BIG DIABLO 3 ANNOUNCEMENT (Update)
 

Blizzard is acquiring the diablo3.com domain. That's the announcement.

http://www.diablo3.com/ See for yourself.

Big farking deal, IMO. It's barely proof of anything.

There are a few things to note, however:

1. Blizzard has known about Diablo3.com for a long time, but hasn't done anything until now.

2. Similar things happened with worldofwarcraft.com and starcraft2.com.

It might be somewhat big news, but don't take it as an announcement of Diablo 3. I would say, be on the look out for an announcement at WWI. If it doesn't happen at WWI, I'd be willing to say that it probably won't ever happen.

*Gets excited*

When's WWI?

How long before the release of those games did it acquire the domains? It could be another year or more before they announce it.

One more day....

WWI is a month from now towards the end of June. They'll probably announce it then. Otherwise, I don't know why they're acquiring all these diablo 3 domains if they're not working on it.

Oh my god. That domain must have been an easy 500k$. I'm buying WoW2.com atm.

The owner of Diablo3.com actually gave the domain to blizzard at no cost. It wasn't even a sale. They just gave it to Blizzard.

As I said in the other thread, that's such a dumb move. I understand that they're a great fan for it, but they could have gotten a lot of money out of it.

Bah.

What a letdown :(

It's not a bad announcement, but I think it was definitely overhyped.

WWI is just a couple days shy of 2 months from now. It's June 28th and 29th, I believe. Be on the lookout for an announcement then.

Also, if you guys didn't know, Blizzard has been acquiring a lot more than just diablo3.com. They've been getting a lot of other diablo3.*** websites.

Why would you even possess that domain if your not going to sell it? It's not like a fucking hobby collecting and paying yearly fees to possess website domains.

The guy was trying to prove he's a "good fan." I doubt that justifies the dumb move to any significant other he has. He might already be right though and not care.

I would have sold it ...with blizzard getting at least $100 mil. monthly from WOW, I don't feel like they should be given handouts.

I would've shot for a nice sum that you could divide evenly amonst everyone involved, per-say around 18 million or so? I'm sure blizzard would've forked it out.

IIRC, there's legal precedent for seisure of domains containing trademarks not owned by the domain holder, so you can only demand so much for the domain before you get taken to court and stripped of it, anyway. I think that it's stupid that he didn't ask anything for it, but at the same time, he was never going to get some huge sum for it.

So... what was the announcement?

Litigation takes a lot of time and money in itself. They'd have to do a cost-benefit analysis. Anyways, that's a good way to launch a product ...a legal dispute for a domain :P.

Which is why you could get any money at all: there is a price point where it's cheaper for them to just buy it than to take you to court over it.

According to dnscoop.com:

"The estimated value of http://diablo3.com is: $2,289,330"

I think that, even if Blizzard took them to court, they could make a case to at least get part of that. They could argue that their domain has actual value and that they aren't trying to hold the domain hostage.

However, the guy was a moron and gave it away so this is all pointless anyway.

He is a moron, hell Blizzard may not ever even do anything with that website, they might be making false hype for no reason, Blizzard loves to twist with people.

It's funny because be was talking about how gracious it was that Blizzard gave him a couple weeks of redirecting diablo3.com to diablofans.com. Well, I'm sure they will when you save them hundreds of thousands of dollars. I hope the guy's already rich ...if they were in a hurry to get the domain he could write his own check.