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Rumor - Diablo 4 and Diablo 2 Remastered Among BlizzCon Announcements
- Thread starter Deleted member 18944
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100% of people on here should boycott this company in my opinion. What they did was inexcusable.
People should feel free to boycott if they want, but don't keep pushing others to do the same or worse still mocking them for not boycotting.
i really want to play Diablo 2 + 4 but i don't want to support blizzard.
if i do pick it up then it'll be from a shady ass code site for dirt cheap so they get as little money from me as possible.
if i do pick it up then it'll be from a shady ass code site for dirt cheap so they get as little money from me as possible.
100% agreed. It's one thing to call for action against blizzard and make others aware of the situation but being an obnoxious dick about it won't help anyone :)
I would totally get down with a D2 remaster. Would be interesting if they ported it to the D3 engine. Would that be possible? I guess they would have to remake every skill to fit that system.
I really hope that fans/protesters at BlizzCon are smart enough to realise that most of Blizzards staff actually had nothing to do with the China debacle and don't bombard them with hate. It would be horrible to be a staff member working at BlizzCon, excited to show off what you've been working on for years, only to have hate thrown at you for something you had no say over.
Save the awkward questions and heckles for when an actual executive gets on stage (if they do this year)
Save the awkward questions and heckles for when an actual executive gets on stage (if they do this year)
That would completely change the game and is the exact opposite of what D2 fans would want.
Isn't that old d2 game mechanics really passive? There isn't much to it.
Real protesters will be fine, and if they are doing it the right way for the right reasons my blessings are with them. The problem is you also have a bunch of internet shitbags who are foaming at the mouth for the chance to get "famous" and become a meme or go viral like the guy from last year. These are the ones that fuck it up for everyone. They could not give two shits about Hong Kong, Blizzard or anything else. Just lulz and post counts
Yeah, China ban it so much there is ride dedicated to in Shanghai Disneyland: https://www.shanghaidisneyresort.com/attractions/adventures-winnie-pooh/
"protesting" the event dressing as Winnie the Pooh only give Disney free advertising, not gonna do much else.
It was a joke, I don't know what else to tell you. Also, I've never been to Disneyland so thanks for the link.
Peiple on here are not smart enough to realise that. Hence the shitting on the Overwatch Switch port.
Yup....there is going to be a lot of insincere shit going on. All to get a rep.
expecting people to choose human rights over their entertainment is too far apparently
Half the products us westerners use come from China. None of us here are innocent, some of us just choose to believe we are. I think Blizzard is a fucked company, but I reserve the right to enjoy a game that talented developers poured their heart into with a franchise I care about.
Diablo 2 is my favorite game, and some of you may recognize me as virtually omnipresent in threads about the game. With that in mind, I still find the idea of a Diablo 2 remaster implausible so I'm skeptical that this "leak" is real. The difficulties in remastering Diablo 2 go beyond the art, although that too is no small feat.
For one thing, getting the game to work with arbitrary resolutions is almost invariably going to involve breaking compatibility with the "classic" version, which is still played by a considerable number of people. This is because there's basically no way to have the AI work the way it does in the game right now while still being able to change the resolution to whatever you want unless you completely overhaul the graphics. I don't really think Blizzard is in for that kind of work.
Another big problem with remastering Diablo 2 is that, as the player base has increasingly shifted to the single player side of things, the remaster has a pretty good chance of actually having less features than the non-remaster. Blizzard could obviously rectify this by having the dev team implement the features that the community has now come to expect - I highly doubt the SP community is going to go back to a world without shared stashes - but it further increases the amount of work involved. They're essentially competing with a highly avid fanbase that's had almost two decades to mod the QoL features they want into the game.
There are some other issues, like so many things being pegged to the framerate (locked at 25 FPS). Of course, you could simply decouple these things and have the values remain the same, but it simply further casts doubt on the plausibility of the remaster since that a) takes more work and b) decreases the likelihood that the game will retain compatibility with the non-remaster. Another big issue if you're going to try to sell Diablo 2 to new people is that the multiplayer has been overrun with cheaters for a very long time. The situation right now is actually better than it's been at some points, but it's still pretty dismal. I don't think Blizzard will be able to remaster Diablo 2 without coming up with a solution to that particular problem.
Blizzard has successfully made it quite onerous to purchase Diablo 2 - it's on no platformand it'll blow your mind how much it costs to buy Diablo 2 legally in 2019 EDIT: Evidently $20 US for a 20 year old game is not mindblowing - so maybe they'll be able to pull this off based on that alone. Who knows? Of course, the other possibility is they phoned this remaster in and just remade the game in the Diablo 3 engine or something. Given Blizzard's track record over the last few years that also wouldn't be totally surprising. Color me surprised if this exists and is being done right.
