The same applies to you if D4 or new game are NOT announced at Blizzcon.
The most likely scenario is D3X2. Anything outside that are wild speculations.
No, D2HD remake costs much much less energy than D3 xpac or D4, especially if you look at all the other HD remakes that have been made. It takes much, much less effort, and in November '15 they were hiring people for legacy games. A brand new game is likely to take them at least 5 years.
You also have "Lost Eternal" coming out.
A D2 remake woudnt sell big. It only attracts the old school players who played Diablo before.
Honestly even a remake would look like crap. The game is freaking old. Making a new game or an expansion of D3 would be so much better in general.
Better for the company and gamers.
A D2 HD can be cranked out pretty quick, and there was an ad out in late 2015 advertising for developers for "legacy games" so something may be in the works. The advantage of doing D2 HD is mostly very little development effort.
D4 might be a possibility, but it is pretty far away timewise is my guess. D3 expansion seems pretty unlikely to me, given Blizzard's experience with D3 sales falling off a cliff from Vanilla to Reaper of Souls, and also their history with SC2 with each expansion selling less than the previous one.
I really don't know if there is really room in the world for more MMORPGs than WoW. So many people have tried, and so many MMORPGs have failed. Even WoW has less than half the playerbase it had at its peak.
I certainly wouldn't be the one sticking my neck out in a games company to push out another MMORPG.
Though this might be true, my expectations are that we get 2 or 3 more large content patches likely due to them canceling/scrapping Xpac 2 in order to put more resources in their "New Diablo universe project".
That is what simply makes the most sense. I doubt they design D3 specific features and never implement them into the game. I for one would love a runeward system, an ability over paragon system, and difficulty that is not simply tied to Torment but actual playstyle. I feel all of these are staples of the Diablo universe, and were all part of a D3 xpac 2.
My guess, and there has been at least one report in Forbes that this is the case,is that we have already seen those content patches with Kanai's cube, the set dungeons, and all the new zones.
What was confirmed today on twitch? This:"BlizzCon will be really cool this year :-)" ...What confirmed that? Nothing.He could be announce everything, from starcraft, hots, every single game that blizzard have. He not confirmed nothing. Just some hype to make some money from the virtual tickets.
Basically, it's confirmation to the same folks that were convinced that Quin going to Gamescom was a sure sign that there was going to be a D3 expansion or a D4 announcement at Gamescom.
But that would likely require a major change in monster mechanics, game play, CC abilities, healing, etc. Essentially, the game would have to become more MMO like.
Which is why D4 is probably a better move than D3 expansion. So much really has to change to make the end game more compelling, and not just a +5 mainstat grindfest, as well as a Fish for GRs until you get that 1 in a 1000 GR so you can set a record. The endgame of D3 as it stands has all the fun of a slot machine, waiting for RNG payoff, while all the fun is in the early and mid game where there is still real progression in terms of gear and skills. There is a reason D3 is a ghost town a few weeks after the start of a season.
I agree with the whole idea of 'the higher the difficulty, the better the loot'.
Would be so nice to grind it out, starting at normal, going all the way to whatever they might call it in D4
Yeah, it really makes the D3 seasons somewhat dull and lifeless when you have all the loot you need in the first week or 2 of the season, and the rest of the season is just about better rolled versions of the same item. There really isn't the "I got this new piece of uberloot which will change my build" type of decision making in D3. You just farm for the items you need for the build you want, because they are all going to drop soon enough if you know how to farm, use kadala, and use the cube to craft.
I'm just not certain what would be "different" enough to warrant a whole new game. Sure, new classes and new story and new items. But those could be done in an expansion, right? Would the gameplay be different? Could they make it truly open world rather than 4-man (or 8-man) instances?
How about a synergistic skill tree with multiple different builds? What about an item system that didn't just spit out a couple cookie cutter builds based on OP sets? What about actually getting something interesting, like new skills or skill points from leveling instead of +5 mainstat? How about killing the infinite Paragon grind? What about new items that unlock from the highest levels of leveling?
There are plenty of interesting things they could do to make the endgame more flavorable, other than the endless quest for thousands of +5 mainstat levels.
No, D2HD remake costs much much less energy than D3 xpac or D4, especially if you look at all the other HD remakes that have been made. It takes much, much less effort, and in November '15 they were hiring people for legacy games. A brand new game is likely to take them at least 5 years.
Yeah, good luck on hoping for a D3 xpac or D4 release anytime soon.
D4 might be a possibility, but it is pretty far away timewise is my guess. D3 expansion seems pretty unlikely to me, given Blizzard's experience with D3 sales falling off a cliff from Vanilla to Reaper of Souls, and also their history with SC2 with each expansion selling less than the previous one.
I really don't know if there is really room in the world for more MMORPGs than WoW. So many people have tried, and so many MMORPGs have failed. Even WoW has less than half the playerbase it had at its peak.
I certainly wouldn't be the one sticking my neck out in a games company to push out another MMORPG.
There are plenty of interesting things they could do to make the endgame more flavorable, other than the endless quest for thousands of +5 mainstat levels.
Anyone who is expecting much other than D2 HD anytime soon is bound to be disappointed.
Funny how there is no announcement of new stuff at Gamescom when most of the D3 news this year was developers leaving the D3 team.