Well, the time has finally come fellow gamers!

 

Blizzard has finally announced an official release date for the most anticipated game-launch they have ever done. May 15th, 2012 is the day that Diablo III will be released to the public! It's available for pre-purchase on the Battle.net official site so you can download it and be ready to hop in right as the servers go live! Don't forget that if you own a World of Warcraft annual pass you get the game for free, so be sure to not accidentally buy it anyway.

 

The first Diablo was launched in 1997, though it was released on December 31st, 1996, and was met with quite a bit of controversy as fundamentalist parents were still sheltering their kids. This was one of the first games to ever depict the actual devil, let alone have you converse and fight with him in hell. Diablo was also moved to the original Playstation, but that was only the single-player version of the game, as online was not yet available on any system aside from the PC. The game spanned many, many years of patches and changes; most of which met with praise.

 

On March 31st of 2000, the BETA for Diablo II was opened and the opening cinematic was revealed on GameSpot. Three months later, on June 28th, Diablo II was released for the PC and less than a month later it had sold more than one million copies (in roughly two weeks) making it the fastest-selling PC game of all time. It was released on MAC shortly thereafter.

 

On September 3rd of 2000, the much anticipated expansion, Lord of Destruction, was announced at ECTS. The expansion would incorporate an entire new act, focusing mainly on the Barbarian lore which was unheard of for centuries, as well as a new boss; Baal.

 

Exactly one year and a day after the release of Diablo II (June 28th, 2000), Diablo II: Lord of Destruction was released. On July 26th Diablo II: LoD sold more than 1 million copies making it the fastest-selling expansion ever. Both Diablo II and LoD still hold those records today; 12 years later.

 

October 24, 2003 was the date of the first really big patch for the online game. Most players were worried mainly about the "Rust Storm" which deletes any illegitimately created/acquired items. This was put into effect by Blizzard due to how prominent hacking was when the game was released. The most notable of which was 'Hero Editor'. It basically gave you the option to give you whatever you want. The hack was free up until about six weeks before the patch was announced, and was then re-released for 15-20$. On the 28th of October the patch was put into effect which released seasonal ladder characters, new items, increasing the difficulty and much more.

 

On July 1st, 2004 the ladder was reset for the first time and Blizzard announced a "Race to 99" contest. On the 26th and 27th of August the winners are crowned -- Female -- Matriarch Tifas-Revenge, and -- Male -- Patriarch ETFonTop-Leader.

 

Four years later on June 28th, Diablo III was announced at the Blizzard Worldwide Invitational in Paris and it gave a preview of the Barbarian and Witch Doctor classes. As you can imagine, the unveiling was met with a huge amount of excitement in hopes that Blizzard will gives us more of what we want. The Wizard class was unveiled at BlizzCon 2008 on October 10th. On August 21st, 2009, the attendees of BlizzCon 2009 witnessed the beautiful gameplay of the much sought-after Monk class, which is the fourth playable class in the game.

 

Keeping up with their consistent attention to the Diablo II ladder and keeping the game up-to-date, they released patch 1.13 and the ladder season 5 begins on March 29th, 2010.

 

The final playable class was unveiled at BlizzCon 2010; the Demon Hunter, on October 22nd.

 

On September 20th, 2011, the Diablo III Beta test began and was given to a select few people. Blizzard continued to tease us with more cinematics, released on October 21st and December 10th of 2011, with "Black Soulstone" and the intro trailer that was shown at the Spike Video Game Awards.

 

And thus ends my gigantic wall of text, and my little timeline of the Diablo series. I hope you enjoyed the read, and I'll see you in-game!

 

- Bows

Thanks for the read Bows.

You're welcome! I thought everyone would enjoy a good read, and, well, I was bored. :P

I hope that people will post guides on skill point usage (without being hard to find); I was complete crap at doing so, and couldn't find a skill guide for my character in Diablo II.

My friends and I have already started making layouts for guides to each character. So no worries. ;)

I think my general slackness when it comes to buying things will see me well in regards to guides on the different classes.

anyone know if a $500 PC from Bestbuy can run this game? seems like even cheap PCs have a quad core and 4 gig ram by default. will add/replace the video card if it even has one

Try talking to Nadril if he still floats around here, a few years ago he managed to come up with a build for under $400 that could play most games at decent settings.

Try talking to Nadril if he still floats around here, a few years ago he managed to come up with a build for under $400 that could play most games at decent settings.

 

i do have an idea what to build. but the thing is this is going to be a gift for my bday. i'd rather ask for a prebuilt desktop than ask for money for parts.

I cant wait to start playing May 15.

This is just too awesome for words to describe.

High heavens here I come, behold.

Try talking to Nadril if he still floats around here, a few years ago he managed to come up with a build for under $400 that could play most games at decent settings.

 

i do have an idea what to build. but the thing is this is going to be a gift for my bday. i'd rather ask for a prebuilt desktop than ask for money for parts.

 

Most sites let you make a wishlist where you could put the parts up and people buy it for you for your birthday.

I'm interested about the story. Looks like we'll have to save Deckard again... But who is this new character? I think she'll play a big role in the game, but I could be wrong.

I don't think that that is Cain in trailer.. the guy was 200+ years old in Diablo 1 and 2, so for him to be an uncle to such a young lady is unlikely.

Cain is in the game.

 

Also, OPEN BETA for those of you that have not played it. April 20-23.

 

- @Bows

Stoked.

15th may is a few days before my last exam.

 

Yesss. ;)

SHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEIT" downloading that beta!

Of course my laptop got fixed 2 days after beta closes. Still not sure which class to pick, they all seem really cool.

Beta didn't look too good, not going to buy the game. Not pumped up the slightest.

Beta didn't look too good, not going to buy the game. Not pumped up the slightest.

I hope you're trolling.

Just had a look at the gameplay from the beta, and it looks pretty true to its roots. I had been wondering if they would go for a proper 3rd person since that is the norm for modern games, or if they would stick to their isometric roots. Most of the feel of the game seems to have been preserved. Three things really jumped out at me during my 5 minutes. You seem to just get skills, rather than needing to choose which really surprised me since that was a huge part of the predecessors. The map seems to be oddly linear instead of the wide open expanses and dizzying mazes, though it might just be that I didn't watch for long enough, or that the beta simply doesn't cover nearly enough of the game. The third thing is the physics, which might be a tiny gripe from me. The physics are so exagerated that its actually comical, which doesn't really fit with the more serious tone of the game (or maybe the barbarian is just even stronger than he looks).

The world "opens up" after the Skeleton King a developer said. 5 days omg omg omg

 

I'm ready.

Killed Andariel on nightmare mode today, not having good gear sucks because progress in nightmare mode is pretty hard with shit gear. In slightly less than 2 days I will have slain the first Diablo 3 demons with my Barbarian. Is the client already available for download for people who didn't pre-purchase?

Gonna fetch the game from GameStop at 23:45, the game can be started at 01:00. I hope my body is ready.