Diablo Immortal

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Raid
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Diablo Immortal

Post by Raid » Sat Nov 03, 2018 12:17 pm

Figured this deserves its own thread, or more specifically I don't want to clog up the Warcraft III Reforged thread.

So yeah, the Blizzcon keynote was last night, and to end it, they chose to show off "their" "new" Diablo mobile game. This has not gone down well. Apparently Blizzard had been dropping hints that there were major Diablo announcements coming this year, although they clarified a few weeks back that there wouldn't be a Diablo IV reveal at Blizzcon. I was unaware of all of this, but each year I've watched the keynote live hoping for a new Diablo game. I can't say I'm staking all of my gaming hopes on it, but Diablo III has been one of my most played PC games and I'd really like some new content.

But no, instead Blizzard decided their big announcement this year was a mobile version of Diablo. They proudly said that they were partnering with a Chinese company, this isn't even developed by Blizzard. Even better, it's not even a new game; it's a reskin of an existing mobile title called Endless of God. Needless to say, this has not gone down well.



It wasn't exactly a big year for Blizzard announcements anyway, but having apparently not learned from EA's faux pas at E3 this year with their Command and Conquer mobile game, it's further evidence that you really shouldn't announce mobile games at conferences designed to cater for your more dedicated fans.

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Re: Diablo Immortal

Post by Tichinde » Sat Nov 03, 2018 12:49 pm

That video is the highlight of this years Blizzcon. Closely followed by the panel responding with "you all have phones right?!!??" when asked if this was ever coming to other platforms.

The announcement trailer has 178 likes, 7 thousand dislikes.
Yesterday, that was 50 likes, 15000 dislikes.

They've pulled the announcement trailer and reposted it a couple of times already.

I had no idea they just re-skinned something else though, that is diabolical.....




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Re: Diablo Immortal

Post by Lee » Sat Nov 03, 2018 12:52 pm









For me it was just hilariously bad. You have people that spend tons of money to go Blizzcon, dropping teasers for about Diablo then show this off and expect it to go well. [-X :lol:
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Re: Diablo Immortal

Post by Raid » Sat Nov 03, 2018 12:59 pm

Poor Wyatt Cheng, the guy who had to get up on stage and announce this. While I've no doubt he bears some responsibility for it, knowing that you have to be the one to go up and disappoint an arena full of hungry geeks can't be easy.



Thing is, I doubt this launch really affects the projects that Blizzcon attendees are interested in. The wording on the expectation management post does suggest they're working on something else for the franchise, but it was a catastrophically bad decision to headline the Blizzcon keynote with a mobile title. My understanding is that these things are big business in China where the developer is based, so it's not as if Blizzcon attendees are the intended audience for it.

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Re: Diablo Immortal

Post by Mantis » Sat Nov 03, 2018 3:53 pm

I'm not really sure how they thought this would be met with a positive reception given how they placed it within the conference. Diablo fans have been pretty hard done by for a few years now and were almost certainly really hoping for either Diablo 4 or a remaster of 2 this year. The guy at the Q&A who asks in disbelief whether the whole thing is an out of season April fools joke is just brutal.

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Re: Diablo Immortal

Post by Raid » Sat Nov 03, 2018 4:44 pm

Mantis wrote:
Sat Nov 03, 2018 3:53 pm
The guy at the Q&A who asks in disbelief whether the whole thing is an out of season April fools joke is just brutal.
Apparently they were vetting questions, and he had to lie and summon up some feigned interest in order to get through and ask his actual question.

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Re: Diablo Immortal

Post by Raid » Sat Nov 03, 2018 5:15 pm

Several media outlets have already posted articles defending Blizzard and Diablo Immortal. That guy asking if it was an out-of-season April Fools joke is the focus, and he's being branded as disrespectful and "an edgelord". The cynic in me can't help but wonder whether these articles have been paid for by Activision Blizzard.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin ... f6819b1b1f

https://www.shacknews.com/article/10831 ... n-2018s-qa

Blizzard announce a reskinned, third-party mobile game (typically aimed at casual gamers) at a conference where their enthusiastic core audience (brought up on games that only existed on PC) have paid hundreds of dollars to attend, invite people to ask questions, and yet the audience are the disrespectful ones. Sure.

