Recently Announced Highly Anticipated PC Game Diablo III

It’s a bit of old news but Diablo 3 was surprisingly announced about 2 weeks ago and has apparently been in development for several years now. The surprise comes as StarCraft 2, arguably the most anticipated game of the decade, is also under development from Blizzard and was expected for a late 2009 release. Both Diablo and StarCraft are extremely groundbreaking and anticipated games, so this leaves us with yet another myriad of questions and hype for gamers as they are forced to wait for the next Blizzard release.

Well firstly it’s no surprise that Blizzard has had over a decade to produce the next game in either series — 10 years for SC2 and 8 years for D3 to be precise, and now suddenly both are in development simultaneously both rumored for a fall or late 2009 release. After such a long gap in both series most of the younger generation of teens knows almost nothing about Blizzard’s games outside of World of Warcraft. If you read a lot of the comments on many Blizzard forums and even YouTube videos of some Diablo 3 gameplay you’ll see so many kids saying things such “Oh what’s this Diablo it’s just a WoW clone but zombie and demon style.”

Veteran gamers can only laugh at those comments but still it leaves the question: Did Blizzard wait too long to make sequels for these games? For many gamers like myself WoW was a bust and we’ve been waiting patiently for a decade now for Blizzard to produce us another good game to play. Interestingly enough the fanbase seems as firm as ever. I refused to play WoW yet I am still loyal to and love all of Blizzard’s other games and I am a shoe-in to buy and play both Diablo 3 and StarCraft 2 upon their respective releases. It’s a win for Blizzard either way despite the possibility of losing their old fanbase with a pay-to-play project such as WoW. Not only that but I’m sure interest in the younger generation seems as though it can be easily generated again, as well as us oldies so it’s clearly a win for Blizzard. I’m happy for both games, but it’s just a shame we had to wait so long for either of them gathering dust laying in WoW’s shadows for years.

Another question is: How does Blizzard release the games? Will we see them both in the same year (2009) with Blizzard hoping that the hype of both will lead to skyhigh sales of both games at the same time, or will we be forced to wait even longer for one or the other? Fall 2009 seems to be the earliest release possible for either game, but there’s been little to no headway on Blizzard’s progress of balancing Zerg units. A lot of the people I know who were so hyped about StarCraft II are not even checking news updates anymore — myself included. All the hype is currently on D3. In my opinion I’m going to guess Diablo 3 for a 2009 fall release, and we’ll see StarCraft II pushed back to about fall 2010. Could the hype of StarCraft II possibly last for 3 years of development, or will it dwindle over the simple fact that Blizzard can’t seem to balance the Zerg units properly after years of skill testing?

Blizzard believes in taking as much time possible to polish a game but in StarCraft II’s case it may end up ruining the possibility of being the greatest game of all time. By the time they actually release the game, graphical advancements that will be in other new games by 2010 or 2011 may make their current 2004-2008 work that’s been in development for years look mediocre in comparison. Right now is the time to shine for these games, so please Blizzard get the damn things out as soon as possible so that we can game on. Whatever happens for sure will be interesting regarding either game.