Blizzard games are big in Korea. Starcraft is a sport there and WoW is a passion, so Diablo 3 — which will be released next year — is obviously getting a lot of attention from Korean gamers.
Unsurprisingly, then, Blizzard is giving the game the complete localization treatment in Korean, and according to the latest reports, they’re very nearly done. That’s good news, as Asian gamers are sometimes forced to wait around after games are released in the West because their localization hasn’t been finished. It looks like Korean gamers won’t have to worry about that with Diablo 3, which Blizzard’s Korean localization team says is in the final stretches and aims to ensure that Korean gamers have exactly the same quality of experience as English-speaking gamers in the West.
Will Chinese gamers be as lucky? Probably not. In addition to concerns about the game’s content — it contains lots of skeletons and other supernatural things that have been censored from Blizzard’s previous games — there are also indications the Chinese localization isn’t as thorough as the Korean one (it may, for example, be using subtitles instead of dubbing). As of now, that’s just a rumor, and one that Chinese gamers are really hoping doesn’t come true. But you can’t always get what you want…
(Unless you’re a Korean Diablo 3 fan, in which case it sounds like you’re going to get exactly what you want quickly, and then be able to enjoy it on your crazy-fast internet).