Blizzard Aiming For Q3 Diablo 3 Beta, 2011 Release

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."

Comments

Re:Diablo 3 Forever?

[e1618978]

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.

awesome!

[larry bagina]

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

Re:awesome!

[zigmeister]

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.