March 14, 2012 by Paul Curtin
Some good and bad news for those eagerly awaiting one of 2012’s most anticipated games. First the bad news, which comes from a recent post on the official Diablo III website: Blizzard has announced that D3 will not be including Player vs. Player combat when the full retail version is released, and they will instead be adding PvP as a patch later on when they feel it’s up to their standards. Here’s what Blizzard’s Lead Designer, Jay Wilson, had to say:
“After a lot of consideration and discussion, we ultimately felt that delaying the whole game purely for PvP would just be punishing to everyone who’s waiting to enjoy the campaign and core solo/co-op content, all of which is just about complete.”
This news is sure to ignite some PvB (Player vs. Blizzard) controversy amongst many fans of the game, but there’s still good news. Although there won’t be PvP at launch, by removing it Blizzard is clearly trying to make their Q2 2012 release date so that fans might be able to finally get their hands on D3 this summer. Wilson went on to tease D3‘s release by saying:
While we work on making sure PvP lives up to its full potential, we hope you’ll find some consolation in the fact that soon, you’ll be having a blast leveling characters, finding items, learning the classes, and perfecting builds…and that when the Arenas do arrive, you’ll be all the better prepared for battle.
Update: Wilson wasn’t joking when he said we’d be getting our hands on Diablo III “soon.” I was figuring Diablo III would have a mid to late summer release like StarCraft II back in 2010, but it turns out Blizzard will be releasing the game much sooner on May 15, 2012 with the release date officially being announced via their official Battle.net site where a digital version of the game can now be pre-ordered.
