This is how you do it Grinding Gear Games put on a clinic in how to announce a sequel, and put Blizzard's Diablo IV announcement to shame

When Blizzard announced their next instalment to the Diablo series recently, I was... underwhelmed. None of it looked bad, exactly, but none of it was exciting, and every new thing I learned about the game served to lower my interest and excitement levels.

Diablo III suffered from lacking an offline mode, you say?
Well, fuck you, because D4 won't have one, either.

D3 suffered from a lack of depth in its vestigial RPG systems, you say?
Well, fuck you, because D4 will do away with even those vestigial stubs of RPGness, and just add Attack and Defense bonuses to every fucking item that drops.

Did D3 at launch feel like monetization with a half-finished game bolted on as an afterthought?
Well, Blizzard has a shit sandwich just for you, too, because D4 will be all about its monetization. That's right, D4 will be a full-priced AAA game with paid microtransactions, because of fucking course it will be.

And so, with D4's lustre rapidly tarnishing, and BlizzCon well in our rearview mirrors, it was time for Grinding Gear Games to stage their own fan-appreciation/marketing event: ExileCon 2019! We knew in advance that they would be announcing both the upcoming challenge league/3.9 mini-expansion and their D4-killer/4.0 major expansion at this event, but the devil is in the details. What could the tiny New Zealand upstarts possibly do to upstage the gigantic BlizzCon media domination machine?

How about announcing Path of Exile 2, for a start.

That's right, PoE's 4.0 expansion isn't an expansion at all; it's an Overwatch 2-style sequel, which will merge an entirely new seven-act story, an entirely new skill system, an entirely revamped item system, 19 new ascendancy classes (in addition to the game's existing 19, bringing the total to 38), all-new character models with modern animation rigging, totally revamped ambient lighting, sounds, music, and more with the game end-game mapping system that follows the original 10-act campaign... which will still be playable, because of course it will be.

Path of Exile 2 looks more next-gen than Diablo IV can even dream of being, and far more interesting and exciting. Oh, and did I mention that this genuine, for-real, D4 killer, is also 100% free? Because it's free.

GGG then followed that with a gameplay demo. 

I want to emphasize that last word again: DEMO. Not a rapid-cut sizzle reel of isolated snippets of disconnected alpha-version gameplay cut together to give the impression of a game that's further along in development than it actually is, like D4 had; PoE2 had their Technical Director actually playing the game live during the announcement stream, and it looked awesome.

That, dear readers, is a game that's well into its development cycle, and tentatively scheduled to release next December. And then, having raised excitement in the room to a feverish pitch with this vision of where the game will be going in a year's time, GGG then raised the bar still further by showing us where the game will be going next month.

Yes, that's an entirely new end-game system, which they've apparently developed while also working on totally redesigning everything else about the game, too... in their copious spare time, I guess? Oh, and this new expansion also comes with a new challenge league, which also looks really, really good:

But let's be real, here -- I was so completely on board by this point, that Metamorph League could have looked like absolute ass and I'd still be salivating over the possibilities. The fact that it also looks fantastic is just icing on the cake. And then, just for good measure, GGG dunk on Blizzard one last time, by announcing the super-secret "skunkworks" project that they've also been developing, in parallel with everything else.

Your eyes do not deceive you; that is indeed a mobile Path of Exile game. When Blizzard announced Diablo Immortal instead of announcing D4 last year, the results were so disastrous that they were forced to avoid mentioning the fucking thing at this year's BlizzCon. GGG announced their own mobile game, but only after announcing a sequel, and a mini-expansion, and a new challenge league, and GGG's fans cheered.

Really, GGG could have announced anything at this point, and been cheered for it, and I do mean anything. PoE VR? Of course I'll buy an otherwise-useless VR headset to play that shit! A PoE-themed CCG? Sure, I'll try PoE Hearthstone -- sign me up! You've made a PoE board game, you say? Shut up and take my money! Hell, they could have announced a line of PoE-themed sex toys, at this point in the proceedings, and I'd have said it looked interesting.

But then, because GGG weren't yet finished dunking on Blizzard, they announced that PoE Mobile's monetization will be identical to the main game's: free to play, with cosmetic mtx only. Blizzard's game was finished months ago, according to their development partner NetEase, and they're still playing coy about how much it will cost, and how much mtx bullshit will be shoehorned in; meanwhile, GGG's game isn't even finished yet, but their monetization model is already in place, because of course it is. After all, it's just the same monetization model that they're already using on PC.

