Up until this point, I have felt that discussing Diablo: Immortal was completely fruitless. It has been roughly two months since the catastrophe that was the announcement at BlizzCon, and only now has the dust settled enough for me to feel comfortable giving my impressions of the game. To me, the story of Diablo: Immortal is not the story of a mobile game people don’t want. Rather, it’s the story of a shifting culture within Blizzard and how that has changed their public perception as a company.
Impressions
My impressions of the game start long before I ever got my hands on it, or even before the reveal announcement at the opening ceremony. For me, BlizzCon 2018 was my first BlizzCon. I’ve always watched form afar wishing that I could be there in person, and with rumors over the past couple years of a new Diablo project in the works, I knew I had to go this year.
Clearly, the announcement of Immortal was not what I wanted as a die-hard Diablo fan. I remember feeling incredibly disappointed after the opening ceremony ended, and it took me several hours to work up enough enthusiasm to go halfheartedly try the demo.
I picked the Monk out of the available three classes and jumped right in. The initial demo area was a tutorial with Deckard teaching you how to play. After defeating a wave of enemies, a new ability would unlock for you to use until your full build was available. Once the tutorial was complete, the game led you out into an open area akin to the Fields of Misery in Diablo 3.
It was then that I ran across two of my friends that I entered the demo area with, and it happened seamlessly. Loot in this area worked like it does in Diablo 3, with each of us having our own version of drops that nobody else could steal. After working through the large zone, and killing many rare packs along the way, you finally entered a dungeon that would queue you up with other nearby players. At the end of said dungeon was a difficult boss that had a set mechanics you needed to learn in order to survive.
I went into the demo wanting to hate this game as much as I could, but by the time I got to the end I realized I was having fun. Unlike Neinball’s experience with the controls, the game felt immediately accessible to me. Before I reached the half-way point in the demo, I found myself combing my abilities seamlessly. The gameplay was a much faster pace than I was expecting, and the game played better than I could have imagined.
As for performance, the game was running on some kind of Android device. The framerate felt very smooth, and the game looked great! I’m curious how the game will run on my iPhone X, especially with much more enemies on the screen then the demo allowed.
Overall, I really enjoyed my time with the game, and I can’t deny the fact that it was fun to play. Would I have preferred to have been playing a new Diablo game on PC? Of course, there is no denying that; however, that will happen in good time as Blizzard has continuously pointed out since BlizzCon. With that said, I’m looking forward to playing Immortal while I’m stuck in airports or indisposed in the bathroom.
A Shifting Blizzard
To me, the true story of Diablo: Immortal isn't just that it's a mobile game, but the story of a shifting culture within Blizzard. This concept has been reported on by Jason Schreier over on Kotaku and is further reinforced by the recent Heroes of the Storm announcement.
We know that Blizzard is currently working on multiple new mobile titles, and regardless of how you feel about mobile gaming, this appears to line up with a rising initiative within Blizzard to cut costs and ship more games. Whether this change is coming from within the company or as outside pressure from Activision is currently unclear.
Personally, I’m not against mobile gaming and I feel like it has a valuable place within the industry. For example, I have played roughly two hours of Stardew Valley on my phone each week over the past couple months (despite also owning the game on PC), simply because it’s a convenient place to enjoy a game that I love.
I have no doubt that Blizzard can, and will, make really great mobile games, but whether those games will be for me is yet to be seen. As a fan of Blizzard, I want more titles on the PC and I want to see a refocusing of their efforts in that space. I want to see Blizzard hold back games that aren’t ready because I would rather wait months, or even years, to have a finished game than get a game that was shipped to early.
Blizzard's culture and priorities seem to be in a state of flux, and I believe it’s possible for them to recover the good grace they have with fans. However, it is going to require a fairly significant change in trajectory from where they are currently heading. Diablo: Immortal is a Diablo game that some may love and others may hate, but it's not the future of franchise. The Diablo fan-base has their eyes set to the horizon for the next big Diablo game. Only time will tell if Blizzard is able to deliver on an experience their fans have been patiently waiting for.
My feelings on it are that the community was unnecessarily harsh because they were expecting a PC game and didn't get one.
It is like if you open your gift Christmas morning expecting some new video game and inside is a board game. It may be the best board game ever but if you got your hopes and built excitement about the video game, seeing that board game is such an instant let down that it is hard for you to give it a chance.
Same deal here. For me, I expected nothing so the game looked pretty damn awesome to me. Though I probably won't even play it because I'm not a huge mobile gaming fan. I have friends though, who will likely play it to death. As mobile games go it looks freaking amazing. Blizzard probably expected some disappointment but they likely genuinely thought they were revealing something really cool that they worked really hard on but that effort was completely invisible to the community because it couldn't see past disappointment.
Regardless though, the market will vote with its wallet. If the game is truly horrible, it won't make any money, Blizzard will learn its lesson and move on. I have a feeling Immortal is going to be really popular though and that 2 years from now most of the people having digital temper tantrums back in November will love it. The same thing happened with Hearthstone
Part of the issue is that we now see whats become of blizzard, or should i say Bli$$ard. There is zero chance they would have made diablo into a mobile game if it werent only to get quick profits. Whether this was influenced from activision or blizzard themselves i don't know, nor do i care. But this whole debacle shows that blizzard no longer care about their fans and their only goal is to make as much money as possible with as little risk as possible.
I have no problems believing that the thing about them having to spend less and release more games thats been leaked, is infact true
Blizzard is Activision's lapdog now and are completely out-of-touch with it's fanbase.
They totally deserve the backlash.
