Blizzard’s always had one of those infuriating “it’ll be done when it’s done” approaches to managing project timelines, but apparently Diablo III is now closer to done than not done. For the moment, anyway.

“We’re definitely in the home stretch. We’re crunching,” game director Jay Wilson has told the New York Times. “This is when the magic happens.”

Of course, he wouldn’t commit to anything so vulgar or obvious as an actual release date or even a three-month launch window, but with a bit of simple baseball-based maths, I’ve worked out that the “home stretch” in a development cycle that’s already spanned about 10 years works out to around only 3.3 more years or so. Which means we could see Diablo III coming out as early as 2014! That’s not much longer now, folks.

In the meantime, there are still so many sets to complete in Diablo II. Get back to it.