A couple of days ago, Kripparrian mentioned in passing on his Twitch stream that the GGG weren't exactly blown away by the D4 announcement. And, OMG, can I ever see why. Because this isn't a contest. Path of Exile 2 is already an incredibly exciting and innovative package which will further advance and redefine the genre, while further cementing GGG's position as the reigning kings of the ARPG mountain. D4, by comparison, looks boring and lacklustre; it's just D3, but with even more of what made D3 suck, and an art style and quality that can't even match what GGG are now bringing.

If you'd asked me a few weeks ago, I'd have told you that I was worried: worried about the current state of Path of Exile, about the game's aging engine and technical debt, about the direction they might be going in, and about the future of the genre. Today, I couldn't be more stoked. Path of Exile 2 is absolutely my most anticipated release of 2020, and it isn't even close; honestly, if Path of Exile 2 doesn't get Game of the Year attention, then there really is just no fucking justice in games media coverage. GGG have knocked it out of the park, again, and deserve all the praise in the gaming world right now.

Well done, GGG! Truly, and sincerely, well done.

A+

Blizzard? If you're listening... you're going to need to up your game, here. I really hope that you understand exactly what it is that you're up against.

Sunk without a trace

I'm thinking that this has to be a sign of something, and probably not one that Blizzard was wanting to see: Of the three cinematic announcement trailers that Blizzard debuted at BlizzCon, only Overwatch 2's and World Of WarCraft: Shadowlands are still Trending on YouTube. Diablo IV's cinematic trailer has already dropped off both the Trending and Recently Trending lists completely.

Diablo IV also had an official gameplay trailer, of course, but that only has 62K likes; Overwatch 2's cinematic trailer, by comparison, is currently sitting at 229K likes, and even WoW:Shadowlands' trailer has 84K. (Diablo IV's "sub-marined" cinematic, BTW, has 76K likes.) These were the three big announcements of BlizzCon 2019, and it looks like only one is really connecting with fans, or with gamers more broadly; WoW:Shadowlands and Diablo IV both look like they're struggling.

The good news for Blizzard is that neither has been "ratioed" -- their like to dislike ratios are still in the black -- but with relatively low likes and poor engagement, it doesn't look like either is generating the kind of positive buzz that Blizzard were clearly hoping for, and maybe needing. If anything, Shadowlands may be in even more dire straits than D4, with only 9K more likes than D4 and a like:dislike ratio of only 2.9 (D4 has an l:d ratio of 19.48).

I may be reading too much into these tea leaves, of course, but it sure looks like Blizzard are going to have a tough time winning fans of both games back over. Shadowlands, which already has a release date (on or before Dec. 1st, 2020), is almost certain to be launching first, may not have enough time to woo back fans. And Diablo IV has the long, dark shadow of Diablo III looming over its prospects, and a lot of former fans who've vowed never to buy another Blizzard game ever again after the way that was handled.

And that was before the Blitzchung fiasco, and Blizzard's botched reaction to it, which has former fans from across Blizzard's gaming fandoms also swearing to never support Blizzard again. Oh, and last year's big announcement, Diablo: Immortal? Still not ready, apparently.

In a much quieter fashion than last year, Blizzard kept Diablo Immortal out of the BlizzCon opening ceremony and instead posted an update on its official blog with a trailer as well as new information on the game’s story, its classes and its gameplay.

Ouch.

There's still time, of course, but given the extent to which Blizzard seem to have lost their mojo, and with it the trust and goodwill of a good chunk of their player base, it's tough to see how they turn all of this around by any of these products' release dates. Oh, and Overwatch 2? The fact that it's being marketed as a sequel, and not as DLC, seems to be rubbing a few of that game's fans raw, too. Blizzard just can't seem to buy a win, here.

And when you think of what a juggernaut Blizzard has been, how they stood atop the gaming industry like a beloved colossus for so long, the though that they've going from heroes to zeroes seemingly overnight like this just feels weird. It feels like a sign of something, like a change of some kind is in the wind. I don't know what will be changing, exactly, but I can't help but think that we've crossed some kind of tipping point, and can never, ever go back.

