Ok, fine, FINE, if nobody did it then I will be the one to talk about it, but keep in mind this mostly an excuse to post a lot of memes related to the event.
Introduction
So, first thing off, Blizzard, or since the two of December of 2007, Activision Blizzard Inc, is the actual owner of beloved and respected videogames series like Word of Warcraft, Starcraft and Diablo (as well as hundreds of tittles over the years of the Activision part, starting with Atari or even before to this day, but that’s for another story). You have to understand, in theory, both Activision and Blizzard work like separated studios, but they are owned by the same people; they have the same boss.
Brief history of Blizzard fanbase
Due to high quality and polished, big universes crafted often to feel alive in addition to the multiplayer experience, Blizzard found -quite- early success with Warcraft and Starcraft, mandatory refferences to the RTS genre and Diablo and Word of Warcraft as ARPG and MORPG each. This resulted in a very loyal (and a bunch of times, irrational) fanbase wich pretty much would buy and defend any practice the company would take.
Diablo 3
This said, Diablo 3 was a big miss due to several problems: you needed to be online to play, even for single player but the funny side was that crashes, lag and connection problems were everywhere, and they weren’t fixed until a good time passed. To add insult to the injury, the game wasn’t even close to the expectations Diablo 2 fans had, wich while being very high, were more reasonable than what Blizzard delivered.
To this, add an auctionhouse in game with real money to buy the most powerfull items and later be closed, infuriating this way both sides of the public (let alone people who spent real money there). While the end of the auctionhouse was probably positive, it just wasn’t justified in the first place the way it was implemented, if in any shape or form.
Last, but not least, they promised player versus player gamemodes, thing that the players never got (just a desolate area to “duel”) and many other mechanics and things that would make the game better ended up being just that, ideas.
Bad following
So, years after, Diablo 3 has disappointed even more, with a “tiny” expansion or big DLC, priced as a full game for a long time, uninspired season rewards and changes (if any changes at all) and a DLC of one extra character priced ridicolously high (being the nechromancer, one of the beloved classes in Diablo 2) wich had to be there in the first place.
Some games try to redeem themselves like No Man’s Sky has been doing for a while now. Diablo 3 was not one of them
Hype
Blizzard decided to start a big campaign of announcements, teasers and so on to let everybody know a big Diablo thing was coming, and would be announced in Blizzcon (where they save some big news for every game in order of justify the big ad that the convention is). Everyone though Diablo 4 was coming, or at the very least, a very important rework of the game in addittion of a big expansion.
Crash
Then they announce a new Diablo game, wich looks extremely close to other mobile ARPG tittles the company they worked with has created before, and will have new mechanics that “fans has been asking for years” (a few, details are not out yet). The public reaction, made entirely of pc dedicated players, was not happy for the following reasons:
-Blizzard not only fueled the “hype train” but kep this announcement to the end of the presentation, as if something great and big was coming.
-People sometimes travel from far away places to attend such event (on top of paying money to enter, justified with some pins, a bag and in-game rewards, but keep in mind the entry fee is mandatory.
-Blizzard is (or was) a company focused on pc mainly, sometimes only in pc depending on the tittle, so it’s obvious people there are not the target public for such product.
-The answers of people announcing the product implying the fans are just wrong, “don’t know what they want”(words used to say WoW fans are just nostalgic and dumb, wich, luckily, they ended up backing and throwing vanilla wow, only a decade later) or should purchase a very expensive phone.
-The overall lack of touch with the community the company has reached, not only ignoring above mentioned points in order to reach the asian market where gaming in phones is a very big market to exploit since the worker class is earning more money lately and therefore is huge demmand.
They basically asked Diablo fans to pay the entry fee and travel to say in their face they are no longer the public target of the product they love, not even enough to give them a tiny something in exchange, because new customers means more money
I will now add a video that show the general disaappointment and a ton of memes because I want to.
. However, I will be carefully crafting said Krokodil into suppositories. Wait, what… Krokodil suppositories you may ask yourself. It is because I will be plugging. After all, I have been taking it up the ass from Blizzard for 10+ years, why change that method now. So long and thanks for all the fish, Activision Blizzard!
