Osc8r wrote on Nov 5, 2018, 04:25:
They single-handedly ruined the MMO genre.

and made 10+ billion in the process ....

Muscular Beaver wrote on Nov 4, 2018, 08:06:

Osc8r wrote on Nov 3, 2018, 16:22:

Mr. Tact wrote on Nov 3, 2018, 13:20:
The Blizzard everyone loved died a long time ago

Yeah, way back in 2004.

Nah, 2004 was still good. WoW was awesome.
Their downfall began with Cataclysm. That expansion felt like a totally different developer had taken over and was aiming for the mobile phone/Facebook game crowd.

That's how WOW always felt to me - a MMO targeting pre-teens and casual gamers. Hell, they even managed to turn PVP into a meaningless gear/point grind.

They single handedly ruined the MMO genre.

AFAIC they fucked up with D3, and this mobile game is just icing on the shit cake that won't fix the kiddie game that D3 turned out to be. Atmosphere=0, Horror=0, writing =-1, laughable at best. Story FUBARED beyond all belief and the gameplay decimated to cater to the lowest denominator.

Christ I still get goose bumps when I remember some of the "simplistic" monologue from Diablo 1 & 2, (since your character never spoke it was mostly monologue) and how far down the shitter Blizzard threw that IP is beyond all belief.

They are as bad as Activision with what they do to their IPs and since they are owned by Activision I guess that should be no surprise.

Prez wrote on Nov 4, 2018, 21:47:
EA did it with their Command and Conquer mobile abomination and now Blizzard pulls the same bone-headed move

Well, first Blizzard would have had to make Diablo 3 a game completely unrelated to past titles. I don't just mean in story, they would have had to completely botch it. Then it would be like C&C4; A cannon installment to the main series that is just an unidentifiable mess. THEN follow that up with a stupid unrelated mess of a mobile game. That is what EA did to C&C.

Blizzard just had a dumb idea, nothing worthy of all this frothing at the mouth. This is like them making one of those game series books bad (which has probably already happened, I don't read them) or letting Uwe Boll do the WoW movie. Bad, sure, but if you are a PC gamer this is just background noise. You can just let this go by (like other unrelated media) and still have your core stuff safe and sound with the company that made it.

I mean EA made a C&C game where you don't build bases or have proper macro on the PC. Not another platform or a spin off series. This was just a dumb phone game. Have people forgotten how many of those already exist for tons of series that they didn't soil themselves over?

EDIT: Also Kane lives! At least Cain is safe. They can only hurt him in prequels now.

I get that big publishers are concerned first and foremost with making its shareholders happy. Fans are a distant second. And making shareholders happy means making tons of money, which explains the move to mobile where constant monetization is the order of the day. I don't like it, but I accept that this is the way it is. But what I don't get, and I'll never get, is how these complete idiots think a good way to introduce these little throwaway cash-grabs is on a big stage where your most die-hard fans are in attendance and watching all around the world. EA did it with their Command and Conquer mobile abomination and now Blizzard pulls the same bone-headed move at their own convention. It boggles the mind that they could be this clueless.

jdreyer wrote on Nov 4, 2018, 15:21:

Creston wrote on Nov 4, 2018, 10:31:
Oh good, gamers found something again to get absurdly over-emotional about.

LOL, I hope that was said with a sense of self-awareness.

Sure, sure, I've gotten pissed at shit in the past. It just seems to be happening every single week nowadays.

jdreyer wrote on Nov 4, 2018, 15:21:

Creston wrote on Nov 4, 2018, 10:31:
Oh good, gamers found something again to get absurdly over-emotional about.

LOL, I hope that was said with a sense of self-awareness.

he heh
i lol'ed

Creston wrote on Nov 4, 2018, 10:31:
Oh good, gamers found something again to get absurdly over-emotional about.

LOL, I hope that was said with a sense of self-awareness.

There will be a huge mobile market for diablo, the issue is that they made an announcement in a crowd of PC Gamers. PC gamers are elitist and they don't want to game on their phones, so yeah they are pissed.

I couldn't give two shits about whether another Diablo is coming or not. After the last one, there is no hope in hell that the next one, or the next five will be anywhere near as good as the first two were. I just think it's telling that there was a reaction to this news, even the hardcore Blizzard fans are waking up to the fact that this is not the Blizzard of yesteryear.

Here's a way they should have monitized D3 for those concerned there isn't a way for them to make money at it...

With the huge talented team they have...
Drum Roll...
Make more content and sell it, like 1-4 times per year.
Bam, more income for D3.
Where do I get my "I'm a genius!" reward?

I hope if they ever do make another Diablo for the PC, lets add some new features to it. I played a game called Stories a little while back, it plays like a Diablo, but they way they tell the story is just fresh and something a blender game desperately needs since they are so story deprived.

Blizzard has the resources and in some ways I feel the responsibility for pushing the envelope forward vs more of the status quo, so disappointing.

But what do we see? A fucking billion dollar company staying narrow while a small team of indies add something fresh to the genre, it's embarrassing really.

Creston wrote on Nov 4, 2018, 10:31:
Oh good, gamers found something again to get absurdly over-emotional about.

Basically this. This phone game isn't for anybody on Bluesnews or really even anybody at Blizzcon, their target market is younger and overseas. They made a mistake announcing this at Blizzcon, but FFS get over it. Diablo 4 will be out by 2025.