I was wrong: there actually was one thing that I wanted to see in Diablo IV and Blizzard will not be giving it to me.

From PC Gamer:

Diablo 4 will not have an offline mode and will require an internet connection to play, Blizzard said during an interview at BlizzCon today.

We asked lead designer Joe Shely if it was possible to play Diablo 4 offline. "There's a large, seamless, connected, and shared space in the world, going down into dungeons, being able to group with your friends, trading and PvP. We feel that the best way to experience that is in a world that is online," Shely responded.

The "shared open world" essentially gives Diablo 4 the form of an MMO, so it's not surprising that it will require an always-on internet connection in order to populate the world with other players. You'll be able to play solo, but not offline.

And just like that, Diablo IV has become even less interesting to me.

D3's "always online while solo" bullshit literally broke the game; why Blizzard would repeat that in D4 is beyond me. Maybe they're thinking that their main competitor in the genre, Path of Exile, is also an online-only mainly PvE joint, but PoE is free to play; unless D4 is also going to be F2P, it needs to be playable offline to be even remotely interesting.

Not to mention that I don't want to be sharing my game space with other players while playing solo, and don't believe that the ARPG and MMORPG genres hybridize at all well. Does "seamless" mean that we'll never see a loading screen, Dungeon Siege-style? If so, then that's the only interesting feature that Blizzard has yet mentioned for D4.

The single biggest hurdle that D4 has to clear is that it's a sequel to the hugely disappointing D3; they absolutely needed to avoid making the same mistakes again with the new installment that they made with the last one. So far, I have to say that it's not looking good on that front. Once again, I expected nothing, and wanted nothing, but have nonetheless been disappointed once again by Blizzard.

Diablo IV announced, surprising absolutely nobody

Blizzard have clearly decided to start BlizzCon with a bang.

Actually, that's not quite right. Blizzard actually started BlizzCon with an apology. They apologized for the whole Blitzchung fiasco, with Blizzard president J. Allen Brack somberly admitting that they first "moved too quickly" when landing on Blitzchung like a ton of bricks, and then "were too slow to talk with all of you," presumably meaning Blizzard's fans. He ended with, "I’m sorry and I accept accountability," which is as entirely meaningless here as it was when Mark Zuckerberg said the same thing under oath during U.S. Congressional hearings.

The expected anti-Blizzard protests are underway, too, although they're apparently not very large. Overall, it looks like Blizzard's strategy of keeping their heads down and hoping that a blizzard of BlizzCon game announcements would swamp coverage of the protests is paying off.

And, lo! those product announcements. Blizzard, apparently realizing that they needed to earn back some serious fan goodwill points, did not play coy this time, making fans wait through a bunch of shit that they didn't care about before faking them out with a mobile game announcement. No, this time, they started with their biggest gun: Diablo IV. Which looks really, really, really... meh.

I mean, none of it's bad, but there was very little story in the story trailer, and even less gameplay in the gameplay trailer, which was one-third cinematic framing device. What literal gameplay was shown appeared only in very quick cuts, which is a great way of "punching up" boring content and immediately makes me suspicious. Only bog-standard ARPG gameplay was shown, too, with no time spent detailing any of the game's RPG systems -- something of a sticking point, given that Diablo III didn't have any.

There was one totally new element shown, though, one which has never appeared in a Diablo game before: mounts! Which were first introduced to the ARPG genre back in 2004, when Sacred did them. Gee, how innovative. Well done, Blizzard. [/sarcasm]

So... yeah. Not excited. Not pre-ordering. Not buying at launch. Likely not buying until there's been at least one expansion pack, and a Battle Chest edition, and then only if reviews are amazing. Seriously, after the shit state that Diablo III launched in, and the way Blizzard literally gaslighted disappointed customers to make us doubt whether Diablo II was ever actually good, Diablo IV would have to be the very best game ever made to bring me back as a paying customer.

Now, if D4 is free to play on release? Well, at that point, it will depend on the microtransactions. I'm not just throwing this out for shits and giggles, either; the gameplay trailer only showed three playable character classes, with an archer/ranger type being conspicuously absent, so it's not too much of a stretch to think that the game could launch as a free-to-play with three playable classes, and then sell other classes as paid mtx. Of course, they could also launch it for $60 with three playable classes and then sell other classes as paid DLC, something which has precedent in the Diablo franchise.

