Fans have been eagerly awaiting the release of Diablo III since Blizzard announced the title in the summer of 2008. Now, already a full year and a half after being announced, the release date for Diablo III is still completely up in the air, with a 2010 release seeming nigh impossible.

Speaking with Techland, Rob Pardo, executive vice president of game design at Blizzard, explained the wait.

“We always announce all of our games too early. We realize that and go, ‘You know what? Next time we’re not going to do that.’ And then we always fail at that. But I’d rather fail at that than fail at making the game great. I think it’s safe to say that, yeah, [Diablo III] is not going to be out next year.”

But before a war erupts between gaming groups, Pardo made sure to explain that it wasn’t due to a lack of focus, or varying priorities that Diablo III is taking so long to finish, as each of Blizzard’s current projects (including Starcraft II and World of Warcraft: Cataclysm) “has individual development teams.”

“We just have a different process and approach than a lot of other studios, and it makes it a very difficult process for us to predict street dates when we’re multiple years out,” Pardo added, “We’ve been wrong [about release dates] for as long as I can remember. So that’s why don’t do release dates anymore.”

So, before you start blaming the individual developers for your lack of dungeon crawling goodness, you might want to aim your burning pitchfork elsewhere – like at those who decided to announce the title in 2008 to begin with, (apparently) knowing full well that it wouldn’t be ready for years. Way to toy with our emotions Blizzard.