Oh good, gamers found something again to get absurdly over-emotional about.

Red886 wrote on Nov 4, 2018, 00:34:

Desalus wrote on Nov 3, 2018, 13:51:
If you don't like it then don't play it. Simple as that. Not sure why fans feel entitled to a fully fledged Diablo sequel. It's only been 6+ years since Diablo 3 released. Considering it's Blizzard fans should expect to wait at least 10+ years for a sequel.

no one said the majority stockholders wanting more and more profits every year, with less and less released, is being entitled.

gamers thinking that Blizzard , after earning multiples of the production budget of Diablo 3 , and also making millions in profit every quarter should spend some the profit into making new games is however considered entitled?

This is Blizzard we're talking about. Last I looked it takes them forever to release sequels and new games (only Valve can top them on how long they take to develop new games). They started raking in tens, if not hundreds, of millions each month way back in 2004 when WoW came out and they have not changed their way of doing business (besides this Diablo announcement). Diablo 2 came out in 2000 and Diablo 3 came out in 2012. Starcraft came out in 1998 and Starcraft 2 came out in 2010. Warcraft 3 came out in 2002 and we still haven't seen a proper sequel. Obviously they have a business model that works for them and I don't see why people think they would announce Diablo 4 in half the time it's taken them to develop sequels in the past two decades.

jdreyer wrote on Nov 4, 2018, 04:18:

Desalus wrote on Nov 3, 2018, 22:28:
Why are you assuming this is a zero sum game? Because Blizzard is making Diablo Immortal does not mean we will never see Diablo 4 (undoubtedly it's in development).

It's an expectations problem.

If you tell your GF, "I have the biggest announcement to make!" she's going to expect you to propose. When you tell her that actually the company is transferring you to Omaha, NE, she's gonna shit a brick, and rightfully so.

Except that Blizzard said, albeit in a cryptic way, that they would not be announcing Diablo 4: "We know what many of you are hoping for and we can only say that “good things come to those who wait,” but evil things often take longer."

Also they said that they had multiple Diablo projects in the works: "we currently have multiple teams working on different Diablo projects and we can’t wait to tell you all about them . . . when the time is right. While we won’t be ready to announce all of our projects, we do intend to share some Diablo-related news with you at the show."

Source

After reading the above blog I never expected them to announce Diablo 4 as it was pretty clear to me that they were going to announce one of the other Diablo projects. For someone to expect Diablo 4 after reading that blog post they'd have to be letting hope blind them.

eRe4s3r wrote on Nov 3, 2018, 20:05:

Blackhawk wrote on Nov 3, 2018, 19:44:
Blizzard did exactly this same thing once before, in 2002 with Starcraft: Ghost. They teased a big announcement was coming for Starcraft. They hyped it. They then did this big website tease that had everyone on the edge of their seats.

When it turned out the be a console exclusive action game, people went ape. They were genuinely pissed off.

You build hype, but you don't give the wrong message, or it will backfire.

Makes you wonder though why they don't do what EVERYONE wants, heck a Diablo 4, Warcraft 4 or Starcraft would have been neat, but replaying the same game from 10 years ago in 4k not so much and playing Diablo on a tablet isn't my idea of fun, I get headache from staring at these (comparative) tiny screens.

Then you literally should get glasses.
The screens arent the problem. The controls are.
And of course the P2W crap that is usually connected to mobile games.

Osc8r wrote on Nov 3, 2018, 16:22:

Mr. Tact wrote on Nov 3, 2018, 13:20:
The Blizzard everyone loved died a long time ago

Yeah, way back in 2004.

Nah, 2004 was still good. WoW was awesome.
Their downfall began with Cataclysm. That expansion felt like a totally different developer had taken over and was aiming for the mobile phone/Facebook game crowd.

theyarecomingforyou wrote on Nov 4, 2018, 03:53:

Leper wrote on Nov 3, 2018, 21:41:
This would have been fine as a companion release to a full PC game (a la Fallout Shelter) or announced outside of Blizzcon, but this shouldn't have been considered a big announcement.

Exactly. Fallout Shelter was extremely well received becuase it wasn't the main focus. It was something EXTRA for fans.

This video by Jim Sterling perfectly sums it up: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HoS3KdCnbZg

^ /thread

There's a Windows 10 app called Bluestacks that is a highly recommended Android emulator. From what I've seen it looks pretty nice. Feels like Steam for Android games on Windows. It could transform Diablo: Immortal into a PC game with surprising quality.

jdreyer wrote on Nov 4, 2018, 04:05:

Ozmodan wrote on Nov 3, 2018, 20:07:
Let's face it, Blizzard is no more, it has been taken over by the Activision accountants.

There is no drive anymore to make good games, only games that briefly bring in money.

People that play mobile games are stooping to mediocrity.

A dev at a AAA studio wrote in to Gamers with Jobs:

"Meetings are no longer, 'How can we make the best game?' Meetings are 'How can we design the game to sell DLC and MTs?'"

There's a video of Steve Jobs taking about how Xerox basically lost their way. The marketing people took over the company and push out the product people who know how to make quality products. A great watch, but also a sad watch because you can see what he's talking about as happening in the video game industry over the past decade.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-AxZofbMGpM

Very few big publishers are left that truly know how to make quality video games. CD Projekt Red is definitely the biggest one.