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Blizzard Aiming For Q3 Diablo 3 Beta, 2011 Release

Posted by Soulskill on from the stay-a-while-and-listen dept.

During an earnings call this afternoon, Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime revealed the company's goals for testing and releasing the much-anticipated new chapter in the Diablo series. "[Morhaime said], 'On the Diablo 3 front, I'm pleased to report that we began internal, company-wide testing last week. The game is looking great and we are currently targeting a Q3 launch for external beta testing. The development team is working hard to try to launch Diablo 3 this year, but I want to be clear. We do not have an official release date or window yet.' Details on the external beta are currently extremely limited, so we don't know the scope of how many testers will be involved or what the beta will include. It's hard to imagine that anything could match the gargantuan beta for StarCraft 2, but Blizzard has said that Diablo 3 will have plenty of online functionality, and that sort of functionality needs plenty of testers to succeed."

14 of 131 comments (clear)

  1. Diablo 3 Forever? by Flipstylee · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The development team is working hard to try to launch Diablo 3 this year, but I want to be clear. We do not have an official release date or window yet.

    I don't care either way, when it comes then very nice, but could we hold off on these sort of posts until, say, a few months before it comes out in 2014?
    Call me troll i don't care, i'm just sick of hyping up the hype that leads to endless post-pones that have been the norm in recent years.

    1. Re:Diablo 3 Forever? by black3d · · Score: 2

      To be fair, it's expected - nay, highly anticipated - that Blizzard posts "soon" announcements rather than specific dates. Official dates are announced at Blizzcon (or Blizzard Invitational) and everything else is "soon". I think we'd be disappointed if they made an official date announcement outside of a Blizzcon.

      http://www.wowwiki.com/Soon

      Blizzard don't really postpone things. They just don't commit to releasing. And when they do announce they'll be releasing, they almost always release on date. (rarely, a few weeks later, but no long-term postponements or delays). If it was any other company I'd understand - announcing and then postponing is commonplace in the industry. Blizzard doesn't announce until they're sure they can deliver, though. They doing in-house testing now, which puts them on-track for an open (but selective) beta by Blizzcon (October), and launch just in time for Xmas. And then patched in January. ;)

      If they say they're expecting to release in 2011, their track record says they'll be releasing either in 2011, or early 2012. Not 2014. They good marketers as they don't fail to deliver.

      --
      "The true measure of a person is how they act when they know they won't get caught." - DSRilk
    2. Re:Diablo 3 Forever? by e1618978 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      They will get higher sales numbers if they are late, IMHO - since Elder Scrolls V comes out in November, and it will probably be another 500+ hour game.

    3. Re:Diablo 3 Forever? by Your.Master · · Score: 2

      I'm a person who really just got SC2 for the single-player campaign. I'd have preferred more for sure, but it wasn't exactly short. I kind of wonder whether this would be an issue if they had traded some of the Terran missions for Zerg missions (they already had a few Protoss). Or if they had outright decided not to ever release expansions and this is the full campaign.

      I think arguing you're being "charged 3 times to get the entire experience" is hollow They always had expansions, so you always had to pay more than once to get the "entire experience" from that aspect.

      A better argument you might make is that for the price of a full game, you want X out of the single-player experience. X can be Y hours of gameplay, a campaign for each race, branching storylines, linear storylines, cutscenes, no cutscenes, whatever.

      However, when you look at the future release plans, and decide everything about Starcraft 2 should be released at once or not at all, you lose me. You're not talking about being unsatisfied with what is available, you're talking about wanting to not have more entertainment products in the future, because add-ons are offensive. And anyway, I'm sure when all the expansions are out (in other words, "when it's done") there will be some kind of "battlechest" deal.

    4. Re:Diablo 3 Forever? by thesandtiger · · Score: 2

      I haven't played SC 2, but how long in number of missions and hours of play is the Terran storyline, and how does that stack up against the number of missions & hours of play I n SC 1?

      If it's 60 missions and 30 hours of play vs. 60 missions and 30 hours of play (just guestimating) then no biggie. But if it's only 20 missions and 10 hours of play vs. 60/30 then you have a fair point.