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Re: Diablo Immortal

Post by Tommy » Sat Nov 03, 2018 6:08 pm

That is utterly shit :lol:

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Re: Diablo Immortal

Post by Mantis » Sat Nov 03, 2018 7:26 pm

The Shacknews article seems to expect that people just lap up everything that gets announced. That audience was the filled with the most dedicated of Blizzard's fans, they were perfectly entitled to be very disappointed by the announcement. It's entirely down to Blizzard for misjudging their own consumers on this one and I think that guy's question could have been far worse for them if some entitled fan had really flown off the handle about it, in the scheme of things he just seemed massively disappointed.

Reports that they've deleted and reuploaded the trailer on YouTube a few times too to try and hide how many dislikes it's getting.

Seriously, what did they expect? It's a reskinned mobile game that's been outsourced to some random a Chinese developer for a franchise which has predominantly had a hardcore PC following for 20 years. I just don't get how they thought it could possibly go down well to hype a bloody mobile game like that.

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Re: Diablo Immortal

Post by Raid » Sat Nov 03, 2018 7:34 pm

Mantis wrote:
Sat Nov 03, 2018 7:26 pm
It's entirely down to Blizzard for misjudging their own consumers on this one
Frankly I think that's being generous, that Blizzard made a mistake and misjudged their audience. I'd argue that they knew exactly what kind of response this would get, and then they did it anyway. I can't imagine a company the size of Blizzard being quite so blind as to the expectations of their own convention's attendees. They make a huge fuss of the event, and every year the first question they ask in the keynote is how many have been before. They've been doing Blizzcon since before smartphones even existed, and they *must* know that the audience is predominantly a PC-playing one.

The whole thing feels very much like a successful company telling their customers what they should want, rather than listening to them.

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Re: Diablo Immortal

Post by Tichinde » Sat Nov 03, 2018 8:34 pm

Mantis wrote:
Sat Nov 03, 2018 7:26 pm
Reports that they've deleted and reuploaded the trailer on YouTube a few times too to try and hide how many dislikes it's getting.
330 likes, 14,000 dislikes on the Game Trailers channel upload.
I looked this morning and it was 178/7000.
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Re: Diablo Immortal

Post by Lee » Sat Nov 03, 2018 11:11 pm

Aye Blizzard knew how exactly this was going to be played out. But still went with it. It's the sort of thing you maybe put at a side event, it get backlash still but I doubt on this scale.

Also heard their up to 5 times now reploading and linking to a new video to keep the damage down low. Companies really don't understand the internet anymore :lol:
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Re: Diablo Immortal

Post by Alan » Sun Nov 04, 2018 3:40 am

I think a mobile Diablo could be good fun. Diablo is a shallow nothing game that takes zero thought or strategy. It’s a series that’s fun as a supplement to other things (podcasts/tv/talking to mates) but on its own I don’t really see how people can take it this seriously. Sounds ideal for a mobile game really. It’s the “how can there be colours in Diablo 3” all over again.

Same thing happened with C&C rivals which by accounts of people that have played it is a very good mobile game. This could be fun. I’d rather see a well done mobile game than D2HD, I’ve played enough D2 to last a lifetime, I’d prefer something different.
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Re: Diablo Immortal

Post by Raid » Sun Nov 04, 2018 9:19 am

For all the negativity, I've not really seen many people saying the game looks bad. I suspect that if Blizzard had announced this via an online trailer or something, the backlash wouldn't have been nearly as great.

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Re: Diablo Immortal

Post by DjchunKfunK » Sun Nov 04, 2018 9:52 am

There are always going to be people who instantly dislike the idea of a phone game considering the history of this stuff, but I think for the majority of people it wasn't the fact that the game is being made, but that they chose to announce it in the way they did. You also have the fact as stated earlier in this thread that Diablo fans have had the short end of the stick for a while now, Blizzard knows they are chomping at the bit for something new and instead they choose this as their closing reveal. If you are going to make a big deal out of Immortals, which they did by announcing it last, then you need to be prepared for the reaction.

One thing I think has been forgotten in the reaction by the media is that people played a fair amount of money to attend this event, this isn't some livestream that people just tuned into. Paying money gives people a sense of entitlement, so when something happens that they don't like the reaction is going to be magnified as people can feel cheated.

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