Diablo III, Possibly the Longest-Awaited Title Launch in Gaming History

The Chinese Democracy of video games is finally out. Blizzard Entertainment, crafters of excellent time-sucks like World of Warcraft and the Starcraft franchise, launched the long awaited and highly anticipated Diablo III last night at midnight.
 
Coming fully 12 years after its predecessor, 2000’s Diablo II, the new version’s release will looks to be one of PC Gaming’s highlights in 2012, and broke Amazon’s presale record. What’s the appeal?  As Boing Boing notes, Diablo franchise offers a “near-perfect combination of clicking, stat-grinding, loot-hunting, medieval gloom, clicking and right-clicking.” Sounds like a great investment of 800 hours.
 
The release was marred by a few problems. Since even single-player games run online, Blizzard’s servers were over capacity almost immediately and for much of the night, denying many eager players early satisfaction. But the company offered some disgruntled Australian customers money-back rebates, dodging some potentially epic gamer-wrath. Good on ya, Blizzard.