      --
      Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.
  2. I Still Play... by zanian · · Score: 2

    Diablo 2 Hccl. I cannot wait for D3, but I probably will have to knowing Blizzard's release track record and the fact that they will be pumping out D3 simultaneously with the second Sc2 instalment.

  3. Re:Slashvertisement by black3d · · Score: 3, Informative

    A click on the "Games" tab to the left there reveals launch announcements for:

    Blizzard - Diablo 3 (this announcement)
    Two MIT Alumi - Gitionary
    id Software - Rage
    Paradox - Magicka 2 (possibly)
    Ubisoft - Movie Company

    This is the first page of results. I think if you keep clicking, you'll find plenty more announcements for other games popular in the geek community. Blizzard doesn't appear to have any sort of monopoly on this. So either, they're ALL paying, or it's just the editors/firehose trying to pick out what's likely to be of interest.

    --
    "The true measure of a person is how they act when they know they won't get caught." - DSRilk
  4. Re:How reliable? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    ... I really hope Blizzard actually gets this release out on time. Past history doesn't give me much hope. I would love to be playing it this year, but ...

    ... I agree. I'd like to be playing it, but then again, I have a wife and a mortgage ...

  5. awesome! by larry+bagina · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I can't wait to find out what kind of exciting new DRM I have to fight just to play the game!

    --
    Do you even lift?

    These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.

    1. Re:awesome! by zigmeister · · Score: 4, Informative

      Are you being serious? Okay let me list off all the things SC2 does that I find to be jerk-ish, call them DRM or Flying Monkeys With Tophats, I don't really care they're asinine:
      1) Online activation for install (this one I'm cool with, especially if it means I don't need to type in a bloody CD key again... either or would be cool but whatever)
      2) Periodic activation every 30 days - this one seriously ticks me off after I've already activated once then wtf?
      3) Can only play offline/not logged in under guest account, prisoner on your own machine blah blah, also that play can't be translated to your battlenet account
      4) must make a battlenet account to install the game, and that comes with several onerous restrictions which I won't go into here
      5) no LAN - where I grew up, which is where my parents still live, which is the only place where I see all three of my brothers at the same time, there is no freaking internet. Now where I'm at the 'net is very nice, beyond nice, but I will never pay money for a game which asks me to be beholden to what the dev's thought was 'enabling piracy' when that feature is and has been part and parcel of games since I was old enough to hold a mouse, as regards LAN, I don't care if the shadow copy comes back or not, we can each buy a copy that's cool, but I want my game to just work, not install haxxorpatch.exe just to play the stupid thing, I hear DOW2:R has very nice LAN capabilities, guess which one I bought?

      The reason I can live with a one-time on install online activation but not the periodic one, and not the must be logged into "really use it", and not the no LAN play is practical too: at my parents house we'd haul our machines to somewhere with a connection get the games working and installed, unplug, test, then haul them back home, ya it was a PITA but it worked. But with the periodic or always on stuff... that's no longer viable. And any dev' who thinks it's "ok because everybody has internet and if they don't they must live in the backwoods lol" will never see a red cent from my ass.

      With that in mind:

      The sole exception could be SC2 which you need a BattleNet account to activate (which, if you purchased it, is a one-off). It can then be played in offline mode

      is either ignorant or very dishonest.

      --
      Failure formatting five FAQs of financial facts.
  6. Re:Slashvertisement by gknoy · · Score: 3, Informative

    Diablo (1, 2, and soon 3) has enough nerds who like it or want more that it is most certainly news that matters. Hell, I didn't get into D1 or D2 and I would LOVE to get in the D3 beta. It's OK to feed us from the hype machine if it's something we're genuinely interested in.

  7. The mice.... by Carnivore24 · · Score: 3

    ....shall click.

  8. Diablo 3 will be out before... by tepples · · Score: 2

    I would bet money that the release date for Diablo 3 comes before the release date of the film Song of the South on DVD in the United States.

  9. Re:Diablo 3 will not live up to the hype by artor3 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    That's what people were telling me about Starcraft 2. Then the game came out, and lo and behold, it was every bit as fun as the original. Better, even. I see no reason to think that D3 won't be just as good.