The New Diablo
A large evil covered in money stares at you menacingly.
It’s almost sad that this post is following the Diablo Anniversary post, in which I reminisced about the timeless Diablo experience and how amazing it’s been to play and enjoy the franchise for so long. Roughly 2 weeks ago a new Diablo game released and it should have been an exciting thing, although now I wish I could erase it from my memory.
It will come with no surprise to anyone by now that I love Diablo games (namely, Diablo 2 and 3). However, I wasn’t too excited about Diablo Immortal. From the moment it was announced, there was this odd weirdness to everything around that game coming from Blizzard. They were so out of touch during the announcement - in what was most likely one of the worst Blizzcons ever. Fans were expecting news about Diablo 4 and instead another “mobile only” Diablo game was announced, AND when confronted with some booing the Game Director had the audacity to ask “You guys don’t have phones?” - a phrase that will be forever remember through memes, together with ‘red shirt guy’. Certain content creators, and I imagine other people, got to play Diablo Immortal during that Blizzcon, and eventually key content creators and people got access to the alpha. The game was streamed by many, lots of content was made, shedding a more positive light about the game. Until, after ~5 years in the making, Diablo Immortal released.
Diablo Immortal is blocked where I live, for good reasons, thus I used alt accounts and VPN in order to try it. It was enjoyable, as any other Diablo game, however from the start it felt like a worse version of Diablo 3. I mentioned this to several friends and they shrugged, as if that didn’t mean much. People still shit on Diablo 3, but there is a certain depth to the builds that was always interesting to me. Builds in Diablo 3 are mostly shaped around sets, but season themes made it so there was some room to experiment with things, and then it’s all on you and how you play that build (yes, there are decisions to be made during gameplay, unless you force ‘auto-cast’ techniques into your build - which I didn’t). In Diablo Immortal, builds are shaped around the gems, and while the gear is probably important, I believe most of the power comes from the high ranked gems. That wasn’t very interesting to me from the start, because I also knew what it meant: the game’s a gacha around gems. In any case, I kept on playing, probably for about ~8-10 hours, and reached level 35 only to discover more let downs.
As you progress and level up, more activities are unlocked in-game. Eventually, you get to do some form of raiding and bounties (and more things when you level further than 35), and bounties was one of the things that made me reach a stopping point. It seems that there was a bug of sorts on release day related to bounties though, as monsters needed to complete them were not spawning. I spent ~30 mins running around in empty maps without not being able to progress anything further, and when things did spawn they’d be killed by any of the other 5-6 players running around the place like me (it wasn’t very fun). But OK, I understood that was an issue and came back the next day to complete them, then realized the game pushes you to play with other players almost all the time - the pop-ups to join up with players doing same bounties as you were really annoying. There are Warbands (players with whom you play often) and Clans as well, which is great but I wasn’t keen on going around “making friends” in a game I was just trying out and unsure I’ll keep on playing.
Diablo Immortal as a game isn’t excellent, it’s somewhat fun but really mediocre in general. I love the Diablo lore and I could not push myself to play through the story to know what happened after Diablo 2 and before Diablo 3. It wasn’t worth my time, I guess, also knowing what it would take to raise the character to its maximum level. I didn’t find the skill system to be that good, or the gameplay to be as much attractive as Diablo 3. Even the activities to do in-game felt more like chores than having fun - I’ve been through that with other mobile games and I’m not a fan. The port to PC was one of the laziest ones I’ve seen as well, and as I mostly play games on PC it was just not a very good experience overall.
Most people out there, content creators included, keep repeating over and over that the game is fun to play, and I don’t get it. You’d need to be numb-minded to enjoy playing hours and hours in Diablo Immortal, a game in which all you have to do is tap skills on cool-down and chug potions (and yes, sometimes gameplay in other Diablo games is the same way, but it has many other things to compensate the numb-minded moments).
Note that I haven’t even touched the monetization topic, which is the most egregious part of the game. Many have covered this topic online and lots of details can be found around the predatory practices of the industry as a whole - main reason why it’s banned where I live. This was expected to some extent, but I could never imagined it would go so far.
I’ve never seen so many different monetization streams in one game before. There is a battle pass system (a free path, and a paid path), there is a 2-tiered paid subscription system, and several in-game shops (which use the different types of currencies found/bought in-game - there are 22 different currencies, by the way). Offers pop-up while levelling up and on a daily basis as well. It’s daunting. On top of this, after watching some content online, I found out about daily caps and hidden caps, and how the game mechanics itself push you towards the monetization, not only tempting but almost inducing you to spend money on the game. When you dig further into the details, it is disgusting how far it goes.
Sadly, this is nothing new or surprising in the industry. Many other game companies develop games this way, not only NetEase, and guess what, yes, it makes a lot of money. What’s increasingly bothersome is how Blizzard doubled-down when confronted with their initial statements around not being able to buy gear in-game. While it is technically not possible to buy gear in Diablo Immortal, you can actually buy gems which make your character stronger, but gems aren’t considered gear.
On top of that, they did boast on media platforms and interviews how well the game did during its release. They achieved all-time records for the franchise and the numbers of Diablo Immortal overshadowed the success made by Diablo games before (even though Diablo 3’s release was a nightmare and not really such a success, except when the game was somehow saved after Reaper of Souls expansion released, its auction house closed, seasons introduced, etc.).
And this is another sad reality: Diablo Immortal is the most successful game of the franchise BY FAR. It already made way more money on release than any other Diablo game, it’s been downloaded as many times as copies sold of Diablo 3 ever, and there are millions of people out there willing to spend an exuberant amount of money to top the ranks of this game. This type of success is bigger than any rant or review bomb any fandom would be able to create. I’d even say that ~95% of the players base doesn’t even know or care about predatory monetization practices, are not plugged to the community and group of content creators on YT or Reddit, and will continue to spend more and more money on the game. Twitch viewership for Diablo Immortal is also on a sky-high number compared to Diablo 2 or Diablo 3, it’s stupid.
All what I describe above put me off the franchise, and Blizzard games, so badly that I uninstalled Diablo 2 and Diablo 3 (obviously, I uninstalled Diablo Immortal after playing the 2nd day). I just can’t push myself to play any Diablo related game thinking that the company treats their player base as ignorant fools - and if there are ignorant fools having fun with the game out there: good for them!
Blizzard will not lose anything from me not playing their games, but I will spend my time on other games or activities in general that will give me back something more meaningful, instead of a sad feeling of emptiness. Next Fest has been ongoing in Steam, with a bunch of demos of games from developers that probably work really hard to get an actual fun experience out there for gamers in general. Pick one you like and support them instead of playing this new Diablo.
