The highly anticipated Diablo III has been gut-wrenchingly delayed many times before. And after the massive 600-employee layoff at Blizzard, we’ve been wondering if we would ever see Diablo III’s release in our lifetime. Luckily, the waiting game is nearly over.

diablo 3 not in my lifetime

Thankfully we'll be playing D3 during our lifetime.

Following the troubling layoff announcement, Blizzard President and co-founder Michael Morhaime took to the Battle.net forums to make it clear that the cuts would have no effect on the release of projects including World of Warcraft, Blizzard DOTA, Diablo III, Starcraft II, and other unannounced projects. As Morhaime was quick to point out, 90 percent of the layoffs were non-developer roles.

“We determined that while some areas of our business had been operating at the right levels and could bnefit from further growth, other areas had become overstaffed,” wrote Morhaim “I also want to emphasize that we remain committed to shipping multiple games this year, and that our development teams in particular remain largely unaffected by [Feb. 29’s] announcement.”

To back this up, Jay Wilson, Diablo III’s game director, encouragingly responded to a tweet from a fan just yesterday.

The Diablo III fan, Chris Wright, asked, “On a scale of 1 to 10, (1=not even close, 10=immenent,) how close are we to that all important #D3 announcement? :)”

Wilson merely responded, “9”, but that was all that was needed to be said.

jay wilson reveals d3 announcement is imminent

When another fan had attempted to extract further information by writing, “How about a decimal place. 9.0 = matter of a week or two, 9.9 = early next week?” Jay quipped, “Don’t push it. :)”

jay wilson says dont push it

In addition, Morhaime clued fans into the official Diablo III release date announcement, saying it was coming in a matter of weeks. And with the confirmation coming from Wilson, Diablo fans have a real reason to celebrate. According to recent rumors, Diablo III‘s release date will likely come in the second quarter, around April to June. If we had to guess, we’d wager that the official Diablo III announcement will come as a finale to Blizzard’s private media event showcasing the latest news about World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandearia, set to take place between March 13 and 15.

If you have any guesses as to the announcement date, let us know in the comments below.