DiabloFans

Quote from Demolition 13»

Why would anyone at Blizzard think it was a good idea to do anything with D2 while they have D4 underway? Even if it was possible? (It's not).'Hey, I know we're spending a lot of time and money on making the best D4 we can, but let's simultaneously distract ourselves and the fans from that work and siphon away some of our customer base for D4 by releasing a remastered D2!" "Genius! Here's a huge bonus for you!" Come on, it's like Apple working on the Iphone 12, but there's a hardcore group who just loved and old phone made by another manufacturer, so they're going to rehash a version of it just for them. Not gonna happen.

It could be argued that it's important to look at their products in terms of IPs and not individual installations. For instance, the Warcraft IP making money off a WoW expansion, WC3R (lol), a movie, microtransactions, swag/toys, etc., is all a win. All of it represents either an increase or a continuation of maintaining capital for them as a company.

Investors may or may not see it that way. They might want an individual thing to excel as well as it possibly can. But in the long term, I think this is also something that is considered at quarterly calls because it's more indicative of longterm success. Box sales are just a blip on the radar--if you base all your success on them, you'll just be chasing temporary highs.

This is why I argue BlizzCon and maintaining Blizzard IPs as a lifetime fan/family identity is more important than just selling the next big thing.

Another thing could be argued--I don't think a D2 remaster would ever have the staying power to upset the multi-million dollar box sales of a major new installment. If Blizzard did it, much like the SC remaster, it would probably be either a labor of love or just for existing fans. I don't think any of their remasters have turned huge quarterly profits on the scale of a major release.

It's a big name game that carries with it multiple generations of gamers. The outlets will all post the press kit assets. That's pretty much how it's always been.

When I want to see more than the same confirmed facts, I usually go to a fansite or reddit. That usually solves it for me since communities around a single topic usually filter this down to unique information/takes or topical reading.

But by all means go for it!

Quote from Jetrall»

Rebjorn - I think that's a fantastic idea and one that would truly benefit the community and the players. Thinking about this makes me wonder why Blizzard hasn't done something along these lines (though, I suppose I wouldn't consider them particularly supportive to mods, unlike other developers like Bethesda). If Blizzard is truly as profit-driven as it seems to us, that leads to the question: if there were a profitable way to do this, why haven't they done it?

Certainly, there is a degree of risk involved in greater support for modding / releasing source code, but I imagine the potential for profit could easily outweigh these risks, especially considering D2 is an older property. Perhaps, then, the potential for profit isn't as significant as we believe. I find it doubtful they haven't at least considered possibilities like this - so perhaps they have done analysis and found that the profits just aren't there for some reason (or the risks are larger than we have considered).

Maybe, for example, they are concerned about drawing attention away from their newer properties (i.e. D3, D4, Diablo Immortal, etc) by shifting player focus back onto D2 - cannibalizing some of their own audience. This could make sense, considering they are surely aware of the legacy of D2 compared to the somewhat lukewarm perception of D3, D4, and Immortal.

They also may simply prefer to maintain greater control over their properties - something which supporting modding on an older title might undermine. It's harder to justify DRM, paid DLC's, and micro transactions on a new title if you're actively supporting modding on an older (arguably, more popular) title. This higher level of control and propriety over games is, unfortunately, gaining in popularity. It may be less beneficial for players, but it is a safer bet for the developer and shareholders.

Ultimately, I think that your idea is great - arguably, better than Blizzard attempting a remaster / remake (as I agree that the fanbase and modders are more likely to put in the effort to crafting a more soulful and honest experience) - but it would likely require a major shift in Blizzard's direction... something which isn't likely to happen if they're content and profiting off of their current model.

In short, this is a great idea but, if Blizzard is as greedy as it seems, I doubt it will happen (sadly). Not enough control over the product, maybe too much doubt about losing audience from their newer games.

Quote from Jetrall»

EDIT: For what it's worth - I was able to 'resurrect' my account by sending a message to the forum's support email (support@diablofans.com) and asking for it to be connected to my Twitch account. It took a few weeks, but it allowed me to re-accedd my old account, even though I had never 'consented' to the account being carried over... I wonder if this is true for other old members as well?

Yeah, I had to do something similar to this to get my old account connected to Twitch.

Diablo3.com actually existed as a blog for a bit before it got the vbulletin treatment. I think mockery said that once. There was an odd subtle tension between mockery's site and... god, I forget that other one. It wasn't medievaldragon's, it was that older one. I think it was founded in 2001. It's still around and dated as hell, lol.

Welcome back Jetrall! Miss those days!

Quote from spoofdaboss»

If i use the staff to open the chamber..

but can't kill duriel

save and exit...

switch to nightmare mode.. maps reset...

go back to hell mode..

will i have lost the staff and duriels chamber will be closed? then will i have to find all the pieces again?

