Diablo Immortal just became a lot less interesting

One of the more controversial decisions that Blizzard made with Diablo III was its persistent online connection. In a game that was pretty clearly not an MMO, and a genre for which solo PvE is the core gameplay experience, the decision not to allow PC players to game offline was, and remains, only slightly less unpopular then the ill-fated Auction Houses... and, unlike the AHs, the persistent online verification DRM is still in the game. The later console releases, which are playable offline, cemented fans' opinions on the issue of Always Online, with plenty of folks walking away from D3 entirely over Blizzard's refusal to add an offline mode to the PC version.

And now, with their wildly unpopular Diablo Immortal release, Blizzard seem to be intent on including this same, wildly unpopular feature in their new D3 mobile game, too, adding even more headwinds to a title that's already off to a rough start. As reported by ScreenRant, who really are all over the D:I story:

Realistically, the announcement isn't a shocking one. Many of the biggest mobile games on the market require a constant online connection, although that's often as part of a system design that maximizes the need for microtransactions from players. Diablo Immortal is also being designed with a massively multiplayer development philosophy behind it, which means that the ability to meet up with other players in-game is going to be crucial for experiencing it the way Blizzard intended. Battle.net, Blizzard's online social service for those playing the developer's games, is also a likely factor in the decision to make Diablo Immortal require a constant internet connection.

That information could be unfortunate for a company looking to sway the community's opinion on its game pre-launch, however. A lot of fan backlash is over a desire for a Diablo 4 or a remastered edition of a previous iteration, and now Diablo Immortal looks like it's going to be unplayable in situations mobile games are most appealing, like on a long commute. If fans are most often going to be playing Diablo Immortal from the comfort of their own home, that will fuel the argument that a sequel would have been a better decision for Blizzard after all.

Back at the start of this whole thing, I'd written  that I'd be willing to give the new game a chance, if:

1. it were free to play, 
2. it provided an enjoyable gameplay experience, 
3. it wasn't obnoxiously monetized, and 
4. it could be played offline.

So, we're already down to, at best, three out of the four criteria I'd set as the minimum requirement for me to give D:I basically any of my time. No, I wasn't all that interested in Diablo Immortal to start with, but Blizzard have already managed to make the game 25% less interesting. GG, Blizzard! Well done.

I'm starting to wonder if Blizzard aren't actually taking the piss, here. Is this just an out-of-season April Fool's prank? Or is Blizzard just trying to strip what little meat remains on the bones of their actually-dead Diablo franchise? Because I refuse to believe that they can possibly be so out of touch as to not know how unpopular Always Online was, and still is, with Diablo fans. What are they thinking?

That's not a rhetorical question, by the way. I'd really like to know. Seriously, Blizzard, throw us a fricken' bone, already. And by that, I don't mean more meaningless PR pablum; I mean actual, honest, truth. Even a bad answer would be better at this point than what we have, which is nothing.

UPDATED:

I'd actually missed this when it happened, as reported by Kotaku AU:

Diablo has always been a franchise about battling back the seventh circle of hell, sometimes in a viscerally bloody fashion. It's a mature franchise. Diablo Immortal, on the other hand, will be a game Blizzard hopes to target at all ages.

At a group press conference uploaded by 리뷰빌런 하텍 from Blizzcon, Blizzard co-founder Allen Adham and Diablo Immortal principal designer Wyatt Cheng took different questions about mobile gaming, and Immortal more generally.
When asked about the direction of Immortal, Adham said that bringing Diablo to mobiles would help Blizzard expand the franchise - and also the demographic of the average Diablo fan.

"It gives us the opportunity to introduce Diablo to a much broader audience around the world that play games, now many primarily on their phones, and in North America a younger audience, many primarily on their phones," Adham said.

And just like that, I'm even less interested in this game. Diablo's disturbing themes and grisly visuals are really the only remaining element that they hadn't entirely nerfed into the ground with Diablo III; removing even those watered-down tonal and thematic elements in order to "all ages" the game basically means that it will bear even less resemblance to the rest of the entries in the Diablo series. And it's not being done for any artistic or creative reason; this is purely about selling an M-rated series to an E-rated audience, because they can make more money that way.

If Blizzard were hoping to convince Diablo fans that Immortal was anything other than a cynical cash grab, then this news will probably killed that possibility for good. The all-ages crowd that they're appealing to, on the other hand, are also even less likely to be interested in Immortal now, since the illicit thrill of playing the pitch-dark game on their mobile phones was basically the entire sales pitch for that audience, too.

GG, Blizzard. The only other thing that could be done to ensure that Diablo Immortal is dead on arrival, that hasn't already been done, would be to charge up-front for the game, while also adding an oppressive monetization scheme. Considering just how incompetently Blizzard have handled Immortal so far, I look forward to that being the next news about this game.