Isn't this Blizzard's modus operandi anyway? OW went through several reworks for example. Hell, WII or III too.
-
Ever wanted an RSS feed of all your favorite gaming news sites? Go check out our new Gaming Headlines feed! Read more about it here.
Kotaku: Blizzard pulled Diablo 4 announcement from Blizzcon (UPDATE: Blizzard disputes)
- Thread starter Nirolak
- Start date
Isn't this Blizzard's modus operandi anyway? OW went through several reworks for example. Hell, WII or III too.
I think the key difference is the changes in leadership and the simple fact that I've enjoyed each new blizzard game less and less save for WoW. Part of me thinks I've simply moved on from them in a sense.
I'm curious what exactly is getting reworked. I figure they are comfortable with the style set in D3, so surely it's not asset overhauls. Story re-writing shouldn't interfere with the base mechanics.
Were they angling for a different type of RPG? Maybe trying a non-isometric Diablo?
Were they angling for a different type of RPG? Maybe trying a non-isometric Diablo?
I don't think the reason Valve hasn't made Half-Life 3 is because they are scared of not hitting the fans' expectations. Otherwise, we would have seen other games from them like a new Left 4 Dead or Portal.
No-one reacted this way, the best parallel I can think of in terms of reaction is Metroid Prime Federation Force where the first Metroid related game to be announced after being dormant for 5-6 years was a 4 player co-op game not featuring Samus, the complete antithesis of what the franchise has been before, the icing on the cake would have been if Nintendo announced it as an Xbox exclusive.
The guy who asked if the game was coming to PC and the boos that Blizzard got from the answer should be a good indicator where the core audience is, mobile games have a certain reputation and who knows maybe Blizzard/Netease will buck the trend, but not having a PC version at the bare minimum is a major oversight.
Is there a reason why Blizzard is removing dislikes from the gameplay video? Seems pretty rude. If people are unhappy then silencing them is not a good look. It was almost at half a million dislikes before.
they should just go with saying they pulled the announcement would be better for them then to fight it
even tho Diablo 4 is probably a next generation launch window game
even tho Diablo 4 is probably a next generation launch window game
Yes, the story is certainly an over-simplification. Probably doesn't even belong here because this thread is more about Diablo 4 and not the drama.
I don't really want to argue much about the scope and ferocity of the backlash, because it's clear you've seen a lot more negative or disgusting things being written or said than I have. It sucks that that stuff is out there, because it definitely makes it harder to have rational conversations when extreme opinions darken the discourse. I think there's a lot of false conflation between people who are upset about their favorite franchise, and people who are using this as a excuse to throw tantrums and espouse hate, etc. When people rightfully call out those throwing tantrums, sometimes they antagonize those who are viewed on the "same side."
But to respond to your reality question, I assume the press release you mention is the "Diablo at Blizzcon 2018" blog post. It's a post telling people to temper expectations, but it doesn't explicitly mention D4 isn't being announced. Obviously reading between the lines we can infer that, but it still leaves a lot of room for fans to expect *something*. Even the the blog post written to tell people to reduce hype still tells people to stay hyped. As an aside, it's pretty bizarre to have the Blizzard marketing team attempt to reduce hype.
I believe the crux of the issue is the relationship between Blizzard and it's fanbase. It's not about instant Diablo 4 gratification or a mobile game (Although for some, it might be.) There is a lot of evidence that Blizzard abused that relationship. Sure, this is an asymmetrical relationship, but's folly to think that Blizzard owes nothing to the die-hard fans who have supported them all these years.
You've written a few things that would indicate you're optimistic about Diablo 4 and Blizzard, but I think there's a lot of people who have become more pessimistic. Personally, when I saw that Diablo Immortal was developed by a third-party company, I wondered, "How will the famous Blizzard polish be applied?" When I read about NetEase's reputation as a microtransaction factory, I thought about Loot Boxes, Card Packs, and the Real-Money Auction House, and wondered when a pattern becomes a trend. When the only *something* that became of the "Diablo at Blizzcon 2018" was an outsourced mobile game, I thought about the slow death of Diablo 3 and it's near-complete abandonment, I think what was the team working on? And then there's a new rumor that D4 has been rebooted internally, and I think that all of these things I've mentioned means that there's a lot of things going wrong at Blizzard.
