D4's Hail Mary Play

Well, they've finally gone and done it. With only a month to go before they launch their (doomed) Vessel Of Hatred expansion pack, the Diablo IV dev team have announced their own 2.0 reboot... just like Diablo III did.

From Kotaku:

Diablo 4's next big update arrives in October as part of the game’s next season, which is also coming at the same time as its first paid expansion. This new update, which is going to be tested by players in September, is changing quite a lot of things, including the level cap, how monsters scale, the paragon system, and much more.

There's a PTR, of course, since D4's devs have no feel for their own game and need players to tell them if it's good, and the changes basically adjust everything about the existing game... slightly.

A study in contrasts

So... Thursday happened. And with Thursday, came a couple of contrasting ARPG release events.

Now, I'm not sure how far in advance Blizzard and Grinding Gear Games had each scheduled their respective events. Marketing calendars are often largely set months in advance, so it could just be coincidence that the studios behind the two biggest ARPGs both scheduled events for the same day, literally back-to-back. The fact that GGG announced theirs first, and Blizzard only announced theirs a few days later, wasn't necessarily a case of Blizzard trying to pre-empt a rival game's marketing event. It might mean nothing.

That said, I did watch both events. I was working during the day, and couldn't watch them live, so I ended up watching the VODs back-to-back. And, oh boy, was the contrast ever funny.

Just in case you weren't convinced...

... I've got your copium antidote right here.

Quite a few Diablo IV content creators have been drinking the kool-aid recently, talking about season four having "saved" D4, and how the Vessel of Hatred expansion can only do well, given how positive player sentiment is towards the game.

Here's what that sentiment looks like as of July 2024:

 

 

Ouch.