This morning Blizzard finally announced the May 15th release date for Diablo III. This gives us exactly
until the servers go live. Between now and then you can prepurchase the standard edition at battle.net, download the encrypted client and then be ready as soon as the servers go live.

It turns out all of our speculation was terribly inaccurate except Blizzard’s suggestion that they would give us a 2 month warning just like they have for the last 4 big releases they have announced.

Here’s some questions and answers I put together from some conversation going on this morning with Blizzard Community Managers:

What about Act II through Act IV?

“We’ve got a full slate of updates coming to this website between now and May 15.”

Can I prebuy the Collectors Edition in battle.net?

Nope, you’ll have to buy the D3CE in stores and they are probably already sold out. Here’s a quote straight from blizzard:

“The Collector’s Edition is only available from retail, and that means to play as soon as possible you’ll want to hit a midnight release to pick it up. We don’t have any plans to release a digital CE, it’s a retail-only kind of thing. But! you may have a few options.” – more

System requirements?

You can find the full system requirements here.

If you’re already in the beta do you have to download again?

Yes

When will the beta end?

No idea, I’m guessing in about a month though.

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.