Sure, Diablo 4 will come out some day, but can I trust it will have that Blizzard Polish? Will I need to become a whale to enjoy it? Will Blizzard continue to support it so people can still enjoy it after 1000s of hours of gameplay? Those questions used to be easy to answer for Blizzard games. Now a lot of people are not so sure.
wait people just accept a dev telling people something won't happen before a event where there's a possibility of said thing still happening? hope ya'll never ask ppl what's coming at E3, TGS, etc before the events
From Reddit:
- Figured this might be the case when I saw the Wizard swinging on a rope. Like why would that exist unless it was copy paste from something pre-existing? Where the fuck is the integrity? Pre-existing engine for other game, pre-existing art assets from D3. Whole game is copy pasted. "We really nailed the controls!" Fuck you you nailed nothing...Did they think people wouldn't figure this out immediately?
- The latter two basically embody everything wrong with modern Blizzard and their design philosophy, and people keep gobbling it up. This is par for the course for the shriveled husk of a company.
- i watched diablo suffer and die during the third part and hoped for a fourth part, to make up for all the mistakes and frustration. and now you, blizzard, come along with this piece of shit! it's utter mockery!
- Exactly. You have to realize, these Blizzard managers and head devs have been sitting in their conference room for at least a year or two jerking eachother off about how good an idea this was, how people are going to love playing Diablo™ on their phones. And then the time comes for the announcement..and they literally had no idea that this could have been taken badly by fans. The dude was confounded. 100% disconnect between Blizzard and their audience. That, or they just don't give a fuck, and would rather make money than put out a decent game.
- Its more like Blizzards feels entitled to a good reception for a shitty annoucement. "What? Why dont you cheer? You're supposed to cheer, not matter what." And like they're also entitled to easy postive questions in Q&A, because they're pretty used to it from games journalists apparently.
- I remember totalbiscuits wife on twitter said something rather grimly along the lines of "I'm glad he's dead so he can't see this"
To be honest seeing one of your favourite franchises iconic to the genre and what spawned a generation of life long fans getting turned into a shallow heartless phone game would probably have given him cancer again.- That's really what it comes down to for me, when you base your decisions solely on what is marketable, you don't get my fucking respect. We don't get to shit on Zynga and EA and then give blizzard a pass when they've compromised their original immersive and artistic values for marketability every year for the last decade. For fucks sake, Warlords of Draenor had straight Farmville mechanics. You're hardly a gaming company at this point, rather than setting out to make a "great game" that stands on innovative ideas, they just shit out highly polished cash magnets based on proven models.
Was there a better way to announce it? Yes. Does that mean Blizzard deserves torrents of hate? No, because everyone is still getting Diablo 4 and Diablo spin-offs, just not now. And this isn't even touching the embarrassing amount of posts calling journalists paid Blizzard shills for pushing back on the notion that maybe Blizzard doesn't deserve so much hate for a mobile game meant to be a stop-gap release. I get that folks are disappointed, but those people are acting crazy because they wanted but wasn't ready didn't get announced this year.
Related to the bolded, the press release mentioned does tell fans to expect something, but the ways it is written implies to me that Blizzard wanted to make sure people weren't expecting a megaton reveal:
Interpretation is a subjective thing, so I'll concede that maybe people interpreted this to mean a Diablo 2 remaster or some new add-ons to D3. Either way, Blizzard was trying to tell folks "No D4 at Blizzcon", which was something that a decent amount of people here understood.
And your questions about D4 are entirely valid, with GaaS and MTXs being the dominant way to launch big AAA games nowadays. But, I would think that between Overwatch, Hearthstone, Blizz's decade-long support of WoW, Starcraft et al, they've earned a little faith. Even when Blizzard fucks up, they listen to the community and fix their issues. Granted, they aren't perfect, but Blizzard does way more than they need to when it comes to game support. I'm not saying that it is wrong to criticize Blizz for this announcement, but I am saying it is wrong to attack & mischaracterize "Immortal"'s announcement as one of active malice. You can either see this as Blizzard pissing off its fans in an attempt to sell out or you can see "Immortal" as Blizz's way of giving fans something new to play while they solidify their vision of D4 because games development is hard and Diablo fans expect a lot (if this situation hasn't demonstrated that for you.) Personally, considering Blizzard's track record and the way that they have continually stressed the company is "gamers first" forever, I'm inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt.
Hello torre, I waited 2 days before starting to share my opinions here or in other media about this issue.
Let me just tell you that the delusion was so strong that I stopped playing any game in the last few days. I like, lost the will to play. I felt "I get it, I'm not the target audience from gaming companies anymore, I'm just getting old".
You may think this is exaggerating, it probably is, but Blizzard was the company I kept always in high regards, the company that I kept as "the good example" in the gaming industry, the flawless, high quality one.
I admit I didn't play most of their latest games, but I still were able to see the quality those game had.
I'm no eSports, no Oeverwatch player.