Your analogy is not 1:1 to what happened. A more correct analogy is that your parents, knowing how much you love video games, and who should have clued into your hatred and/or disinterest of board games, tease at you with subtle hints of awesome things to come, ask you to get your gaming area ready, and then when you open your gift on Xmas, are dumbfounded as to why you don't like the board game they got you, and after closer inspection, you realize that it is another board game with different logos and graphics.
So you waited almost 2 month to say that you like gameplay of D:I and will use it instead of magazines in your toilet. Gotcha
This is BS. How much did you get paid for this "opinion"? how can we trust DIabloFans.com with objectivity, if the integrity of people writing articles like this is highly questionable?
Is it possible that combat animations are fluid on a phone? yes of course.
Is it possible to have depth, endless replayability, and deep character development coupled with deep itemization on a phone? Hell No.
D3 failed in all those categories miserably, and you think a simplified Mobile-Phone version of D3 will do better? WTF?
If D2LOD was 100% Diablo, then D3 is 10% Diablo, and Reaper of Souls increased this significantly to about 11-12% Diablo. So at best D3 is 12% "Diablo", and Diablo Imortal will only make this worse.
Those ignorant and selfish pricks at Blizzard are ruining the Diablo Franchise. Wyatt Cheng might be a decent and polite human, but he is a piece of shit Diablo "Leader". Wyatt Cheng and many of those other "Diablo Devs" did not even know what Herald of Zakarum was, like WTF??!?!
No wonder D3 turned out like pure SHIT.
Don't get me wrong, "D3" is a great arcade Tunnel-Runner game, but its definitely NOT a Diablo game. D3 failed miserably, and anyone saying otherwise is not old or smart enough to have witnessed Diablo at it's peak with Lord of Destruction, the expansion to the best ARPG in the world called Diablo 2.
Ah. The brilliant argument of: "If you don't agree with me you are clearly too stupid to understand why I am obviously right."
D3 RoS beats LoD in every single way other than it lacks nostalgia glasses. I say that as someone who played thousands of hours of LoD and have also played oodles of RoS.
Everyone always talks about this amazing experience and replayability that was LoD yet that memory was always a mystery to me.
Here is what I remember: Spamming Baal runs over and over to get gear that allowed me to spam Baal runs faster. There was no end game and once you reached a certain gear level, everything was easy mode. Meanwhile, while great for its time, by today's standards the LoD quest/storyline was incredibly short and shallow. (Not that D3's story is anything special but it at least is far longer than D2). Balance in D2 sucked with most builds being utter piss compared to a few incredibly powerful ones. The runes that were needed to be most godlike were so incredibly rare that botting and duping was how most wealth came into the game and actual players spent more time in trade channels and later forums bartering their way to godlike instead of playing their way to godlike which, as aforementioned wasn't even useful because being godlike had no meaning. It just meant you could farm faster, there was no harder content to engage in and actually put your godliness to good use. Once you had reached epeen godly level, you did it again with another spec/class.
Is RoS perfect? Not by a long shot, it has some very deep flaws but in terms of quality of gameplay, story, and challenges to partake in at the highest gear level it leaves LoD hopelessly in the dust.
Gearing and gameplay in RoS is more complicated and more interesting than it ever was in LoD by the simple virtue of there being more active skills and more active skill buttons. In LoD I remember gameplay being something like this: teleport to mob, spam hammers until all is dead or cast battle orders then whirlwind until everything is dead. There were no rotations, there was no crowd control, or cooldowns. Resource management was trivial. The game was not complicated. Gearing was to a degree I suppose, but not more complicated than RoS which involves far more choice in variance of play through gearing.
All that said, come to think of it, it would be pretty easy to clone D2LoD, exactly as it was to phone without sacrificing any gameplay. It was a very simple game. Would only need a D-pad along with two action buttons, and a switch weapon button to accommodate 99% of builds in LoD. This doesn't make it bad, but to say LoD is 100% Diablo while RoS is like 12% Diablo is a bit strange when RoS offers virtually everything LoD had but with far more depth and breadth. If anything it is the other way around.
But hey, can't fight them rose tinted glasses!
Does D3 have runic words?
Does D3 have talizmans?
Does D3 even have weapon swapping button?
...so who have rose tinted glasses, again?
I think the biggest difference what d2 did right and d3 horrible wrong is itemization.
In almost any other aspect I would give d3 the upper hand. However they shouldve done so much more for the game (e.g. like GGG did with PoE) and it couldve been really a great game even for the masses...
But we know now why this never happened.
Thanks no mobile games for me. Not even some casual games while waiting, sh*t*ing, etc.
I think that this is a post for shut up ppl. I think this is a "paymate" from Blizzard.
Sorry all but i prefer to play diablo in my 26 inch pc screen instead of my 5,5 inch mobile screen. For me diablo inmortal isn't my diablo future, is only another game that i'll try to play some weeks and then uninstall it, like all in my mobile. As long as it's free or there are a hacked version, otherwise ill not try it because i do not pay for any mobile game, i have pc xDD
this is only my opinion, I'm sorry if there are people who feel offended
Q: Will there be rewards and unlocks for tour matching Reaper of Souls account?
As I am sure your blizzard/Playstation/Xbox account will be synced?
RoS offers virtually everything LoD had = it's having all that D2 have.
It's not.
And seeing your activity here and on other topics, people seeing you as a desperate fanatic D3 fanboy.
Let it go. Seriously.
The one and only reason that I responded to themortalgod02 was the fact, that he was totally wrong in his quoted sentence.
So nice try for accusing me for being a D2 fanboy.
Yes, we talk about every game of the series, but not in a fanboy way like you do, and also criticising D3, like you don't want to.
So yeah, "get used to the idea".