The wait is almost over! Blizzard Entertainment has officially announced that Diablo III will be released on May 15, 2012. Fans of the Diablo game series have been anxiously waiting for this news. This is incredibly exciting for gamers like me who have spent many nights trying to get their characters to just one more level, and who felt their hearts nearly stop when The Butcher came charging out of the door in the first Diablo game.
Previous to this announcement, there had been much speculation about when the release date for Diablo III would be. In January of 2012, a Best Buy store in Rochester, Minnesota, had a poster sized sign that said that Diablo III would be released on February 1, 2012.
The sign said the store would have a midnight opening for the launch, and it encouraged people to pre-order the game from Best Buy right away. The sign had a countdown clock embedded into it. People noticed that the word “February” was misspelled on the sign, and it wasn’t much longer until the sign was removed from the sales floor.
Recently, Amazon listed April 17, 2012, as the date that Diablo III would be released. It is standard practice for retailers to enter a release date on games that are expected to become a hot seller. It is my understanding that the retailer need a placeholder date in order to start taking pre-orders. Shortly after the internet spread the word about the date Amazon had selected, Amazon changed it to “2012”.
During the opening ceremony at Blizzcon 2011, Blizzard President CEO Mike Morhaime announced the World of Warcraft annual pass This was something brand new. The annual pass was a 12-month subscription to World of Warcraft that could be billed monthly.
Players who signed up for the annual pass got an exclusive World of Warcraft mount called “Tyrael’s Charger”, (which I have been having fun with), and guaranteed beta entry into the next World of Warcraft Expansion, (which is called “Mists of Pandaria”). For Diablo players, the best part of the annual pass was that it would let you download and play Diablo III as soon as it became available, the minute the servers went live. You would get Diablo III for free!
There are a whole lot of gamers who cannot wait for Diablo III to download onto their computers. If you haven’t signed up for the WoW annual pass, and would like to, you need to do it before 12:01 A.M. PDT on May 1, 2012.
Diablo III is currently in beta. Blizzard has not yet announced when the beta will end. So, if you will excuse me, I need to finish leveling my Barbarian to 13. The Skeleton King awaits!