Diablo Immortal and its Not Being Diablo IV

Apparently someone asked in a Q&A whether the Diablo Immortal announcement was a joke, which I think is maybe a harsh way of voicing concerns.

But I do sort of get it - on the spectrum of gaming devices, Computers and Phones are on opposite ends. A PC (or Mac, but I get that I'm in the minority for playing games on one) gives you myriad options. Going to a console means reducing controls to the options you have in your hands, and while that has worked for a lot of games (Diablo III's console ports have been quite popular,) it would be hard to imagine something like World of Warcraft working with anything less than a keyboard and mouse. Phones take in further, such that your entire interaction with the game has to take place within a touch-screen interface. Having played a bit of Final Fantasy VII on my phone, I can tell you that it's not 100% intuitive.

Some games work great when they're designed for it, like Hearthstone, but if you were to compare that to, say, Magic the Gathering Online, you're dealing with a far simpler game that requires less precise player input.

And I think that's one of the major factors that is subverting enthusiasm for Blizzard's latest Diablo product.

I think the other, maybe biggest factor, is less about what it is than what it's not.

Diablo III came out a long time ago - I think six years. After Reaper of Souls and I guess the addition of the Necromancer class a bit later, the game has been in stagnation for years. Fans have been clamoring for Diablo IV, and the fact that this is the big Diablo announcement feels like a serious let-down after a perceived hyping-up for the title.

After Blizzard's post about managing expectations for Diablo announcements prior to Blizzcon, I thought that perhaps the announcement for Diablo IV was just being delayed a bit to maybe wait until it was in a more presentable place. But I think that if that were the case, I would have done something like the original WoW Classic announcement last year, where they said "this is happening, but we can't really say anything else yet." Giving Diablo fans something to look forward to would be good.

Now naturally, I think that the people working on Diablo Immortal felt that this would be that exciting news, and I don't want to make light of the major work they've put into the project. But I do think that Diablo players skew a little more hardcore and skeptical toward the mobile platform, which has a reputation for having underwhelming games with a mercenary attitude toward monetization. Blizzard has been pretty good about avoiding such practices - the fact that you can play Hearhstone or Heroes of the Storm pretty easily without dumping cash into them is a serious credit to Blizzard as a company - but for players who were hoping for Diablo as a franchise to go into greater detail and complexity, perhaps putting a little more RPG into the ARPG, this seems like a step in the opposite direction.

Now, I'm not nearly as invested in Diablo as I am in WoW, and so I don't think I felt this sting as much as the biggest Diablo fans did. But the reaction I'm seeing (and it's really anecdotal - there might be at on of people eager to play Diablo on their phones) suggests that this whole project and direction for the franchise is not really the right move. If there's actually a Diablo IV in the works, you could mitigate any worries about the mobile game (or at least most of them,) but right now I imagine a lot of people see it as a bait-and-switch.