Finally, I hope they don't remaster this game because Blizzard can go fuck themselves. Liberate Hong Kong - the revolution of our times.
EDIT: It's also worth adding that Diablo 2, unlike Warcraft 3 and Starcraft, were developed by Blizzard North - a quasi-independent studio with basically no connection to the current incarnation of Blizzard besides the name. It's practically irrefutable that this contributed heavily to their inability to make a Diablo 3 that resonated in the same ways as its predecessors and I conjecture simply makes the task of remastering the game all that much more difficult.
For one thing, getting the game to work with arbitrary resolutions is almost invariably going to involve breaking compatibility with the "classic" version, which is still played by a considerable number of people. This is because there's basically no way to have the AI work the way it does in the game right now while still being able to change the resolution to whatever you want unless you completely overhaul the graphics. I don't really think Blizzard is in for that kind of work.
Another big problem with remastering Diablo 2 is that, as the player base has increasingly shifted to the single player side of things, the remaster has a pretty good chance of actually having less features than the non-remaster. Blizzard could obviously rectify this by having the dev team implement the features that the community has now come to expect - I highly doubt the SP community is going to go back to a world without shared stashes - but it further increases the amount of work involved. They're essentially competing with a highly avid fanbase that's had almost two decades to mod the QoL features they want into the game.
There are some other issues, like so many things being pegged to the framerate (locked at 25 FPS). Of course, you could simply decouple these things and have the values remain the same, but it simply further casts doubt on the plausibility of the remaster since that a) takes more work and b) decreases the likelihood that the game will retain compatibility with the non-remaster. Another big issue if you're going to try to sell Diablo 2 to new people is that the multiplayer has been overrun with cheaters for a very long time. The situation right now is actually better than it's been at some points, but it's still pretty dismal. I don't think Blizzard will be able to remaster Diablo 2 without coming up with a solution to that particular problem.
Blizzard has successfully made it quite onerous to purchase Diablo 2 - it's on no platform
Finally, I hope they don't remaster this game because Blizzard can go fuck themselves. Liberate Hong Kong - the revolution of our times.
EDIT: It's also worth adding that Diablo 2, unlike Warcraft 3 and Starcraft, were developed by Blizzard North - a quasi-independent studio with basically no connection to the current incarnation of Blizzard besides the name. It's practically irrefutable that this contributed heavily to their inability to make a Diablo 3 that resonated in the same ways as its predecessors and I conjecture simply makes the task of remastering the game all that much more difficult.
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I'm in for Diablo 4 but we have known this was in development for like 2 years now. And its not going to be a 2020 release more than likely. 2021 if I had to guess. Maybe the D2 remake will land in 2020, but Ive played all of that one that I think I want. Not sure Ill bother, but maybe.
In any case I actually liked D3 stem to stern, so my hope is that they bring back the ball busting difficulty pre Inferno nerf. I found the reaction to vanilla D3 confusing as prior to launch as a person who only lightly dabbled in D2 I was promised some seriously hardcore shit, only to get gibbed in Act II of Inferno by bee's and have the entire playerbase go "Wait.... not THAT hard".
I don't think I have ever been so confused.
In any case I actually liked D3 stem to stern, so my hope is that they bring back the ball busting difficulty pre Inferno nerf. I found the reaction to vanilla D3 confusing as prior to launch as a person who only lightly dabbled in D2 I was promised some seriously hardcore shit, only to get gibbed in Act II of Inferno by bee's and have the entire playerbase go "Wait.... not THAT hard".
I don't think I have ever been so confused.
In a ideal world, yes that would happen,. Sadly people think there entertainment is far more important than peoples right to stand up to oppression without getting crucified by said company.
woof i hope not. been holding off on buying a digital copy of the game for like half a decade now. but if the rumor is fake guess it's a sign i should just get it over with
I've no inside track on the industry, so I should say that what I'm saying is completely conjectural. It just seems implausible to me, as a person who knows a lot about Diablo 2, that Blizzard would be willing to put in the work to remaster it. They don't have the foundation that they did for Starcraft or Warcraft 3 (or even the original Diablo) and because Diablo 2 is still a game that is played by a decent number of people they have their work cut out for them in terms of making a product that meets community expectations. The fact that they shit the bed with Diablo 3 (and again with Immortal, evidently) further compounds this.
Where I live, buying a copy of Diablo 2 and the expansion legally and digitally is more expensive than Overwatch. Call it a conspiracy theory, but I don't think Blizzard really wants to sell this game.
