Diablo 3 release date is now known, may 15 2012 and you can even pre-purchase it right away. Diablo 3 developement has been interesting to watch in the past few months, especially since they announced that it would be free to WoW players with a one year subscription.
Simply put, the classic Blizzard scenario was being played out. Blizzard would slowly trickle information about the future game that would make the fans pass out from desire but the game would never be really completed. The long-awaited release date always seemed to be far away and as any fan of Blizzard can attest to, better be patient with them.
However the twist this time was that by giving the game away free with 1 year subs Blizzard had to release within that one year time frame and most early guesses from “insider sources” seemed to aim at early spring 2012, which seemed to fit the rumors of Diablo 3 in spring, Starcraft 2 summer and Pandaria in fall, a busy year for Blizzard.
Then the rumor mill went crazy a few weeks ago after Blizzard said they were not ready yet to announce a release date which in the mind of many people meant that early spring was out and any point in 2012 became a possibility.
Pvp is cut…
A few days ago the big news drop… pvp will be cut from Diablo 3, the reason given? It’s not living up to their standard which has been Blizzard excuse for all cut content since Lord of the Clans. You may agree or not with the wording chosen or if it’s the real reason but it is the reason given.
…
At this point I was planning on giving a long history of Blizzard history since it merged with Activision but I’m going to keep it simple. Every game and expansion since the merger (exception of Wotlk which released soon after the merger) have had content cut or has been heavily modified. Cataclysm lost Path of the Titans and a lot other small features, Sc2 went from three campaigns to one, Diablo 3 now just lost pvp…
I’m having trouble finishing this post… I’m disappointed by Blizzard since the merger. Not everything was bad and I had a ton of fun with Sc2 but on the whole, I feel I’ve been watching a company that cared about making great game become a company only interested in making money at the expanse of the quality of games and the gamers. Call me naive, but I loved to think that somewhere out there, there was still people who cared about just making a great game.
I’m going to finish with this. Please prove me wrong Blizzard.
Your sentiments resound with me. Sadly, I still want Diablo III…. but if I had more balls, I’d probably not buy a Blizzard game till Activision gave them their freedom back.
I should start by saying I’ll not be playing Diablo3 for other reasons, but this whole game is starting to reek of rushed and money grabbing. Starting with the free game being given away with a years sub. I know this pleased a lot of people, but to me it rather screamed ‘we won’t sell enough units to make money on the read moneyAH, give loads away’ and now no pvp in an online game…I beleive they hope in impliment it in a future patch, but i’d put money on that patch being a paid for expantion which is mostly content removed prior to release or purposly held back in development.
Blizz before the merger had freedom to take the high road and say “it’ll ship when it is ready.” I was worried that would fall by the wayside when Activision entered the room. And so it was.
But here’s the thing. Blizz had practically zero in the way of marketing and sales chops, while Activision had it in industrial sized containers. So they get to use Activision’s marketing and distribution acumen; it comes at a price. When you make certain announcements, you’re expected to keep them. Hundreds of thousands of dollars are committed when you do this. Materials ordered, venues booked, tons and tons of stuff. It’s isn’t a matter of “pride” or “honor” or anything else, it’s a matter of if they don’t meet that deadline, the bottom line will suffer immediately.
Observation: they did not CUT PvP per se, they are delaying it. Big difference and one I would have mentioned. Whether they live up to that … welllll … two words. “dance studio.” We’ll see.
At any rate, one gets two choices here: something like STWOR full of bugs that you hate and hope they will fix … someday. Or something delayed until it’s working right, then it gets patched in, and at which point they can hate it because it doesn’t do PvP the way they expect / demand / want.
(come on, you know PvPers as well as I)
I think Blizz gets fuxxored either way, so might as well go the route of “kill all the bugs first” because, heck, solid software buys a lot of forgiveness.
I do agree with you there. Us customers are such hard creatures to please… I don’t know… I miss the old Blizzard because I knew that once it was realease, I was in for a game that would last me for years, a masterpiece.
I’m sad because I felt Blizzard was special, that it would not buckle under outside pressure or fall into the trap the other companies seem to fall into when it comes to making money.
So to answer your question, I would prefer the game to be delayed until it is truly ready.
OMG what happened to the blog requiring me to log in to Twitter just to comment now? Update to template?
You mean it would not allow you to comment if you did not sign in to twitter?? I’ll investigate…
also, what happened to your blog? It is down???
Yeah Grimm! Where’s your blog? I get the “White Error Screen of Annoyance.”
Z