[1mmortal]

We’ve got a new entry in the “unfounded rumors clearly written to generate page hits” category. Courtesy of Got Game:

An inside source has revealed that Activision-Blizzard is pushing to release Diablo 3 by NOVEMBER OF THIS YEAR, and has employees working from 9am – 2am daily to finish polishing content. It has long been rumored that D3 would be released by the end of this year, though Activision-Blizzard has inexplicitly denied this by excluding Diablo 3 from this years listed releases.

While the “BY NOVEMBER” part of this “rumor” is dubious, the rest of it is common knowledge. Just about every video game is rushed to the finish, with the devs working very long hours in “crunch mode.” We took photos of sleeping bags under desks during our visit to Blizzard North back before D2’s release.

I’m sure that sort of thing is going on at Blizzard Irvine right now, and probably has been all year, and I’m equally sure that Blizzard (and all fo us) would love D3 to be in stores by November, or early December. Better for pre-Xmas sales, better for more spacing between D3 and SC2X’s release, etc. But will it happen? BTW, there are still some free days in November and December of this year in our mega-release date pool, if you haven’t yet made your prediction.

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