If you want to play Diablo 2 without breaking the law and you don't already own it, my suggestion would be to hit up ebay for a physical copy. There's a nearly 100% chance that your CD keys will be banned from online play, but you'll still be able to play the game singleplayer (which is, in my opinion, the best way to play) or as a part of any of the secondary multiplayer communities that continue to support the game. An added benefit to this approach is that you can buy the game without any money from the sale going to Blizzard who, for aforementioned reasons, can pound sand.
I kind of hope the rumor is true just so that this post becomes a meme
I understand not harassing people and not heckling people and ruining the whole event for everyone. But what you're saying here is basically that you're okay with their executives using their employees as a shield, and if they're willing to hide until the anger blows over and we're all upset about some other violation of human rights, they can basically have their cake (being all lovey-dovey with the Chinese government) and eat it too (a nice, happy Blizzcon where no one would dare to bring up their support of human rights violations).
Every day people who work in almost every industry have to deal with really unpleasant shit. Having someone ask you an awkward question in a panel isn't some life ruining event, and if they're responsible adults they've already prepared to answer those kinds of questions. Someone's excitement might get rained on? Hard cheese.
There are going to be organised protests at BlizzCon, I'm not saying it will be 'nice, happy' event, I'm saying people need to direct their anger correctly and not just heckle/harass everyone that comes on stage for internet fame.
How exactly should a developer who has no say in the China incident possibly prepare to answer questions about it? If the Overwatch team gets a bunch on awkward questions about China, all they can realistically do is not really answer and try and move on, which will probably result in booing or whatever. It just generates a bunch of anger and toxicity for absolutely no gain.
If a high up executive like Brack gets on stage, then sure, let's put hard questions to him, but otherwise it's just pointless
It's important to rain on Blizzard's parade. They want Blizzcon to be full of wonderful cheering audiences celebrating their new Overwatch heroes and game announcements. Cute moments like some guy calling out some lore error. It's an important marketing event for them, one that the company certainly goes to a lot of effort to support and promote. If they could just avoid the bad sound bites and groaning displeasure of their audience by not sending their decision-making executives to the forefront I'd be, honestly, fucking disgusted.
The only way to make any impact on this situation is to make it appear to Blizzard as if the wordwide disgust from their audience is potentially as or more monetarily expensive than appeasing the Chinese government. Putting the focus of their big marketing convention dead-center on their appeasement of the Chinese government is absolutely one way to hit them in the pocketbook. They can never regain the marketing dollars lost.
I do agree with your general sentiment, but as weird as it sounds I just don't want it to get too mean-spirited. You can protest and ask intelligent questions without being absolutely horrible to undeserving staff. I'm hoping media coverage of the protests will do a large portion of the work. After all, I'm that basically every gaming journalist will do a story on the protests, it's a hot topic right now. I'm certain there will still be heckling, probably no q&a sections.
I think I've just worked in the service industry so long that I have a lot of empathy for staff who take undeserved shit from the public.
It would be great if the event opened with executives getting on stage and speaking openly and potentially apologising about the situation
yup. same here. feel more obligated to definitely not give them my money considering just how much I have in the past. Can't condone that crap.
Obviously it shouldn't get mean spirited. I just want people to, while minimizing undue angst for the regular employees, ask any questions that might leave a bad smell for Blizzard's PR.
I think we're on the same page, it's just that my personal experiences working in a lot of shitty industries have hardened my heart against feeling bad for people who get asked awkward questions :P
Should? Nah, Everybody is free to think and act on their own.
Me, if they announce a Diablo 2 remastered, i'm buying it.
And if Overwatch 2 isn't rigged with demanding lootboxes, i'm also getting it.
Yeah, my thoughts too.
Even though I would like a new Diablo, I have no clue what that game even is at this point. We've given nothing about the game in development, no dev diaries and no sense in what direction they're going and such. I don't even know how long they've been working on it.
I like the concept of a new Diablo but I'm not sure if I really want a new Diablo 4.
If you think one has anything to do with the other. No one is choosing entertainment over human rights, it's just that some of us fail to see the value of your boycott. This is where we disagree (which is fine), not over human rights. I respect your opinion and your boycott, so please respect mine and don't claim I care more about games than about human rights. I don't. If I ever start believing my purchase of Diablo games will influence human rights in any way, I will act accordingly. So, please, boycott all you want, write about it, I will never comment your decision negatively, but cut it out with this "games are more important to some people than freedom" shit because it's a bit insulting.
No, they are certainly not more important. In my opinion, they also have nothing to do with people's lives at the moment. So, let's disagree on that and move forward without insulting one another here. If you believe boycotting these games will help some lives - by all means, do it and I respect your decision. I don't believe it, so respect mine.
Highly doubt they're releasing either of those on consoles at launch.