I was looking forward for a D2 Remaster/remake! Hell, I even bought D3 Switch just to support them, even though I'm not playing it.
The delusion with Blizzard going mobile with Diablo is so strong that it will probably stop me from buying D4 as well, if that ever happens.
I'm not against good games in the mobile environment, in fact I think I'd love to play a port of D2 for iOS.
What I don't want is a F2P MMO with microtransactions built by a company (NetEase) with a very bad reputation for "milking" their audience with predatory tactics.
Just have a look at how they released Diablo 3 in China...
There's definitely money to be made there, but I don't want to support these practices myself.
This whole mess over a stupid mobile game has to be the stupidest story ive seen all year and further shows why this art form isnt respected as it should be lol
Its all such a non issue
Its all such a non issue
It is not your job to stop me. But you still have very much the idea that you can make that desire public. i never said that your opinion should not be heard, I only state my position on this matter in opposition to yours. I am not any more "toxic" than you are, we merely have opposing views on a matter.
And I know what I am talking about, I believe that a company making a blunder should review that blunder and make sure that doesn't happen again. That may or may not involve changing human resources. I can't see your opposition to this to mean anything but two possibilities:
1. You genuinely think no mistakes are made at all and that there is no PR issue. i find that hard to believe.
or
2. You don't think anyone who made the mistake should be punished. Which is the stance I believe you are on. Which is noble but not how businesses work.
At this point I hope it's called World of Diablo. Would give me a good laugh. I feel like an outlier of diablo fans. I played diablo 2 to death yet I really enjoyed my time with diablo 3 both on pc and especially when it hit console. Looking forward to whatever they call D4.
If they are, they've convinced everyone who works for them to lie for them. This is highly unlikely.
Why all the angriness? We obviously know Diablo 4 will be released on the PC eventually, this is just a side game on mobile. If you want to play it, play it, if you dont want to play it, dont
I dont understand what's going on.
I dont understand what's going on.
Announcing it at the end of Blizzcon is really the only issue. The game would have annoyed the hardcore audience anyway, just because it's not D4, but announcing it directly to them instead of announcing it with a press release or something is what caused the extreme toxicity.
The problem is outrage culture combined with man-children that have way too much free time for social media.
Another recent example is how some of the press (even on Era) were hounded over the fake smash leak that turned out to be fake.
Read this polygon article. It's got the info you need and not injected with hyperbole.
https://www.polygon.com/2018/11/5/18064290/blizzard-diablo-immortal-reaction-explainer-blizzcon
Last edited:
Yeah maybe the timing wasnt perfect, but still, it blew out of proportion.
Thanks for the article, it was a good read. I still cant grasp it though, maybe because I just cant see any reason to be angry over a game, there's so much worst out there.
The biggest problem isn't really the announcement anymore. It was the backlash to the fan backlash and now it is the backlash to the backlash to the fan backlash.
ah ah yes this.
Those people are dumb.
Diablo on smartphone is fine.
Don't play it if you don't like it.That's it.
Yeah it is, I already registered for it, I'm actually interested. I play star wars galaxy of heroes all the time on mobile, I'll give this a try as well.
Man, that fact Jason is having to argue with trolls is some funny shit.
Even my Korean friends that are racist as fck towards anything Chinese-made don't think it's that bad a move, they are more pissed they didn't give it to a Korean development team to do it complete justice because the Chinese companies stole most of the design, gameplay and interface ideas that came out of their countries mobile development community.
Even my Korean friends that are racist as fck towards anything Chinese-made don't think it's that bad a move, they are more pissed they didn't give it to a Korean development team to do it complete justice because the Chinese companies stole most of the design, gameplay and interface ideas that came out of their countries mobile development community.
The phone game's existence is not the problem. It's the fact that Blizzard tried to market it to the wrong crowd that was the problem. Blizzard tried to push a game to the wrong people, so your very statement is wrong. Saying "don't play if you don't like it" ignore the fact that Blizzard was the salesman trying to push the game to begin with.
why would you want to be that loyal to a money making business that you are willing to buy games that you have intention of ever playing. Why would you hold blizzard so highly?
You don't play their games, so why get mad at another game you won't play?
They exist to make games and be profitable, they have made plenty of mis steps in the past so there is no reason to hold them in such high regard that you'd buy their games for years just to "support" them, they aren't a struggling indie dev.
Well then.
Oh, I would have figured Microsoft with Halo Infinite and Nintendo with Metroid would have been more relevant. But point taken.
Last edited:
User Banned (2 weeks): Hostility towards other members, accumulated infractions
This shit will never not be funny to me.
