With StarCraft 2 in stores and World of WarCraft continuing to be a license to print money, a company's fancy may turn towards a certain hack-and-slash game called Diablo 3. During Activision's earnings call today, Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime announced that an external beta would be launched during the third quarter of 2011, which means we could be playing the game as early as July.

The attitude of "when it's done" was clear from the call, as Morhaime stressed that Blizzard would release the game when it was happy with it, and not a moment before. "I want to be clear that we do not have an official release date or window yet," he said. However, Activision sent us the slides from the conference call, and here are the three bullet points put under the heading of Diablo 3:

Beginning company-wide internal testing

Targeting Q3 launch for external beta testing

Do not have an official release date or window yet, but driving hard to launch Diablo III this year

So there you go. There may not be any official date, but they're certainly aiming for a 2011 release. My opinion? Blizzard should take its time. We'll have plenty of games to play before now and then, and I'd rather have a more polished experience.