Easier Reading

• I'm changing the format of these posts to something like this, rather than making them bullet point lists and readers not really knowing what each minor post entails. For example, you might want to know more about Titan but you don't care that I had a random thought about why video game companies no longer say "Proudly Presents" in any of their intro cinematics (the last game I can remember ever doing that was Westwood's Red Alert.)


• And, if you want to make things easier for me, please create yourself an alias name when post comments. That way, I'm not always responding to "Anonymous". It's just one extra step (under "Name/URL" instead of "Anonymous") and you don't even have to put anything into the URL section. It's still anonymous, but now I can have a specific name to respond to. :)

What's Really Holding Diablo 3 Back?

(This one ending up becoming quite big, so I cut it out and put it into it's own post. I will post shortly.)

January 17th Release Date

On a related note, the January 17th release date is still predicted by some.

VoidTester alerted me to a post about one person's reasoning for the January release date.

The link I originally read (on the Battle.net Forums) wasn't too well organized, but there's a much better thought out and articulated post here (possibly by the same person, Druwin):

- Diablo 3 will be released on January 17th, 2012. Why? Because the free 30 days trial period of SWTOR expires exactly mid January.

- Diablo 3's release date will be announced in 2 weeks on Dec 10, 2011 during the Spike Video Game Awards. Why? Because a.) SWTOR launches 5 days later, b.) competitor BioWare also reveals their new strategy game during the show, and c.) Blizzard did the same with the announcement of WoW “The Burning Crusade” which, by the way, has once been pushed back from a late 2006 release to mid January 2007 as well – same situation as with Diablo 3.

- Amazon knows NOTHING. It’s all just placeholders.

- Selling of Diablo 3 merchandise has begun: Tyrael hoodie, SteelSeries mouse, pad, headset etc. The “Book of Cain” will be released on Dec 13, 2011 – 3 days after the release date has been announced during the VGA.

- I expect a big, final Diablo 3 stress test with a lot of additional beta invites starting mid December, when SWTOR launches.

(TBC wasn't announced at the VGA, though, they just released the intro TBC cinematic.)

* UPDATE (11/30/11): Confirmed. They're just going to be showing the full Diablo 3 opening cinematic at Spike VGA. Same as last time.

Still, they listed some pretty good reasons. And there are other favorable marketing cases for a mid-Jan release date (plus, it's in the beginning of the quarter), but this would be assuming that the game is fully completed with a working RMAH.

I believe that the RMAH is the one piece holding everything back though, and we'll know more within the next few weeks. If an announcement is made at VGA, it would be more likely for a Feb release date. That leaves a Jan announcement for early March, but there won't be any releases in mid to late March, since it's too close to the new quarter.. they would rather push it into the first couple weeks of the next quarter instead (early-to-mid April.) I think everything is going to depend on the RMAH testing schedule and government approvals (especially in SK.)

At this point, I'm going to say that January 17th isn't a likely release date and there won't be an announcement at VGA.

TitanGuru.Com Account Suspended

The TG site went down over the weekend, again.

This Account Has Been Suspended

Although I'm not advocating use of the website, you can still get their latest updates here on their Twitter page.

I don't recommend them because TitanGuru ripped off a large amount of new Titan details from this blog where it was discovered first. The site owner refused to acknowledge the real source and will not provide citations to his readers.. but they rather claim that "they came across it". Since then, they've been very careful not to mention this site or link back to it in any way (and deleting posts about it if ever mentioned). They still frequently visit this site for new Titan information, however, so that they can continue to claim it for their own. :)

If you're looking for Titan information, I would recommend this site (of course) or TitanFocus.info as better alternatives. As an added bonus, those alternative sites don't need to buy visitors or use paid botting services for FB Likes. So you know that the traffic is "honest" and visitors are only there for Next Gen MMO information and not gimmicky tricks.

Since TitanGuru still hasn't posted any updates on their Twitter or Facebook page today, you can probably assume that he just hasn't logged into the site since the Thanksgiving Day long weekend to correct the problem. It will be back up sometime later and it probably just went down due to quota violations (more than 100 visitors in a single day on that site is serious business.)

You're not missing anything right now. They haven't had any decent posts in a while, and even then, it was the stuff they got from here. They're not down due to releasing "HUGE NEWS!!", as some might suspect. It's down just for silly reasons, and they're not a site to ever find or have inside leaks.