14 DAY TRIAL // Diablo III, the upcoming dungeon crawler game from Blizzard, might go free-to-play soon enough through a special Starter Edition that will be made available to those interested in the experience at no actual cost.
Lots of people are eagerly awaiting Diablo III, Blizzard’s newest role-playing game, which should appear on May 15 for the PC and Mac platforms as a full-priced title.
The studio, however, is also preparing a special free-to-play version of Diablo III, in the form of a Starter Edition.
Such a thing was briefly leaked yesterday when several gamers who had accounts on Blizzard’s Battle.net service found that they could access the beta stage for Diablo III’s Starter Edition without having to enter any special key.
Since then, Blizzard took the beta servers for Diablo III down to “resolve an issue affecting the beta accessibility,” and, as you can guess, the mention of any Starter Edition no longer appeared.
According to those who had time to access it, the game looked the same as the current beta version, but many buttons that urged players to pay and upgrade their game to the full edition were present.
What’s more, when accessing certain features, they were treated with a message that said their action was “unavailable in the Starter Edition of Diablo 3”.
The appearance of a Diablo III Starter Edition wouldn’t be out of the ordinary, as Blizzard is offering quite a few such versions for its different games, including World of Warcraft or even the more recent StarCraft 2. These basically act as demos and help draw in players that aren’t sure if they want to spend money on the actual experiences.
As of yet, Blizzard hasn’t commented on the small leak, but you can expect an official announcement soon, as Diablo III is going to be released in less than a month, on May 15 for the PC and Mac platforms.