After all this time, Blizzard has finally announced the release date for the anticipated next chapter in the Diablo saga. Diablo III will hit Windows and Mac platforms in most territories this spring, on May 15.
Via announcement, Blizzard stated that players in the U.S., Canada, Europe, South Korea, Southeast Asia, Australia, New Zealand, and the Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau regions would get the game in mid-May. In Mexico, Argentina, Chile and Brazil, the game will be available as well but only digitally via Blizzard’s Battle.net service. Pre-orders for digital copies have started today.
It won’t be until June 7 that gamers in Latin America and Russia can get their hands on a copy of Diablo III. Blizzard claims that the game will be fully localized into Latin American Spanish, Brazilian Portugese, French, German, European Spanish, Italian, Polish, Russian, Korean and Traditional Chinese. They’re really not leaving anybody out of this one.
“After many years of hard work by our development team and months of beta testing by hundreds of thousands of dedicated players around the world, we’re now in the homestretch,” said Mike Morhaime, CEO and cofounder of Blizzard Entertainment. “We look forward to putting the final polish on Diablo III over the next two months and delivering the ultimate action-RPG experience to gamers worldwide starting on May 15th.”
Diablo III will sel at $59.99 both for a retail DVD copy or a digital version, and will run on everything from Windows XP up through Windows 7, as well as Mac OS X. The special collector’s edition, running $99.99, includes the full game on disc, a behind-the-scenes Blu-Ray/DVD two disc set, a soundtrack CD, a 208 page Art of Diablo III book, and a 4 GB USB ‘soulstone’ featuring full versions of Diablo II and Diablo II: Lord of Destruction as well as a matching Diablo skull to put it in, plus exclusive in-game content for Diablo III, World of Warcraft and Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty.
Gamers not willing to pony up for a new game, but still want to play and are still denizens of World of Warcraft’s Azeroth can throw down for that game’s Annual Pass – it’s $14.99 a month, but will net you a free copy of the game and a special WoW in-game mount. This deal expires at 12:01 a.m. PDT on May 1.
However, the game will not ship complete, as many games tend to do, these days. Diablo III will only ship with the single-player game intact. The planned player vs. player arena mode will arrive as a free-to-download patch after launch. Blizzard developers have stated that the feature simply was not ready to be shipped along with the game.
However, despite all that, the wait is almost over. It’s almost like the summer of 2000 all over again! Are you excited to delve back into Blizzard’s idea of hell? Let us know in the comments!
Diablo III is slated for release on Windows and Mac PCs on May 15.
