Yeah but the classic team doesn't have the resources to remake a game from scratch. They couldn't even remaster War3 correctly.
Also that link headline is misleading. They recovered enough source code to have a game, how do you think they made patches and an expansion. The thing it sounds like they didn't recover is the 3D models used to generate the sprites and backgrounds in the game. Note that Starcraft Remastered didn't have those either, they touched up everything like pixel art, but that would get pretty challenging on Diablo II with it having so many more characters and animation frames at larger sizes, also many of them being complex "paper dolls" composed of interchangable parts.
At the time of the D1 manual, when they wrote that Inarius' wings were stripped, I'll bet they had in mind typical feathered angel wings, not the energy tendrils that showed up in D2. I think there's an unused graphic of an angel statue that looks such. And of course the iconic angel on the mana globe was always the more traditional style. In other words I'm not sure they thought through how to tear out the energy wings and whether they want to keep that part of lore.
A summon is to call something from somewhere else. Lilith s more than the sum of the "ingredients," that would instead be manufacturing her.
Its possible/likely that she needs some kind of human host to tether herself to Sanctuary, just like all the Prime and Lesser evils had. However while host is shown to have some influence on their power (Diablo as Albrecth vs Aidan), its also clear that Diablo's power clearly surpassed any one host.
Lilith is causing the remaining humans to act worse and spreading chaos and corruption by here mere presence. She may also be summoning demons to help her out and that is causing massive collateral damage to humans. Some heroes might want to get rid of her for that reason alone, even if it isn't the best thing for humanity in the long run. Remember the lore panel stressed that feeling of how the good guys don't always win or they arrive a day late and a dollar short, whatever we accomplish in D4 is almost certainly going to have a huge failing or downside. Like maybe killing Lilith opens us up to worse aggressors in expansions.
The leak was pretty accurate but I don't get how they are doing male amazons. They either have to have it be the only single-gender class or else tweak the concept.
Demon Hunter is a much better concept for an archer IMO, is distinct from the elementalism of sorc/druid, and perfectly fits the grimdark setting. I'd hope they would push more in that direction rather than rehashing D2 just because.
Listening to Rhyker's interview with David Kim it doesn't sound like they are 100% on what the other two classes are yet. Although they might have things they are working on which could be part of that leak.
Gender parity seems way too big an issue for a class actually named Amazon. (Male amazons?) They might though be working with something very similar to Amazon concept. But I think its too much elemental magic with sorc and druid in, unless they are reworking that part too, at which point it is hardly an Amazon..
i posted this in another topic, but i think it suits this discussion:
Diablo 4 is indeed darker than 3, but still not scary...
we are still the equivalent to superheroes killing hordes like they are nothing,
we don't feel alone and afraid vs an unforgiving world
and because it's an mmo you'll actually see other "superheroes" all around you, making the world a joke.
Diablo 2 was the same once you gained some levels, frozen orbing and whirlwinding everything down. Or even a high level mage in D1 spamming chain lightning, teleporting around the levels instantly doing Laz runs. The horror aspect never really worked past the early game.
I'm a bit skeptical of D2 remaster because its going to be a huge asspain compared to say Starcraft.
Mainly its that rag doll/ body parts system used to build the player characters and some monsters. Arms, legs, heads, weapons etc. are all independent sprites, you can sort of see them looking at transparent shadows and seeing the odd overlaps in the player outline. This was done so they could cheaply make more diverse appearance for armor (there's only three armor classes for each body part, but many different combinations of body parts for a given base armor type.)
What made the whole system work for the artists is of course that they had everything modeled in 3D. They had their scripts isolate the different parts and render their animations in each direction as sprites, which would then be re-assembled in realtime by the game engine.
As I recall for Starcraft remaster, even though most of its graphics were also prerendered, the remaster team redrew them by hand. Lots of work but a bit more feasible when the only multi-part thing is like maybe the archon to make its transparency effects work. Still though you have to wonder why they didn't just start with the old models rendered at a higher resolution and maybe do a few touch-ups. And that was with a Blizzard South property. Chances seem higher that Blizzard North assets got lost in the studio closure, Brevik seems to think that the D2 source code is lost (making a significant remaster near impsosible alone), let alone their arcane models and rendering scripts to cut up the player parts while positioning them correctly.
