Frustrationen över att releasedatumet för Diablo 3 lyser med sin frånvaro tilltar för varje dag som går, inte minst på de officiella battle.net-forumen där folk ventilerar sin frustration och spekulerar i diverse mer eller mindre troliga orsaker.

Bashiok lyfter på locket och berättar att den enkla anledningen till att Diablo 3 fortfarande inte har fått något releasedatum är för att det helt enkelt inte är ett tillräckligt bra spel ännu. Vi håller tummarna för att Blizzard önskar sig fler nissar till sin spel-verkstad och att tomten uppfyller denna önskning utan förbehåll.

Thank you for voicing your concerns, Starbird. I realize you and many other people are excited to play the game, and are probably feeling a bit let down that we haven’t yet announced a release date. While you bring up a number of points of speculation, I just want to cut right to it and state that the reason we don’t have a release date yet is because the game isn’t yet where we want it to be in terms of our quality standards. We aren’t holding it back on account of any one piece of the game, or for any other outside factors. While it is indeed playable from beginning to end, we’re still actively working on many individual game elements and the ways that they interact with one another, with a great deal of iterative tweaking, balancing, polishing, adjusting, redesigning, and retesting going on. We’re going to continue beta testing, and before too long that’s going to include a large influx of new invites.

Much of this iteration obviously takes place behind closed doors, so I can sympathize with the concerns about the lack of visible progress, and the sentiment that we should just go ahead and ship the game. Until we’re able to reveal more of the results, I can only assure you that we are indeed working on critical game systems that directly impact the core of the experience. 

I also realize a lot of people were hoping for a release date announcement at the VGAs. We’re simply not going to be able to dispel or comment on release date rumors and speculation every time someone expects an announcement. We’ll be announcing a release date when we determine the game is ready, and not holding it back just to line it up with any particular game-industry event.

The bottom line is that development of our games and preparations for release are long and complicated. We’re just as excited to get the final version into your hands as you are to play it, but making sure it lives up to our quality standards will always be the most important factor in that process.