BlizzCon Cometh...

Jesus fuck, has it really been almost a year since my last post?

My original plan here was to have my Diablo III postmortem finished, and have moved on to discussing what I wanted to see from Diablo IV, long before now, but it would seem that ship has sailed without me on it. So, with BlizzCon only days away, and rumours swirling once again that they'll actually announce D4 this time, really, I guess I'll skip to the end, and then backtrack.

What do I want from Diablo IV? Honestly, nothing.

That's going to seem very strange, given how much time and head-space I've clearly given to D3, but I'm honestly not all that excited for D4. I've already decided that I won't be playing it at launch, or even in the first year, after the debacle of D3's launch; and, given what other news is swirling around ActiBlizz lately, I don't believe that announcing D4 at this late stage of the game will change their narrative all that much. People who've made careers out of their Blizzard fandom are deleting their accounts and resolving never to buy another Blizzard game ever again; it seems that the least I can do, having also vowed never to spend money on another Blizzard game ever again, if for different reasons, is join the boycott.

But, really, boycotting Blizzard at this point is just a formality. The truth is that I've already moved on from Blizzard's games. I don''t have any expectation that today's Blizzard will bring a new Diablo title that actually innovates or pushes the genre forward; meanwhile, Grinding Gear Games are constantly innovating and trying to push the genre forward, and have succeeded well enough that other ARPGs are now imitating Path of Exile, rather than imitating Diablo II. Blizzard, whose Condor/Blizzard North unit invented the ARPG, is now irrelevant to the genre, and has been for years.

Let's face it: innovating isn't something Blizzard have actually ever done.

Blizzard's game is to take something that others are already doing, but that nobody is yet dominating, and then perfect it: polishing off the rough edges, and adding interesting story beats and charming characters to make the whole package sing. They have always produced engaging, highly polished games, but those games were never inventive; they were streamlined, stripped-down versions of other games that already existed. WarCraft did not invent real-time strategy; World of WarCraft did not invent the MMORPG; Hearthstone was literally Magic the Gathering Lite with WoW's IP on top; Overwatch was Team Fortress 2 with more characters; and so on.

Blizzard North were the only innovators that Blizzard ever had, and they're all gone now... and if you needed proof of that, look no further than Diablo III, which was a god-awful mess at launch, and which is still fundamentally broken. This is a company that thought Diablo Immortal was a great idea, and something that long-suffering Diablo fans would embrace with enthusiasm; this is a company that thought banning and censoring free speech in one of the most outspoken fandoms in video games was a fantastic business move. They've lost touch with their fans completely, and I have zero faith in their ability to have listened to what fans were telling them about the Diablo franchise specifically.

That said... hypothetically speaking, what would Diablo IV need to do, in order to lure me back in?

1. Remember that solo PvE is the heart and soul of the ARPG genre.

Alternatively, if you want to make a Diabloverse MMO, commit to that and actually build and balance it like an MMO. Do not try to do both simultaneously; despite their similarities, ARPG and MMO do not actually hybridize well.

• Do finish telling the story that D3 started. Sorry, but you don't get a clean slate, here; you can't just drop all the dangling story thread that you didn't bring to completion in your last title and start over.

2. Move the genre forward

Path of Exile are dominating the ARPG genre right now, and other ARPGs are starting to iterate on their system. Diablo II is no longer the standard, so it's not enough anymore to just make the D2 sequel that people wanted, and which D3 wasn't. You have to do new things; you have to do things with nobody ever thought could be done with the form. And I don't just mean in terms of monetizing the fucking thing.

• Do a branching storyline, in the style of Octopath Traveller, except that the outcomes of quests form the decision points where the story branches. An ARPG really can't include a bunch of dialog trees without ceasing to be an ARPG, but you can use directional storytelling, and other storytelling tricks from visual media, so produce the same effect: having the story unfold differently depending on what the player does.
• Do voxel-based, fully destructible environments, of the sort that Everquest Next was working on before it was cancelled. And do free movement: no more invisible walls, no more cheap gating mechanics. Use proper level design to guide the players where you want them to go, instead. And do it without loading screens; seriously, Gas Powered Games was making ARPGs with seamless area transitions almost twenty years ago, and you should revive that tech. 
• Do proper RPG progression mechanics; do proper ARPG itemization; and add one character development mechanic that's unique to this game. Think PoE's passive web, ascendancies, and pantheon system, or Grim Dawn's constellations... you get the picture.  
• Don't make another game in which the only source of real power is loot.
• Don't worry about consoles; the next generation of consoles will have plenty of power, and SSDs, and should be able to anything that a gaming PC can do.

