It's been well over two years since Blizzard first officially announced its plans for releasing Diablo 3, yet the third game in the popular action-RPG franchise seems no closer to its actual release than when it was first announced. In fact, a third game from another action-RPG franchise might be released before Blizzard's title.

Runic Games, formed in part by former Blizzard team members, launched its downloadable action-RPG title Torchlight in late 2009 to solid sales and critical response and a sequel, Torchlight 2, is already set for a spring 2011 release. However when asked by our sister site Joystiq if a possible Torchlight 3 could come out before Diablo 3, Runic Games' co-founder Max stated Schaefer, "I really think we will, I'm not joking about it."

Schaefer said the small size of the Runic Games team means that they could bring out a third title in the series before Blizzard finally releases Diablo 3. Still Schaefer says he doesn't envy the Diablo 3 development team in the least, saying, "Everything has to be super epic. More epic than anything that's come before, more epic than World of Warcraft. They have to do that. It puts them in a really tough spot, I don't envy them. It has to be perfect."

It should be noted that Torchlight 3 has yet to be officially announced and that Runic Games have stated that once Torchlight 2 has been completed the dev team plans to start working again on their previous announced MMO title set in Torchlight's fictional universe.