After a Blizzard community manager posted a sarcastic comment on the Battle.net forums that hinted that Diablo III may be unable to live up to the monstrous hype it has garnered, fans got worried. However, Diablo 3 game director Jay Wilson was quick to go over to the forums himself and reassure fans that it was obviously a sarcastic comment, and that the final build of Diablo III “is in great shape.”
“Let me be clear: Nothing could be further from the truth,” he said. “”As those of you in the beta have seen, the game is in good shape. Actually, I should say that the beta version of the game is in good shape. The latest full build we’ve been testing here in the office is in great shape.
“We get a lot of sympathy from the other teams because of the long hours of crunch our design team is putting in, but the secret is that playing through the game as we do final tuning, bug fixes, and optimizations is a real joy.
“We always know a Blizzard game is almost ready when we have to ask members of the team to stop playing so they can get their work done. That’s definitely been the case around here.”
He said that fans will “love” the final build of the game, and also confirmed that Blizzard will be announcing a release date “in the near future.” Yeah. Right. “In the near future.”
“See, I didn’t say “soon,” so I’m not taunting you. 😉 You’ll know as soon as I know for sure the exact date.” Okay, this doesn’t sound so bad after all.
“And by the way, we want you to have high expectations for Diablo 3 and all Blizzard games,” he continued. “
That’s what pushes us to try to make the best gaming experiences we possibly can. If Diablo 3 wasn’t a worthy next installment in the Diablo series, we wouldn’t release it. That’s the way we do it. That’s the way we’ve always done it.
“As I’ve said many times in the recent past, we think Diablo 3 is coming along great and we can’t wait for you to get your hands on it. We’re doing all we can to ensure you have one hell of a time once you step foot in Sanctuary…
“Also, I think Diablo is much more comparable to the Evil Dead series personally, and those just kept getting better. OK, I know a lot of you prefer Evil Dead 2 to Army of Darkness, but come on, Bruce Campbell fights a squad of little Bruce Campbells! Priceless. =)”
That’s enough teasing, Blizzard! You’re almost as bad as Valve. Just give us the damn game already.