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So, what about early 2012 release, Jay?

Source of this awesome news is here. Let's be honest guys, Blizzard keeps trolling us. Over and over.
Tell me how on earth you can say "polishing phase" when you are overhauling the most basic mechanics of the game. Oh well, we'll meet this summer, I guess?

Those damned ''quality standards''... once again.

So Blizzard decided to give us additional info about the (in)famous release date. They decided to speak out, in public, on their official forums...

So what do we know now? Do we finally have a vague idea of a possible release date of this supposed-to-be-uberfantastic-and-nearly-perfect game?

The answer is -of course- no. Instead, we are given yet another "soon, when it's ready, we are working hard, we're almost there, just be patient we love you..." crap:

While you bring up a number of points of speculation, I just want to cut right to it and state that the reason we don’t have a release date yet is because the game isn’t yet where we want it to be in terms of our quality standards.

As of December 19th they still don't have the power to give us a release date? That does not sound anything close to "early 2012 release", in my opinion. And there is one another thing that really makes my "bulls*it detector" go crazy:

While it is indeed playable from beginning to end, we’re still actively working on many individual game elements and the ways that they interact with one another, with a great deal of iterative tweaking, balancing, polishing, adjusting, redesigning, and retesting going on. 

So the game appears to be "playable from the beginning to the end". Again, "wow!"... very impressive, I'm astonished. Given that Blizzard was aiming to deliver it before 2012, I really did not expect it to be "playable from beginning to end"... Of course the fact that Korea caused tons of problems to Blizzard (real money auction house stuff) did not influence the release date, right? Nah... it's just about meeting the quality standards... Sure!

But there is more. Someone asked why the beta is not openly playable, right now. If not for everyone, at least for a larger audience. The answer is simple: the infrastructure is not ready yet:

The service currently available is a single test site, it just couldn't hold that many people. While we'd certainly like to make people happy, it wouldn't be a good experience, and frankly letting people try the game is not the purpose of the beta test.

I am very curious about HOW Blizzard is testing the game. Diablo III is supposed to attract millions of players. Many of them will be playing the RMAH, dealing with real money. Meanwhile Blizzard still has to implement the "virtual wallet" thing on Battle.net and properly test the AH. And what about PayPal? No clue, we will discover mechanics and fees when the game will go live, I suppose. Also, where is the damned "stress test"? Again, nothing.

I'll be honest, I'm getting a bit bored of everything even before seeing the game. I guess that's the side-effect of too much anticipated hype. Hype that YOU, Blizzard, decided to generate from nothing between September and October. Grrrrrrrrr....!!!

First RMAH fees revealed

Here we go, Blizzard finally decided to test the RMAH. Of course everything will be done using "virtual money" and there will be no PayPal involved. That basically means you will be using the GAH (Gold Aucion House) with "beta coins" instead of "gold coins". I fail to see how that could reflect the RMAH (which involves multiple fees and PayPal) but it's still a good update.

Q. What are the auction house fees? 
During the Diablo III closed beta test, the Seller will incur a 0.15 Beta Buck listing fee and a 0.65 Beta Buck fee per successful transaction in the currency-based auction house. These numbers are not final and are for testing purposes only; they're subject to change.

Of course the Blizzard's rule number one always applies: everything is subject to change. I guess those numbers reflect the general expectations, at least for what concerns the listing fee. If 65c seems a bit high, keep in mind that we're talking about fixed rates. Not having to deal with percentage-based fees is very very good for everyone. That sounds bad if you try to sell your stuff for few dollars... but it looks much more interesting for higher numbers.

What about PayPal? Not a word about it, yet. Let's wait... and see.

Release date pushed to 2nd quarter of 2012...?

Small warning: this wasn't confirmed by Blizzard and it's still a rumor. Sadly, it's more than just a pure guess or random estimation. As you can read on Diablo IncGamersa (source), Amazon.de sent a mail to every customer who preordered Diablo 3 on their site, informing that...

"[...] we have updated information from the developer, saying they won’t make this new projection either. Diablo III is now scheduled to release within the 2nd quarter of 2012"

I was already a bit skeptical about a Jan-Mar release. The "closed beta" did not really shine: instead, it showed tons of flaws, bugs and missing stuff. The Real Money Auction House is still under development, we don't have a clue about auction fees, the rune system was changed more than one time already... I mean, where is the supposed "stress test" of a "nearly finished product" that Blizzard wanted to give us?

Someone could argue that "only Blizzard knows when the game will be released". I'd answer "yes and no": sometimes even the most secret information slips out of your hands and becomes public. You just need a random angry employer at Blizzard to get THAT info, after all. Let me also add that I really see no logical reason to send a random email to your customers informing that "sadly... your preorder is not going to be shipped as intended, instead you will need to wait even longer". I am sure lots of (potential) gamers would just cancel the preorder, so that's a very dangerous action if you don't have some kind of "decent" source to confirm the delay. And I guess Amazon... could have that source.

There is another interesting fact that -in my opinion- is not helping at all: blizzard is working on the console version of Diablo 3. They always showed some kind of "interest" in the past, but they now admitted they're focusing on the porting project already. If history can teach us anything, we can say that's not a good thing. Generally speaking, I am totally against pc/console porting. I'm a console and pc owner, so that's not a matter of preferences: it's just that "porting" stuff usually does not end very well for pc's.

Well, that's all folks. I won't deny I am a bit tired of this annoying "let's keep the hype up in every possible way". If Blizzard really decides to push the game to 2nd quarter, confirming this early prediction, I guess I'll quit blogging about the game and focus on something else. Let's see what happens.