Yes, there will be an empty spot on the gift lists of many gamers this year as Blizzard has announced that Diablo II will miss the holiday season and head for an early 2000 release. The company says the reason for the delay is that the development team wants to fully debug and balance Diablo II's gameplay before its worldwide release.

　　The company has also changed the Battle.net service to accommodate the new game with a new client-server architecture designed to prevent cheating and to encourage more multiplayer gaming with more features. And the game will have a more global scope with servers set up in Europe and Asia

　　In a release today from Blizzard, the company apologized this way: "While we appreciate that Diablo II is highly anticipated by many gamers, we also know that gamers have come to expect a high level of quality from Blizzard products. We have worked hard for many years building this trust and, as we have promised before, will not take development shortcuts at the expense of disappointing our customers."

　　In the meantime, Blizzard plans on beta-testing the game before year's end with a 1,000 player limited beta release with an additional beta stress test after that.