On January 7th, rumors and photos of Diablo fans from around the US emerged quickly all over the internet, including a blog entry released from Joystiq. Threads and posts all over the Diablo forums began showing up with this picture:

This photo was later to be confirmed real by a Best Buy employee stating that the store did indeed have an apparent midnight release for Diablo III. This is great news, except… what does Blizzard have to say about their own game announcement? The answer was absolutely nothing — until now. Just moments ago, Bashiok announced via Twitter that “Diablo III does not have a release date. Any store or person claiming otherwise is guessing.”

It is still unclear when Diablo III will be released, although Soon™ is always a good estimate for Blizzard games. No official response from Jay Wilson on the Diablo III launch has emerged either, leaving Diablo fans in the dark. This isn’t the first time we’ve seen a company like Best Buy doing something like this in order to get pre-orders. Gamestop did the same thing over a year ago, and thousands attempted to pre-order the game. That promotion has since been taken down by Gamestop, but Best Buy doesn’t seem to be the only one announcing the February release. Target has also jumped aboard this idea of a February release.

As for all the hardcore fans of the Diablo series, we all knew better than to believe such shenanigans but the light of a possible Diablo III release was just what many of us wanted to hear. After all the rumors of Diablo III’s delays being blamed on the delayed release into Korea, we needed something. The wait continues…