There’s no Diablo III release date, and Blizzard never given one. Not really a tentative one. Not really an estimate at one. When asked in regards to a release date, Blizzard employees provide the same reply for several their games.
“When it’s done. ”
Diablo 3 release dates in many cases are given/guessed at by media sources and particularly by computer software merchants. These dates don’t have any authority and exist solely to spur interest/pre-sales.
Beta Test Timeline
After years of offering release date estimates for various games, the majority of that they missed, Blizzard is continuing to grow quite conservative about offering release dates. They now give only vague release date windows, and not any specific dates or targets unless they’re very sure they are able to meet them.
Ergo Starcraft 2 and WoW: Cat didn’t get release dates until 2-3 months beforehand, when those titles were well to their beta tests. This makes the beginning of the Diablo III beta a far more of use way of measuring the release date than any actual release date announcement, and on that front Jay Wilson has estimated that Diablo III will undoubtedly be released about 6 months following the beta test begins.
Geoffkeighley (via Twitter): somebody needs to ask this: When may be the Diablo 3 beta gonna be?
Jay Wilson: Probably about 6 months before we release.
Observe that this really is not even close to a precise timeline, plus much more of a spur-of-the-moment estimate.
In-may 2011 Blizzard confirmed that the Diablo III beta must start in the “third quarter” of 2011. What this means is July 1 – September 30. That is a wide target, however the range was narrowed down a little in mid-June, 2011, when it had been unmasked that the major system will be announced on August 2, 2011. Since we were previously told that the beta wouldn’t begin until after all of the systems were unmasked, this puts an early-August 2011 date for the first possible start of Diablo III Beta.
Estimated Progress?
Estimates of a portion completed are discouraged by Blizzard development teams, since there is no method to quantify the procedure for the reason that fashion. They spent years focusing on the building blocks of Diablo III: programming the overall game engine, testing out numerous different types of art design, creating a plot and character concepts, and so on. The hardware and foundational work takes so long or longer than adding in this content, that makes it impossible to estimate the entire percentage completed.
