The development of Diablo 3 was announced in June of 2008 in Paris at the Blizzard Worldwide Invitational. Over 3 and a half years of waiting and we are playing in beta, reading fan sites and learning details of the game from data miners, speculators and lucky beta participants. The question on all our minds is, when will Diablo 3 be released? For quite awhile the Diablo 3 release date was scheduled to be in the fourth quarter of 2011. This was according to the Blizzard product timeline that was ‘leaked’ in February of 2011:

However, in September of 2011 Blizzard announced that they were pushing the release date back to Q1 of 2012. That gives us a three month window when we’re likely to see Diablo 3 hit shelves, January, February or March.

Blizzard has a history of announcing its release date right around 2 months before the actual date. Wrath of the Lich King’s release date was announced on September 15th and it went live November 13th, Cataclysm’s was announced October 4th and went live December 7th and finally Starcraft II’s release date was announced May 3rd and went live on June 27th. I believe it’s safe to wait for an official release date announcement before expecting Diablo 3 in the next month.

What we can say is that Diablo 3 won’t be out for Christmas and probably won’t be out in January. February and March are the most likely candidates with February looking less and less likely as we go through the holiday season without word of an official release date.

Diablo 3′s beta testing is still in its infancy. Beta testers have still not seen runestones, gems, any PvP or our Artisan Jewelers or Mystics. We just saw the RMAH for the first time, they critical component of Blizzard’s new Battle.net Balance system and we’re still waiting to continue past the Skeleton Key in Act I. While Blizzard may not let us experience all this content before the release, it’s likely that their testing is still in early phases.

I’d sit back, subscribe to this blog, and wait patiently for a release date to be announced. Until then, enjoy beating Deathwing over and over with the Looking for Raid tool in World of Warcraft!

Important: Many of the strategies and tips I share here were originally inspired by the people at the Diablo 3 Gold Secrets Forum. If you're serious about making the big bucks in Diablo 3, or just being the best players, you need to signup ASAP.