I know it has been a while since BlizzCon ended, but considering this years convention was met with some controversy, I wanted to share my opinion of some of the announcements revealed this year.
Do you not have phones?
So let us start out by addressing the elephant in the room, the announcement of the new Diablo Immortals game. So why do I point it out as being a elephant in the room? I mean, we finally get a new Diablo title since the third was revealed way back in 2008!
Could it be the new game was made for the mobile platform?!
Yikes.
Joking aside this was a major punch in the gut for fans of the franchise and the disappointment was not hard to detect among the crowd. And let’s not forget that the game itself is being developed by a third party company named NetEase based in China, who people have accused of making reskins of their games as a lot of elements such as the UI, is identical in most of their titles. It definetly will be interesting to see how much influence Blizzard will have in the development of the game.
Is it necessarily bad that Blizzard is developing a mobile game? Personally I would say no. The problem is the way the company handled the announcement, by treating a mobile game as being a new major title in the franchise, completely disregarding the platform Diablo was originally made for – the PC. It should not have come as a surprise for Blizzard that people reacted so negatively to the reveal, it almost feels insulting to open the convention by announcing a mobile game of one of Blizzard’s major flagship franchises.
To make matters even worse, it was recently revealed by Allen Adham – co-founder of Blizzard Entertainment, that the company is making a push for more mobile games.
[ss_quote cite=”Allen Adham” url=”https://screenrant.com/blizzard-mobile-games-developers/”]In terms of Blizzard’s approach to mobile gaming, many of us over the last years have shifted from playing primarily desktop to playing many hours on mobile. And we have many of our best developers now working on new mobile titles across all of our IPs. Some of them are with external partners, like Diablo Immortal. Many of them are being developed internally only.[/ss_quote]
As a long time Blizzard fan this makes me both sad and concerned for the future of the company. No one asked for mobile versions of their games and that is not just me saying this. Question remains why they are moving in the direction of creating mobile games, with inferior hardware and capabilities compared to PC and even consoles.
What is happening to you Blizzard?
A Silver-lining
In hindsight (and thankfully), not everything announced at this year’s BlizzCon was meet with skepticism. Blizzard also announced a remaster of one of their older titles – Warcraft III.
Not going to lie, I am very excited to play a modernized version of this classic. Having played a lot of Warcraft III when I was younger and knowing this game is getting a remaster is making me very nostalgic.
I am definitely looking forward to playing this on my PC hint hint.