... 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.
Across all platforms, roughly 18.6K users cared enough to leave a review on Metacritic; of those, 14.8K feel negatively about the game. That's about 79.6% negative, a 4:1 ratio. Remember: D3's Reaper of Souls expansion also had about 20% retention, and D3's Metacritic page doesn't look nearly as dire as D4's.
Now, obviously not all customers who bought the game will have cared enough to leave a user review on Metacritic, but as a representative sample, I think it will serve. So, now we come to the question: are the 4 out of 5 Diablo IV customers who disliked the game planning to come back to buy the expansion?
Yeah, I don't think so, either.
A couple of other takeaways: much like D3, D4's platform breakdown skews heavily in the direction of PC users. Only PlayStation5 comes close, which makes sense considering how heavily XBox Series X|S consoles are being outsold this generation. Given what a non-presence XBox is in these numbers, though... do you think Game Pass is moving the needle on D4's player count? At all?
What does this mean for VoH? I could always be wrong, but I think it means history repeats itself, with Vessel of Hatred garnering the same 15% - 20% retention that Reaper of Souls earned, back in the day.
So that's my prediction. Much like RoS, VoH will land to rapturous critical response, with critics who'd already proclaimed D4 to be a nearly flawless masterpiece tripping over each other to breathlessly assert that VoH "fixes" the base game. And, much like RoS, VoH will under-perform in sales, as customers who'd left disappointed decide to stay away.
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