Oh, the shade...

It looks like Grinding Gear Games aren't quite done throwing shade in Diablo's direction. After following Activision Blizzard's disastrous Diablo Immortal reveal by announcing that their own Path of Exile would be coming to PS4 in time for the holidays, GGG have now responded to an influx of disillusioned Diablo fans with a post about all the resources that exist for new PoE players.

The post hypes the game's built-in tutorial system (the lack of which was a frequent criticism of Diablo loyalists in the past), and links to a number of the better resources that PoE's player community have compiled to help ease new players into the game, but the coldest cuts of all come with GGG matter-of-factly describing their update cycle, and the frequency with which they engage with their player community.

It's also worth mentioning that we have a 13-week development cycle with significant expansions released four times a year. Each expansion usually contains a new challenge league and many general improvements including new skill gems, unique items, in-game features, balance changes, reworks of existing skills and more! The release of the next expansion is scheduled for the December 7 (US/EU Time). We'll announce its details next week!

In the meantime, we post news five days a week (on New Zealand weekdays) to keep you updated on what's happening in development and in the community!

Would you like some ointment for that burn?

This stands in stark contrast to Activision Blizzard, who not only haven't released any content for Diablo in years, but who still haven't announced any for their long-suffering PC-playing fan base, and whose only response after a week of Diablo Immortal blow-back was a weaksauce, corporate-speak boilerplate, "we hear you." GGG's welcome to new players isn't quite the sick burn that the Warhammer: Chaosbane team inflicted, but then it doesn't have to be: Path of Exile is the industry leader in ARPG right now, and can afford to take a higher road while still making their point.

This is what I meant, when I wrote yesterday that Activision Blizzard's response to their Diablo fans wasn't good enough. I didn't just mean that Diablo fans deserved better, although they certainly do. I also meant that Blizzard was creating all sorts of opportunities for their competitors, while doing nothing to restore the fortunes of a Diablo franchise which could fairly be described as beleaguered, if not completely moribund, by this point.

Blizzard don't just need to do better for the sake of their fans; the need to do better for the sake of their own future.

Of course, it may already be too late for Activision Blizzard to save their Diablo franchise. Most of Diablo's fanbase walked shortly after Diablo III launched as such a broken, buggy, unfinished, badly designed, and ultimately disappointing mess. Most of them did not come back for the Reaper of Souls expansion, even if Blizzard decided to start counting them as RoS customers whether they'd bought the expansion or not. Most of them got the message that D3's developers were putting out in those first few years: that the devs knew best, that players' opinions were only valuable if they agreed with the devs', and that Diablo III represented the future of the franchise whether fans of the franchise liked it or not. That message came through, loud and clear; fans received it, and heeded it, and left.

Diablo Immortal isn't just good business sense because there's money to be made on mobile; expanding the Diablo fan community to include people who haven't traditionally been interested, mainly because they weren't PC gamers, may be absolutely essential if Activision Blizzard want to continue having a viable Diablo franchise at all. If that's true, then the tone-deafness and arrogance with which ATVI have approached this critical task becomes even more breathtaking.

Activision Blizzard have just seen their share price drop ten percent, after their earnings fell for the third straight quarter. They really can't afford to see their push to mobile fail. But the developers of Diablo, in particular, have historically been dismissive of, if not outright hostile to, the entire idea of Diablo on mobile as recently as April Fool's Day of four years ago. If their thinking on that subject has evolved in the interim, then that's fine; both mobile hardware and best practices of the mobile gaming industry may have changed to the point where a Diablo mobile game really is something that you can make well, and not a joke anymore.

Blizzard really couldn't just pop up at BlizzCon and announce that they'd done a complete one-eighty on the subject of mobile gaming; they needed to lay a foundation first, and then start trying to build the hype on top of that. But Diablo's devs didn't even try to do this, and reacted to fans' reaction to their PR failure with scorn. "Do you guys not have phones?" is not the message that people should be taking away from the reveal of the start of your company's big new mobile gaming initiative, but that's exactly what happened last weekend. And they only people to respond since then have been Diablo's competitors.

Seriously, why hasn't someone lost their job over this yet?