D3CE Boxes Hitting Stores

A couple of days ago we saw photographic evidence of Diablo 3 boxes in stores, and a few fans commented that they’d only believe it when they saw D3CE boxes. Well, here you go, thanks to Fmulder pointing us to a post on AtomicPC, where they showed a photo from a user who saw a D3CE in an Australian store.

Many fans are wondering if their preorders, from Amazon and other online sources, will arrive the day of the launch, permitting them to start playing at midnight. No one wants to wait for the mail to come the next day, but as of yet there’s been no official word on this. It’s probably nothing Bashiok could even tell us; different retailers have different release schedules, timelines, shipping speeds, etc. We’ll post news on this if/when we hear something useful to pass along.

Speaking of passing along useful news, check out this informative post from SKroo, who says he’s a long time employee of Walmart, and warns that each store will probably receive only a handful of D3CEs, as that’s the usual routine with collector’s editions of hot software offerings.

Blizzard has said that Walmart, Target, and various other brick and mortar retailers are receiving copies of the D3CE to sell first-come-first-served on launch night. As no one knows how many which store will get, and Blizzard never says anything other than, “we print limited amounts” there’s no telling if they’re sold out, if more will be coming in, how many your local store will have, etc.

Perhaps this uncertainty is part of the fun, making any D3CE copies you find feel like a lottery win! (Assuming there aren’t 20 of them sitting on the shelves of every store a month from now, since Bliz actually manufactured a million units, and everyone who bought five of them hoping for a future eBay profit gets to eat that dream like cold oatmeal.)