3. Your multiplayer content must add value without detracting from the core game.

Spend some time thinking about what a guild or community even looks like for this genre. Spend time thinking about, and building, features which those players will find useful, and fun to use.

• Do have proper match-making this time, for people that just want to play pick-up games without having joined a guild first.
• Do have a proper trading system, which caters to social trading but which discourages speculation. If you find yourself nerfing in-game drop rates to balance your trading economy, then you're done it wrong.
• Do have proper PvP, for those that like that sort of thing. Give players the tools to run their own PvE racing events, PvP jousts and tournaments, and challenge "leagues" with added rules and restrictions to increase the game's difficulty. You know, like PoE have already done.
• Do add built-in voice chat, this time. Seriously, why was this not already a thing?

4. Make the game free to play.

I am serious about never buying another Blizzard game, but I might try the game if no up-front risk is involved. If I like it, I might even be moved to buy additional stash space, or additional character classes, or cosmetic mtx.

• Do add a robust cosmetic mtx system from launch. D3's transmog system is weak shit; do better.
• Don't sell the game for full retail, and then lard it with "live service" bullshit.

5. Finish the fucking thing, and test it thoroughly, before releasing it.

I know that the trend in AAA video games is to release products in a beta stage of completion, and then release a road map of upcoming fixes and features that weren't ready for the game's launch, but we're talking about Diablo IV here, which is following up a game which was released broken, full of bugs, unfinished, and so badly designed that they did a complete redesign for its first expansion pack. Don't repeat any of those mistakes. Do take some other risks along the way, though.

• Do bring forward the NPCs from D3. Eirena the Enchantress, Kormac the Templar, Lyndon the Scoundrel, Covetous Shen, and Zoltan Kulle were some of the best characters in the last game of the series, with stories that were arguably better told than any of the player characters.
• Do pick up the story from where the last game left off, and build on it. The story events of Reaper of Souls killed lots of Sanctuary's people -- we're talking about Black Death levels of mass death, here, with half of the population, if not more, slaughtered in the streets by monsters that most didn't actually believe existed until that moment. What are the consequences of that? D4 shouldn't be a gothic horror story so much as a post-apocalyptic story.
• Do something new with the game's villain. Yes, I know the game is literally called Diablo, and that Diablo himself will make an appearance, but how you get to the story beat where killing Diablo is your goal should be something other than a straight line. Maybe the wave of death from RoS rang a cosmic dinner bell, drawing in Cthulu-esque monsters from beyond that can only be fought by the Nephalem, the Angiris Council, and Diablo himself... all fighting side-by-side together against impending doom? And then have Diablo turn on the group, and need to be put down like a rabid dog? Seriously, the options are limitless here.

Blizzard aren't going to do any of those things, of course, and are unlikely to have any hands-on gameplay ready to go, or even show, for Diablo IV. My prediction: A patented Blizzard cinematic trailer, with Blizzard's normal Hollywood-calibre production values, and very little by way of concrete details, all of it being overshadowed by the China/Hong Kong/protests story. But who knows? Maybe I'll be wrong.

Either way, we'll know for sure in a matter of hours.

A sign of the Diablo times...

... from DiabloFans.com:

It is with great sadness that I must announce the closure of DiabloFans. Our site has been a pillar of the Diablo community for many years, but due to the fading interest in current Diablo products and business realities for Curse, it is time for DiabloFans to say farewell.

You've read that correctly. The best-known and longest-running Diablo fan site, and one the few which was able to run an actual business, fuelled by nothing more than the love of Diablo fans for the franchise, is shutting down due to a lack of interest in Diablo. Whatever Blizzard do next with the franchise, they will do it without the support of this long-running portal, and the dedicated and passionate fans who made it happen.

And Diablofans aren't the only ones finding it hard to justify continued support of Activision Blizzard's Diablo franchise.