According to BestBuy, it's Feb 1st:

http://pc.ign.com/articles/121/1216054p1.html

And the sign has been confirmed to be real by joystiq. However, Bashiok said its "pure speculation" since they haven't announced a street date. Note that nobody at blizzard has said the game WON'T release on Feb 1st, they just said it's all speculation.

(Copypasting here the post I just made on battle.net):

This wouldn't be the first time a Blizzard release date breaks out via a retailer though. Amazon did it with Cataclysm, and even non-Blizzard games more often than not have their release dates leaked via retailers. Companies always say only they know, but the truth is big retailers always have insiders in the industry that know these things.

Now, the only thing is that it does seem too soon. Announcing a release date barely three weeks before it happens is odd, even for Blizzard/D3. They did it with Cataclysm, but that was an expansion to a very well established game. D3 has a huge fanbase, but it's a much bigger release than Cataclysm was, so this seems a little too strange.

However, on the other hand, why would a retailer chain spend time and money on printing and setting this up to have it end up being fake considering they'd go through PR hell afterwards?

(End of copypaste)

So what do you guys think?

Doubtful... may just be a placeholder date

Yeah, but on a printed ad and with a countdown? It's a rather elaborate set up for a wild guess, isn't it?

Nah far too soon as the advertising hasnt been turned onto to overload your custoomers with Diablo 3 images where ever they look.

Yes, it is true. The game will be released in Feburary.

The game will likely be released in February... of 2013 :-P

click-click-click-click-click-click-click-click-click-click

"Lol" is a rather vague and ambiguous answer, don't you think?

Blizzard said some time ago that the expected release window for Diablo 3 is "early 2012". Whether or not that's still accurate now is anyone's guess..

Highly unlikely. As I recall Blizzard's definite release dates are always published with at least twice the time to spare than what we'd get now, and even then they sometimes change them (cf. The Burning Crusade).

feb is about the point when people's initial 30 days of TOR runs out, hummm wouldn't that be a nice time for people to be enticed back into blizact's loving embrace?