In business-speak pillars are things you have several of. Diablo was raised on a PC pillar, then they added a console pillar, now they want a mobile pillar. All of them together figuratively prop up your brand as a whole, like pillars holding up a ceiling. PC and console can't be the "next big" pillar because with D3 sales they are already well established.
The thing that is worse than this game being mobile is that it isn't being developed in house, and doesn't appear original at all compared to this Netease's other offerings. The devs don't seem to speak English and there aren't a ton of Chinese speakers at Blizzard so the oversight has to be somewhat limited. This is the kind of mediocre product like Ghost and Warcraft Adventures that Blizzard used to cancel to keep their name clean, so that people would automatically buy Blizzard products because of the high quality of their brand. It may do very well in Asia but I doubt it is the right fit for even the mobile audience in the West and will be a stain on their name here going forward.
Anything that is not able to absolutely decimate path of exile in the pc-arpg genre would've been doomed to fail. As long as PoE is alive and kicking, there won't be a D4, or honestly, even a D3Exp2.
Blizzard knew this, so they went a completely different direction with mobile.
The problem is, mobile as it is is more tailored towards the asia market. It most certainly will be successful there. But having this in mind, announcing it with such a big ceremony was the big wrong decision here.
If they would've announced nothing (and just did this in some asia only thing....) or as a side note (like: oh btw we're bringing diablo to mobile, tailored for asia market, but you can play it outside of asia as well) it would've been better than this. everything would've been better than this.
This is the worst PR they could've ever gotten out of that. I feel really sad for blizzard, but the shitstorm which is brewing or already ongoing is self made, and thus deserved. But I still feel sad for them, because blizzard usually had great success with whatever they did. Or at least they hat like neutral reactions (HoTS being the only real thing which isn't a huge success I guess), and now they're getting such an overwhelmingly bad reaction from basically everywhere...
Whatever you are drinking dude , it must be some massively fucked up cocktail....
Yeah PoE doesn't have anywhere near the number of activated accounts as D3, and it's freaking free.
There may well be more active PoE players right now, but that's why Blizzard is busy making D4 instead of updating their 5 year old game.
If this was true, I'd feel really bad for the Torchlight MMO in the works. They said at one point they weren't actively working on one after 2 because Diablo 3 was really nailing that gaming niche and they didn't think they could compete. It would be the same thing all over again.
Seeing as D3 came out before T2, that sounds like code for "sales didn't meet our expectations."
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Yeah but the classic team doesn't have the resources to remake a game from scratch. They couldn't even remaster War3 correctly.
Also that link headline is misleading. They recovered enough source code to have a game, how do you think they made patches and an expansion. The thing it sounds like they didn't recover is the 3D models used to generate the sprites and backgrounds in the game. Note that Starcraft Remastered didn't have those either, they touched up everything like pixel art, but that would get pretty challenging on Diablo II with it having so many more characters and animation frames at larger sizes, also many of them being complex "paper dolls" composed of interchangable parts.
After Warforged its pretty clear that they aren't ready for a D2 remaster. A decent D1 remaster is probably all they could muster.
At the time of the D1 manual, when they wrote that Inarius' wings were stripped, I'll bet they had in mind typical feathered angel wings, not the energy tendrils that showed up in D2. I think there's an unused graphic of an angel statue that looks such. And of course the iconic angel on the mana globe was always the more traditional style. In other words I'm not sure they thought through how to tear out the energy wings and whether they want to keep that part of lore.
A summon is to call something from somewhere else. Lilith s more than the sum of the "ingredients," that would instead be manufacturing her.
Its possible/likely that she needs some kind of human host to tether herself to Sanctuary, just like all the Prime and Lesser evils had. However while host is shown to have some influence on their power (Diablo as Albrecth vs Aidan), its also clear that Diablo's power clearly surpassed any one host.
