According to sources close to Kotaku, Blizzcon didn't go exactly as planned for the Diablo team. Allegedly, they were going to announce that they were working on Diablo 4, but with no concrete vision in place, they pulled the announcement - hence the news post from the official Blizzard/Diablo site:
"One of those people told me that the Diablo team wasn’t yet ready to commit to an announcement, as Diablo 4 has changed drastically over the past four years and may continue to change further. (We’ve heard it’s gone through at least two different iterations under different directors.)" -- Jason Schreier, Kotaku
Blizzard has yet to comment on the story, so we cannot confirm whether the sources are correct. Although, if you do read the news post again, they do mention that they aren't ready to announce all of their plans at Blizzcon. Was this it? Hopefully we'll find out soon.
UPDATE
Kotaku has updated their original article with a correction: Blizzard did NOT plan on announcing Diablo 4 at Blizzcon this past weekend. Here's the statement that they received directly from Blizzard:
“First off we want to mention that we definitely hear our community. We generally don’t comment on rumors or speculation, but we can say that we didn’t pull any announcements from BlizzCon this year or have plans for other announcements. We do continue to have different teams working on multiple unannounced Diablo projects, and we look forward to announcing when the time is right.”
Their sources still confirm that they are working on Diablo 4, but that it still has a long road ahead.
If this is true, It is worse than any possible human reasoning , any sane person cannot find any excuse or logic in this.
How the fuck can you let happen the same shit AGAIN that happened to Diablo 3? If this is true, someone needs to sue Blizzard for being the most retarded crowd that ever walked this earth. How low of a lifeform can someone be to use the same excuse twice in a row for the same series of games and hope that the customers swallow the pill.
I mean, these guy's brains defy any kind of common sense and logic scientifically, biologicaly and physicaly possible in this universe.
There are no words in any language that can be thrown at these guys to describe the condition they are in.
I can't take this shit any more, it defies the very fabric of reality.
what really grinds my gears is the view some people have of us as a passionate community. blizzard always creates with love. d1, hellfire, d2, lord of destruction, diablo 3. they were beautifully crafted games with sometimes flawed mechanics or gameplay systems. but those are things you can change.
the detail and style of the game you create with love and passion cannot be redeemed when you fuck them up for the release and no blizzard game came as a dirty scoundrel. sure, WoW evolved quite a bit but the rest of the games were and are beautiful. and so we (at least I) play the games with the same love and passion. i know that i rode the WoW train since before release and i ride it until the end. same with the other games from them. that just shows that i care for these games and in the matter of diablo, for this franchise.
we (again, at least I) love diablo. and we (you know it, I at the very least) defend it with what is available.
if the team fucks it up, i don't buy it. if necessary, i downvote their videos on youtube. if further necessary, i engage actively in calling out silence between community, CM and dev. i wasn't particular silent on these boards for the last two years, but i don't really hate the game. i hate the people who understaff the diablo team and who do stuff like diablo immortal and now this whatthefuck of a d4 rumour!
how can they try to pin it on difficult development? how can they really try to suggest that they went through two other directors? how can other blizzard departments pump out content patch after content patch and keeping their respective games fresh and diablo isn't able to achieve any further greatness? they fucked up a whole 20th anniversary chance to unveil the redeeming diablo 4 or at least a bombastic XP2 for d3.
but now we came to this. it is really, really bad and i just hope that any higher ups realize made mistakes.
If D4 is indeed already 4 years in development and has changed drastically during this time, this means even worse news - its developers are same level clowns as those of D3.
I think the bigger news you all should be worried about here is It's been almost half a decade and they still can't figure out what kind of game it's going to be.
If by 'damage control' you mean inflict more? Sure. I can well believe it.
“First off we want to mention that we definitely hear our community. We generally don’t comment on rumors or speculation, but we can say that we didn’t pull any announcements from BlizzCon this year or have plans for other announcements. We do continue to have different teams working on multiple unannounced Diablo projects, and we look forward to announcing when the time is right.”
Oh that makes it actually worse Blizzard. A LOT worse. Thanks for showing how tone deaf you've became.
Here's the issue: they released D3 in 2012 and Reaper of Souls in 2014. Since then ALL they have done is port it to everything on the planet. Now it may take a lot of code to port a game but they cant sit there and say it takes the same amount of effort to port a game ad infinitum than create a story, engine, assets, voicework, etc...
When they announced the Necromancer they had an entire year before their expected release date, meaning they knew ahead of time that all they could accomplish in a year was just a class, no expansion no story. The only reason a AAA company would set the bar that low is because they know they don't have anyone on the task. Slowly we start to see new zones and mobs that were most likely part of a cancelled expansion, some of which were necromancer themed. They announce "season mechanics" and then revealed all a AAA company who reports record profits every year can muster is changing a spawn/reward value from 1-2. Meanwhile a F2P Indie Dev can release sweeping mechanics and double the acts in the same window.
Come 2018 we get yet another fkn port and an outsourced mobile game with reused assets. Clearly they gutted the Diablo team and have just put it on the back burner. Now their damage control is "we are working on stuff" which means absolutely nothing they could have just started today for all we know.
