Blizzard's Diablo Immortal (Mobile Game)

[RandV]

If Blizzard eventually produces what the market wants, it'll be because the market made itself heard. Patience hasn't done much for Diablo fans since the last Diablo II expansion in 2001. They're still waiting for a real replacement for Diablo II... 17 years later. I see how it might look like they're acting entitled, but they're not acting any more entitled than sports fans who are tired of waiting to have a winning team. Like them, they're voicing themselves in the hope that they'll be heard. That's just part of supply and demand.

Now I've never been into Diablo but has that market really been waiting 17 years? While Blizzard has filled it at a glacial pace they created an entire new genre with Diablo with tons of imitators over the year - many of them apparently being quite good, like Torchlight or Path of Exile. And when Blizzard did follow up with their own sequel it seemed quite unpopular.

I'm not going suggest I know what people are thinking but it feels to me if someone hasn't found something to fill their Diablo II needs then they're probably looking at it with an immense amount of nostalgia and with that nothing will ever be able to live up to it.

 

[LightningStrikes]

Activision Blizzard stocks dropped hard after Blizzcon and the Diablo Immortal announcement. Apparently more than $3.7 billion...

Probably time to buy them though.

 

[LightningStrikes]

Now I've never been into Diablo but has that market really been waiting 17 years? While Blizzard has filled it at a glacial pace they created an entire new genre with Diablo with tons of imitators over the year - many of them apparently being quite good, like Torchlight or Path of Exile. And when Blizzard did follow up with their own sequel it seemed quite unpopular.

I'm not going suggest I know what people are thinking but it feels to me if someone hasn't found something to fill their Diablo II needs then they're probably looking at it with an immense amount of nostalgia and with that nothing will ever be able to live up to it.

That's pretty much the problem for most of Blizzard's games. They've been genre-defining titles. The StarCraft and WarCraft series defined the RTS genre (maybe together with Command and Conquer and Age of Empires, but they played a big part in it). World of WarCraft redefined the MMORPG genre. Diablo created the RPG / hack-and-slash dungeon crawler genre. Hearthstone re-established the online CCG genre.

There are many non-Blizz adaptions out there, most of them fail to live up to the high standard of the original Blizzard titles. But even Blizzard has trouble living up to their legendary status. Understandably though as things change constantly in gaming: new technical achievements, suddenly consoles are an even bigger thing (thanks internet), VR is becoming a thing, 3-D gaming is a valid option, mobile is suddenly a huge potential market. And the competition is not sleeping. Magic Arena is seriously threatening Hearthstone. They're endlessly trying to reinvent or revive WoW and failing. Path of Exile is the Diablo II sequel the hardcore fans have been waiting for. The likes of Fortnite bind huge numbers of gamers.

IMO it's unrealistic to expect Blizzard to release a sequel of these genre defining games that will themselves turn the genre upside down again once again. And to top it all off out-of-game circumstances have changed too. A 15-year old that has played Diablo II 8+ hours a day after school and on weekends is now 32 years old. He/she now probably has a fulltime job, maybe even a family, a house to pay off, a car... he/she will never be able to play a Diablo X with the same amount of dedication, enthusiasm, etc. So what fans are expecting is unrealistic - even without considering actual game development and all factors surrounding Blizzard.

They too have changed, they have investors and stakeholders telling them what to do, and that's to generate as much revenue as possible. Downside of this: Diablo III was not PoE for hardcore fans, it was a cartoonish adaption without much gore and dark humor as the classic game. Blizz is not the once small ambitious group of nerds who just tried out new things and had success with it. And then there's social media, official forums, twitter, reddit, gaming sites, apps and messengers filled with people that want transparancy and communication. Plus people get more and more impatient and demanding at the same time.

"Unpopular" among hardcore fans maybe, "unpopular" as far as revenue is concerned quite the contrary.

 

[Nizdizzle]

"Many of us over the last few years have shifted from playing primarily desktop to playing many hours on mobile. We have many of our best developers now working on new mobile titles across all of our IPs."'.

This is the part that makes me uneasy as a late 20s gamer. I have no desire to game on my phone, I've tried it and it just isn't enjoyable. Tiny screen, uncomfortable controls, and I have to either constantly charge it or have it turn into a scalding-hot brick in my hands if I play while charging.

If gaming switches over to mobile I'm going to have to turn to... books or something for entertainment.