You don't need to change difficulties to reset the map. You just need to make a new game. Changing the difficulty doesn't affect your quest progress in any other difficulty--it's all tracked separately.

I'm pretty sure once you use it to open the chamber on any difficulty, it remains open regardless of if you've beaten Duriel. But it's been a while.

Quote from Bleu42»

D4 is quite literally years away. At least three is my guess, closer to 4 most likely. What we saw is pre alpha. 2020's blizzcon most likely will show us at least 1 of the remaining classes to be announced, probably both. 2021 Blizzcon will either show the 2nd, or just the rest of the systems they decided on. Might get some beta news after, and if we're lucky a launch sometime late in 2022. 4

Yeah I would bet money on both classes being playable next year at the con. I can't imagine them not having a playable class and having to develop itemization, combat, etc., with only three classes. I feel like it would be like the baseline for moving forward on many fronts.

Also agree with @WishesHeHadBeta on the timeline. Makes sense on many fronts.

It's also usually the case that what we see at BlizzCon is usually a bit behind what they actually have internally. For instance, the next wow raid area they showed off in one of the panels was already datamined showing a lot more progress before the event.

Quote from Sinclair»

The only reason we got shown Diablo 4 this early in the devolpment cycle was to avoid/erase the cluster fuck that was Blizzcon 2018 and it's mobile/microtransaction disaster again. As cool as the statue is it is in no way tied to the actual game's release.

It was going to be announced last year but they delayed it at last second. It would've been announced regardless, probably.

Quote from NoVaRoCk»

https://www.blizzardgearstore.com/stores/blizzard/de/product/diablo-lilith-24.5--premium-statue/281877?categories=collectibles%2Cstatues-%26-replicas

Blizzard offers Lilith Statue with a deliverydate of 30.8.2020

so we can hope for a near releasedate of the game itself??

They said the game isn't even Blizzard Soon(TM) soon, so...probably like 2022 like most are saying.

Welcome back

Quote from user-13216883»

Here is the camera zooming out during the boss fight with Belial. This feature has been in the game since 2012 and people are now talking about it like it's the most unbelievable thing the gaming industry has seen. People claiming D4 has a new engine is so fucking unbelievable and appalling to me that it makes me throw up by how easy it is for Blizzard to sell their lies.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQSd0LkzRcI&t=98

If you were responding to me right above you, I think you missed my point. It wasn't that it could zoom in, it was that once it was, you could see the models were much higher res/poly than D3. I think we all obviously know you can zoom in with D3

Yeah, the D3 models looking at them now look like paper dolls with low res paint and use the same like 5 animations for everything xD The difference is night and day. The cutscene graphics are the in-game graphics. My friends and I just kind of looked at each other when it started after the cinematic and almost shat ourselves. I think much of that detail is lost, though, when zooming out. You can zoom in with a keybind like in D3. Some effects like the dynamic weather/lighting/etc. are still obvious at that angle/distance, though.

This is just based on my play experience/my friends. Not sure what other people are seeing in videos online. I haven't really watched any.

Hi fren

Quote from WishesHeHadBeta»

Magistrate,

Ok that’s a huge relief. I guess I didn’t grasp that’s what the gameplay would be like after watching some YouTube gameplay videos, since I assumed that the low player numbers in a Demo wouldn’t actually reflect how it would be at release with a huge player base.

Yeah, you can pretty much just ignore total players. As you know, games like this don't group based on number of total players. Like in WoW, there's millions concurrently, but you only see like a couple in the zone, maybe half a dozen normally in a questing hub/town, a couple dozen in a city.

They scaled down that pretty big number of demo players for that tiny playable area--I'd assume you saw all those PCs in the demo area--pretty nicely. Besides the world boss and town I only saw 1 other person sometimes.

Quote from WishesHeHadBeta»

Magistrate,

I’m still not understanding how blizzard specifically said there will be hundreds of players in your “world”, yet somehow we won’t encounter them a lot when we’re out fighting monsters? How does that make sense? Like in WoW, certain “servers” have very high populations and you’ll constantly find it difficult to complete quests because of overcrowding. That’s specifically what I’m concerned about.

WishesHeHadBeta,

Because they're spread out over many dungeon instances and a huge open world, and phased according to the type of content being done. There's hundreds of dungeons, and that map is only one of, I want to say three. And we only saw a small portion of it. And it accommodated hundreds of demo players fine.

This is why they also said that the number of players you see depends on what you're doing. A huge world boss looks like a dozen or more and it zooms out to accommodate, but they also said these will be rare. Most of the content is scaled to only a couple players in your visible area.