How do you actually function in the real world, honestly?
Maybe to avoid the most dislike ratio ever in history of entertainment debut ?
I think you need to see it from a Diablo fan perspective:
Every other game Blizzard has made in the years since D3 has had updates, expansion packs and constant content added.
D3 was a big departure from D2's loot and build ideology.
The first Diablo news (ports excluded, as they're not "news") is that it's a mobile game.
A mobile game made by an external studio.
An external studio that is known for loot box BS.
The closing to Blizzards big convention.
The rise of ARPG's that fill the space: Grim Dawn, PoE, Wolcen etc etc...
Improvements in those games that Diablo fans would love to see in Diablo. Nothing.
Now you could say people should just play these other games - they're not the same, they don't combine the sound, visual and gameplay design that all fits together so well in Diablo. D3 left a lot of people sour on where Blizzard took the franchise but after RoS they had redeemed the game. The Rise of Necromancer pack was a tiny addition that fans had wanted since release.
Disliking a video and booing at a paid convention is pretty timid. Anything worse and yeah, it would have been fairly childish.
Every other game Blizzard has made in the years since D3 has had updates, expansion packs and constant content added.
D3 was a big departure from D2's loot and build ideology.
The first Diablo news (ports excluded, as they're not "news") is that it's a mobile game.
A mobile game made by an external studio.
An external studio that is known for loot box BS.
The closing to Blizzards big convention.
The rise of ARPG's that fill the space: Grim Dawn, PoE, Wolcen etc etc...
Improvements in those games that Diablo fans would love to see in Diablo. Nothing.
Now you could say people should just play these other games - they're not the same, they don't combine the sound, visual and gameplay design that all fits together so well in Diablo. D3 left a lot of people sour on where Blizzard took the franchise but after RoS they had redeemed the game. The Rise of Necromancer pack was a tiny addition that fans had wanted since release.
Disliking a video and booing at a paid convention is pretty timid. Anything worse and yeah, it would have been fairly childish.
Being a Diablo fan, you would know that this was a side project and that Diablo 4 is coming anyway.
I'm not a Diablo fan and even I knew that. So yeah, pretty childish to boo something because they didn't announced the game when you wanted it and how you wanted it.
Love it. If you say this out loud, it sounds like you're saying "the fourth 'blo" in Mandarin.
Did it ever happen to you that you are so disappointed by something that you don't feel like doing any active activity like playing games? That's it.
It's the realization that the gaming industry is moving in a direction that I don't like.
You can ridiculize it if you want, I can't stop you. I'm the first one that understands it's an exaggeration.
It also doesn't help reading statements like yours.
People can be emotional, passionate about the most trivial thing. Do you think watching your favorite soccer team being dismantled won't have an emotional impact on you?
So yes, this whole Diablo Immortal thing had an emotional impact on me. It will go away, eventually.
Just let it go dude, there are plenty of other games.
Games have always been and will always be a business and they need to adapt to survive.
If you don't like the way certain games are going find those games that do suit you. You may even find ones you like more!
How the fuck is that 'the problem' vs the torrent of toxicity and hate posts that have since followed that event and the mobile game?
A gaming company misjudged the timing of an announcement. Too bad, but not a big deal
In the grand scheme of things. The toxic component of the backlash is a far bigger issue.
I go back to the same idea that paying a Blizzcon ticket because you know expecting quite a few game announcements this year and just ending up with WC3 Remastered and Diablo Immortal is a bit.. frustrating especially for people who came from the other side of the world.
Either way they should have done it the right way announce D4 and then Immortal it wouldn't hurt them one hit.. instead we got this raging going on.
Either way they should have done it the right way announce D4 and then Immortal it wouldn't hurt them one hit.. instead we got this raging going on.
It's a disgrace the way the Diablo franchise is being treated. Over 30 million copies sold but hey they can't figure out how to design MTX into it so here we are.
The entire Blizzard catalog is a GAAS party, they couldn't let Diablo get away with an old school business model could they.
Blah.
I just wish GGG had one tenth of the artistic talent that Blizzard does and that PoE felt a little better to play.
The entire Blizzard catalog is a GAAS party, they couldn't let Diablo get away with an old school business model could they.
Blah.
I just wish GGG had one tenth of the artistic talent that Blizzard does and that PoE felt a little better to play.
Well it sounds like YouTube/Google are helping them which is shady as hell because as far as I know you can't remove dislikes or views from your own videos just comments. I'm surprised there isn't more media spotlight on this. If Blizzard are allowed to take away dislikes then people should be allowed to give likes to their videos. If that sounds like shit then it is.