 

[Commander Clueless]

This is the part that makes me uneasy as a late 20s gamer. I have no desire to game on my phone, I've tried it and it just isn't enjoyable. Tiny screen, uncomfortable controls, and I have to either constantly charge it or have it turn into a scalding-hot brick in my hands if I play while charging.

If gaming switches over to mobile I'm going to have to turn to... books or something for entertainment.

I think there will always be a market for PC/console gaming (heck RDR2 just had the second best launch in entertainment history), but the focus switching to mobile is just how things are progressing really.

As someone who dislikes the vast majority of mobile games I don't like it, but it's the big market now. I'm sure there's room for all of us to have games, though. I hope

 

[Osprey]

Now I've never been into Diablo but has that market really been waiting 17 years? While Blizzard has filled it at a glacial pace they created an entire new genre with Diablo with tons of imitators over the year - many of them apparently being quite good, like Torchlight or Path of Exile. And when Blizzard did follow up with their own sequel it seemed quite unpopular.

I'm not going suggest I know what people are thinking but it feels to me if someone hasn't found something to fill their Diablo II needs then they're probably looking at it with an immense amount of nostalgia and with that nothing will ever be able to live up to it.

I meant that fans have been waiting for a worthy successor to Diablo II for 17 years. There have been copycats and even Diablo III, and those scratch a lot of the itch, but not all of it. After nearly two decades, still no game feels quite like Diablo or Diablo II. Indeed, it's hard to live up to a classic, but it's not impossible if you try.

For the past few months, I've been playing Two Point Hospital, the spiritual successor to Theme Hospital, from the same era as Diablo. You might guess that it couldn't possibly live up to the original, after 20 years of nostalgia, but it's everything that I and most fans ever hoped for. It perfectly captures the spirit and gameplay of the original, so it's possible to live up to a 20-year-old classic if you really try.

When it came to Diablo III, I think that Blizzard paid less attention to what fans wanted and more to what they thought that fans wanted. They appeared to want to replicate the massive success of World of Warcraft by adopting a similar slightly cartoony look, toning down the gore and essentially making it an online only game. It wasn't what fans wanted, so there was backlash. A mobile game isn't what fans want, either, so there's more backlash. It could've been avoided if Blizzard had given fans the sequel to Diablo II that they've really wanted for so long. If they had that, they wouldn't mind there also being a mobile game and a toned down version for online and console play.

 

[Lessavyfav]

A Diablo version of Dark Souls would have been amazing. Use the Diablo 2 style loot table and have a Dark Souls 2 style hub with Tristram. Mini bosses could be generals and stage bosses could be lesser evils.

 

[RobBrown4PM]

Don't forget that they threw reason, logic and basic story telling out the window with SC2. They quite litterally carbon copied WC3's story and pasted it onto SC2's.

Blizzard lost me as a fan after WOL came out.

 

[beowulf]

And here I just started playing D3 last week lol. I was a huge D2 player for years and years. Life got bust never got D3 until I got a new laptop two weeks ago and decided to try the free version and liked it enough that I bought the game since they have D3 and the expansion for $37. Still have to decide if I want to spend the $18 for the necro pack.

 

[funruiner]

I think that if they announced this any other time other than when they did, it wouldn't be an issue at all. They should have brought something else to the table for Blizzcon.

 

[KingBran]

I think that if they announced this any other time other than when they did, it wouldn't be an issue at all. They should have brought something else to the table for Blizzcon.

Rumor is they were going to announce Diablo IV but it wasnt ready to show off so they scrambled and made the mobile game the "highlight" of the show.

 

[aleshemsky83]

Hmmm, new Jason Schreier article confirming what many believed, Activisions influence is taking over Blizzard and becoming super finance focused, with cost-cutting and being pressured to push out more games.

https://kotaku.com/with-activisions-influence-growing-blizzard-is-cutting-1831263741

Not exactly an outrageous discovery but it kind of tells you what to expect in the future.

 

[syz]

“Finance in general in Blizzard has been one of these invisible functions that’s there, but doesn’t have a say,” said one veteran employee who left recently and asked not to be named because they were not authorized to talk to press. “Now they’re suddenly in meetings.”
Said a second, who also asked not to be named: “A lot of decisions now are being driven by business folks, marketing and finance folks. There’s a real struggle now between developers and the business people… Strategic decisions are being driven by the finance group.”