These absolute idiots that still talk about d4 are even more fking retarded than Blizzard mobile bullcrap game. We will get stuff for D3 in the future, d4 dont fking even exist.
And then, we doubled it!
This shit is so confusing community thinks that Blizzard working on D4 and so many expected to be announced on Blizzcon, but there was no info about new Diablo! Now Blizzard getting confused by community rumors, everyone buzzing about new game, but what was told only that multiple unannounced Diablo projects is on the work, nothing more...
They didn't said nothing about new game dunno whats going on with community and Diablo team, it just looks like there is huge miscommunication and Blizzard should do something fast explaining about these unannounced projects!
We get it they want money from mobile gamers and yes it's profitable, it will give them a lot of money, if they will use same business model as all mobile games do, I get it they will continue working with these unannounced projects using all the money they will get from Diablo immortal.
Community should calm down and Blizzard should be more open with us I still believe that we will get arpg that we hope to get one day, today it's okay I will try Immortal just for a new story (lore), but come on make it faster don't be so slow and closed in side with hints that confuses community feed us more we need more info!?
For fuck's sake, just sell the Diablo franchise to GGG or Crate Entertainment. You know, someone who actually has a clue how to make an excellent ARPG and has a great track record in that respect. Someone who doesn't need to change directors, twice, and take four years to figure out what a Diablo game is supposed to be. Diablo 2 changed a great deal over the course of its development, sure. A lot of people don't know but early news were showing D2 to be A LOT closer to what Diablo 1 was. But then they got a little more ambitious, expanded their vision, included outdoor areas and the whole thing pieced itself together rather logically. These...amateurs can't even figure out what a Diablo game should be like over the span of four years.
Do not under any circumstances fall for the idea that Blizzard has learned. They've been hiring a lot of people for "unannounced Diablo projects". Hiring = Diablo games will be developed by people who likely have no experience in developing ARPGs. Not with D3, certainly not with D2. In a way, they'll be like the D3 team. New and clueless. Their directors sure as hell won't know what to do, seeing as they have to change them so frequently. This ain't Blizzard North, these aren't the people with the track record of making D2 and LoD. These are rando guys just working under the Blizzard brand that happens to (unfortunately) own the Diablo franchise. They are not the legends of the industry that gave us the great games of the past, they're not the Blizzard we used to know. They needed to change directors, twice, because they're not building on the foundations of Diablo, they're trying to reinvent it, even though the foundations are right fucking there! Which means it won't feel like Diablo. That's why they don't already know what D4 should be, even though someone who developed D3 should fucking know what was wrong with that game and how to improve upon it. But they don't. They're still learning how to make an ARPG.
I got a feeling this is just a cover up. Seeing how the gaming media is trashing on us the upset fans. I can see a piece like this making its rounds to try to lesson the blowback
Why so searious... it's just a computer game?
I would wager there is internal struggle on how to monetize the game when it comes out.
My biggest concern with this ongoing sh*t show is that by the time D4 comes out the fanbase will already have been so aggrevated there will be nothing Blizz can do right and D4 is destined for failure.
"We do continue to have different teams working on multiple unannounced Diablo projects" <puke>
Read/heard that line way to many times now
What a great way to cover themselves by moving the goal posts almost indefinitely without having to show any proof.
Shocking that Kotaku lied to get clicks and views huh? Lmao what a joke.
BlizCrap so full of Shit, just trying to save the stock price
11 days without another news post, that's the hell we are in with Diablo. immortal dropped their stock 7% (big hint) then financials dropped it another 11% (huge hint) your not listening to your fan base. in a few videos its mentioned that Blizzcon could have been alright for Diablo if they had announced season 16 changes along immortal, or a Diablo 4 sign to give everyone hope. none of that, they are basically working on it but not actually going on the stand and saying so. Blizzard was a great company. The best thing in my mind of Blizzcon was Ashe for overwatch, it was announced very well with big daddy Jeff hinting at more characters and being playful with the announcement. he was having fun and had my whole attention which is great, the rest of it was dev's that didn't want to be there forced to talk about things they didn't want to talk about and the stuff they wanted to talk about they couldn't. the "you guys have phones right" blew me away at the arrogance of it not to mention they have no clue. My logic here is Hearthstone came out and made a'lot of money so they saw that and went, how can we do this again with one of our other franchises easily... shareholders over gamers, blizzard says its about gamers and they are gamers.. no your not, you were but not anymore. go back to the basics and make great games like you have done in the past, since you guys sold out to activision its all about shareholders. focus on games YOU (blizzard) want to make and the money for the shareholders will come. that goes for bungie as well bcaus forsaken fell on deaf ears, destiny 2 is alright but its a halo game re-skined. make a massive open world, scaling fireteam difficulty to how many are in the team, so you can play with more then 3 cause i play with 5, two always have to do something else. cut down on the damn planets! too many loading screens, i have m.2 ssds and it takes fooooorever to load into places especially crucible. sorry about bungie, its just a activision/blizzard rant. black ops 4 is a pig with different lipstick, gets old.