Blizzard has never officially announced a ship date for Diablo III, so saying that the target date is now “Early 2012” is not really a slip.
How can you push back a date you never announced?
The official line is that it isn’t ready yet. As Mike Morhaime put it:
…we didn’t put so many years of work into Diablo III to release a game that was almost ready.
A good enough reason for sure. The list of games that didn’t delay for that reason is pretty long, and many suffered for it.
Still, I will be interested to see the dark theories running around with the “real” reason for the “not a delay.” Did Blizzard fear being over shadowed by SWTOR? Are they maneuvering to try and rain on the Guild Wars 2 parade?
Anyway, this is something of a blow to the instance group, which has been on hiatus since late spring due to the lack of interest in Cataclysm and any other MMORPG. There was a hope that Diablo III was one of the games that could potentially get us back together and playing as a group this fall.
So that leaves Star Wars the Old Republic from my MMO outlook list of late last year. Here is hoping.
And where the heck is Torchlight II these days? That was estimated as “some time in 2011” at one point? Is that headed to 2012 as well?
The Ancient Gaming Noob 
“The list of games that delayed for that reason is pretty long, and many suffered for it.”
Note how one word can be changed in the above quote, giving an entirely different meaning to the quote (just the opposite in fact), and it can still be just as true.
Delays are bad, any way you slice it.
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SWTRO: Star Wars The Republic of ye Old?
Torchlight 2 seems to be getting delayed, which is a shame, because I am itching for a hack and slash. And given that I had two max-level characters in Diablo II, I can’t go back to play that again. No chance in hell!
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@Bronte – Hrmm… that is the French acronym… yeah… like how they use OTAN for NATO.
I’ll go fix that.
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Considering I never imagined Diablo 3 would be out in 2011, an “early” 2012 release is actually a promising surprise for me!
Because Diablo 3 is NOT an MMO, I really don’t see Blizzard conspiring to rain on another MMO’s parade (GW2) or run from one either (SWTOR). The target audience is slightly different (there’s plenty of overlap, sure, but plenty of Diablo 2 players won’t touch an MMO with a 10 foot pole), there are no subscriptions at stake, and getting a game out before Christmas is almost certainly going to result in better sales than getting it out after Christmas.
I don’t see why Blizzard would bother to “delay” it unless they really were working on it.
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The real reason is CIA advice that a major terrorist atrocity will occur in February provoking an outburst of militarism in the general public which will make that an ideal time to launch Diablo 3 (which is obviously an American capitalist brainwashing device).
Or it could just be not ready yet.
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As long as I can remember, Blizzard has been very slow to ship product, and terrible at meeting release dates. The games are fun, run well, and make lots of money, though, so I guess it’s all good.
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