Hence: mobile games.

 

[RandV]

I don't know... normally I'd say this is a bad thing but does it really matter if Blizzard has already long since lost the farm? I mean you do have to keep an eye on the finances in game development to make sure things are viable. Bluzzard just earned themselves a special reputation in the 90's and through the 2000's, carving out an enviable position where they could say 'we're making the game we want and will take as long as we need to make it perfect', and that was okay because unlike say a Daikatana or a Duke Nukem Forever you knew the wait would be worth it and the finished product would be a critically acclaimed best seller.

But they haven't really been that company for a long time now. I'd say either the damage had already long been done following the merger and this stuff isn't anything new, or it's through the companies own failing that the finance people need to step in and take them to task. It sucks that this means mobile ports and excessive monetization, but I'm questioning if anything was really lost here.

Of course it could still be the case that Blizzard was doing fine and this is just Activision being dicks, but just saying.

 

[Saitama]

And here I just started playing D3 last week lol. I was a huge D2 player for years and years. Life got bust never got D3 until I got a new laptop two weeks ago and decided to try the free version and liked it enough that I bought the game since they have D3 and the expansion for $37. Still have to decide if I want to spend the $18 for the necro pack.

I really like the necro class, I think it's worth it.

 

[LightningStrikes]

After the recent lay-offs, ActivisionBlizzard CEO appears on list of most overpaid CEOs in America with a salary of $28 million:

EA, Activision Appear in List of Top 100 Overpaid CEOs

 

[Morbo]

And here I just started playing D3 last week lol. I was a huge D2 player for years and years. Life got bust never got D3 until I got a new laptop two weeks ago and decided to try the free version and liked it enough that I bought the game since they have D3 and the expansion for $37. Still have to decide if I want to spend the $18 for the necro pack.

yeah it doesn't have the magic the way D2LOD did, but the core gameplay is excellent, and it looks and sounds great. I don't play anymore and haven't for quite a while, but I did end up putting a fair number of hours into it. My favourite classes were Wizard and Demon Hunter.

I'd play for a bit first and make sure you like the endgame before also buying the Necro pack.

 

[KingBran]

I meant that fans have been waiting for a worthy successor to Diablo II for 17 years. There have been copycats and even Diablo III, and those scratch a lot of the itch, but not all of it. After nearly two decades, still no game feels quite like Diablo or Diablo II. Indeed, it's hard to live up to a classic, but it's not impossible if you try.

For the past few months, I've been playing Two Point Hospital, the spiritual successor to Theme Hospital, from the same era as Diablo. You might guess that it couldn't possibly live up to the original, after 20 years of nostalgia, but it's everything that I and most fans ever hoped for. It perfectly captures the spirit and gameplay of the original, so it's possible to live up to a 20-year-old classic if you really try.

When it came to Diablo III, I think that Blizzard paid less attention to what fans wanted and more to what they thought that fans wanted. They appeared to want to replicate the massive success of World of Warcraft by adopting a similar slightly cartoony look, toning down the gore and essentially making it an online only game. It wasn't what fans wanted, so there was backlash. A mobile game isn't what fans want, either, so there's more backlash. It could've been avoided if Blizzard had given fans the sequel to Diablo II that they've really wanted for so long. If they had that, they wouldn't mind there also being a mobile game and a toned down version for online and console play.

If Diablo III released in the format it is now, it would have been much better recieved.

Though I have to admit before the auction house went defunct I made a but of real money on it.

 

[beowulf]

Looks like Immortal might be scuttled after all. Season 18 of Diablo 3 starts at 8pm eastern tonight.

 

[beowulf]

Looks like it might be coming out soon as the beta has closed.

 

[aleshemsky83]

Looks like it might be coming out soon as the beta has closed.

Lol, I just realized I got invited to the beta. Never bothered to install it though.

 

[LightningStrikes]

I might check it out for when I’m bored - depending on the prizing model. Any news on that?

 

[542365]

I’ll give it a shot as something to do in the car or whatever. Don’t have particularly high hopes because I’ve never really enjoyed a mobile game.

 

[beowulf]

Looks like it won't be a mobile only game and will be available on PC.



PC open beta and mobile release date: June 2

 

[Gardner McKay]

Looks and feels like a reskin of D3... a game that was highly disappointing at launch and took years to get better.