Lilith is causing the remaining humans to act worse and spreading chaos and corruption by here mere presence. She may also be summoning demons to help her out and that is causing massive collateral damage to humans. Some heroes might want to get rid of her for that reason alone, even if it isn't the best thing for humanity in the long run. Remember the lore panel stressed that feeling of how the good guys don't always win or they arrive a day late and a dollar short, whatever we accomplish in D4 is almost certainly going to have a huge failing or downside. Like maybe killing Lilith opens us up to worse aggressors in expansions.
Going with the "good guys don't always win" theme, I strongly suspect we do kill her, and then up regretting it in future expansions.
There is never "enough." Whatever limit you set, there will always be a market for more.
The leak was pretty accurate but I don't get how they are doing male amazons. They either have to have it be the only single-gender class or else tweak the concept.
Demon Hunter is a much better concept for an archer IMO, is distinct from the elementalism of sorc/druid, and perfectly fits the grimdark setting. I'd hope they would push more in that direction rather than rehashing D2 just because.
Because the guy says "save us, mother" and Lilith is not Lucion's mother.
This is a human/nephalem who is also a Triune member. Its unlikely to be anyone we know already.
The lore panel explicitly identified this guy as a Triune member.
Listening to Rhyker's interview with David Kim it doesn't sound like they are 100% on what the other two classes are yet. Although they might have things they are working on which could be part of that leak.
Gender parity seems way too big an issue for a class actually named Amazon. (Male amazons?) They might though be working with something very similar to Amazon concept. But I think its too much elemental magic with sorc and druid in, unless they are reworking that part too, at which point it is hardly an Amazon..
Diablo 2 was the same once you gained some levels, frozen orbing and whirlwinding everything down. Or even a high level mage in D1 spamming chain lightning, teleporting around the levels instantly doing Laz runs. The horror aspect never really worked past the early game.
I'm a bit skeptical of D2 remaster because its going to be a huge asspain compared to say Starcraft.
Mainly its that rag doll/ body parts system used to build the player characters and some monsters. Arms, legs, heads, weapons etc. are all independent sprites, you can sort of see them looking at transparent shadows and seeing the odd overlaps in the player outline. This was done so they could cheaply make more diverse appearance for armor (there's only three armor classes for each body part, but many different combinations of body parts for a given base armor type.)
What made the whole system work for the artists is of course that they had everything modeled in 3D. They had their scripts isolate the different parts and render their animations in each direction as sprites, which would then be re-assembled in realtime by the game engine.
As I recall for Starcraft remaster, even though most of its graphics were also prerendered, the remaster team redrew them by hand. Lots of work but a bit more feasible when the only multi-part thing is like maybe the archon to make its transparency effects work. Still though you have to wonder why they didn't just start with the old models rendered at a higher resolution and maybe do a few touch-ups. And that was with a Blizzard South property. Chances seem higher that Blizzard North assets got lost in the studio closure, Brevik seems to think that the D2 source code is lost (making a significant remaster near impsosible alone), let alone their arcane models and rendering scripts to cut up the player parts while positioning them correctly.
In business-speak pillars are things you have several of. Diablo was raised on a PC pillar, then they added a console pillar, now they want a mobile pillar. All of them together figuratively prop up your brand as a whole, like pillars holding up a ceiling. PC and console can't be the "next big" pillar because with D3 sales they are already well established.
The thing that is worse than this game being mobile is that it isn't being developed in house, and doesn't appear original at all compared to this Netease's other offerings. The devs don't seem to speak English and there aren't a ton of Chinese speakers at Blizzard so the oversight has to be somewhat limited. This is the kind of mediocre product like Ghost and Warcraft Adventures that Blizzard used to cancel to keep their name clean, so that people would automatically buy Blizzard products because of the high quality of their brand. It may do very well in Asia but I doubt it is the right fit for even the mobile audience in the West and will be a stain on their name here going forward.
Yeah PoE doesn't have anywhere near the number of activated accounts as D3, and it's freaking free.
There may well be more active PoE players right now, but that's why Blizzard is busy making D4 instead of updating their 5 year old game.
Seeing as D3 came out before T2, that sounds like code for "sales didn't meet our expectations."