After having seen the feedback EA received after the C&C mobile announcement, closing the opening ceremony of Blizzcon with the reveal of a mobile game developed by a third party studio infamous for P2W mobile games (including but not limited to Diablo clones) is a clear indication of not being in touch with your audience.

Not saying there isn't room for Blizzard mobile games and if they decide to go the licensing direction instead of developing such games themselves all power to them. But the people attending at Blizzcon are clearly not the target demographic nor did they travel from all across the globe to see a Diablo mobile reveal.

I need to scratch my head each time I read posts that don't differentiate between critique of games and hostile threats to developers.
The former is absolutely fine, the latter is not acceptable as isn't to extrapolate from the crazy 1% to all critical voices in an attempt to shut down all discussion or to generate some click bait headlines.

No need to defend multi Billion Dollar company they got Lawyers for that. Just don't threat individual people, that's my 5 cent's on it. And for all the shit Diablo 3 was getting at launch i liked there payed auction house system never used it. But farmed a shit ton off gear with friends just to get into Inferno Difficulty, that was some off the most fun i had in a videogame, but then yeah only a small margin off players hit that difficulty cap (around 1%) the first few weeks so they changed the difficulty level and the loot dropsystem over the next months.

And i agree that the word entitle is dumb, the only thing you got right's on is a working product (at least in Europe).

Also why are YouTubers/games media blowing this thing up, as if a dude just landed on Mars? (slow news week?) Or just Click bait?

I think the best comparison you could make is the wrestle crowd at the first RAW after Wrestlemania and People going to Blizzcon, there both hardcore fans they love to hate the product but they can't stop buying stuff set company produce so a better tittle would be Blizzard fans are marks?

I'd beg to differ, when some of the arguments being used by those criticizing the fan responses is that a Diablo phone game is a perfectly fine thing end a Blizzcon keynote on.

I saw a bunch of people talk about this over the last few days all across the internet. People being angry at blizzard, gamers, the april fools guy, the 'don't you have phones' guy, people posting memes about the phone guy, multiple threads on this site where people want to talk about it. Sounds like it's definitly worthwhile to talk about when you want to capture the news of the week in gaming on a podcast.

There is no problem with Blizzard making a mobile Diablo, it totally makes sense and will bring in a huge audience.

The problem is that audience is not the one that goes to Blizzcon. They read the room so badly that it makes you wonder if they even know why people go to Blizzcon.

The backlash should be about the announcement, not the game.

Yeah, there are faults on all sides here. It's terribly tone-deaf and stupid for Blizzard to reveal this game at an event like Blizzcon. They did a terrible job of managing the message and setting expectations, and they've had to pay for that with this backlash. Everything I've heard about the devs making Diablo Immortal and the precedent set by other mobile games based on beloved franchises gives me serious doubts that this will be a game that any hardcore, invested player is going to be even remotely interested in.

But at the same time, the reaction has been too dramatic, as it always is on the internet, and it's clear that people feel like they were entitled to something and felt slapped in the face when they weren't given it. Entitlement is a product of people's investment, and of the tearing down of boundaries between creator and consumer as facilitated mainly by social media. Attacking individual developers or PR reps or whomever is never justified, and it's wrong to suddenly paint Blizzard as villains because of this one event. Some people will love Diablo Immortal. It's not the worst thing ever, but it is something that could have been managed, if not outright avoided.

I saw Austin Walker comment on this issue via Twitter, and I thought his take was pretty righteous (I mean that in a good way). He basically said that it's OK for there to be a new game in a franchise that isn't designed for the core audience of said franchise because there's so much media out there and so many other things we can be exploring and finding out about. I think this comment kinda tied in to some reactions to the beta of Fallout 76 as well. Many people brought up this announcement as being a perfect excuse to finally dive into Path of Exile.

Like I said, when I first read the tweets I thought he was spot-on, but then I thought about it and I think it's a little naive. There are loads of games that I wish I had the motivation and energy to play but can't bring myself to do so for various reasons - the sheer volume and weight of media becomes paralysing. But I would drop absolutely everything I was doing if an Elder Scrolls 6 was released tomorrow, because I'm invested in that world and that franchise and because Bethesda games are my jam. I know that there are other great RPG series out there, and I still need to play Witcher 3, but my love of Elder Scrolls is real, and it's powerful, and I think differently about it than I do other games and other series. I'm not the sort of person that's going to get butt-hurt and threaten people because Bethesda are releasing a bunch of games before TES6, but I can understand where people's feelings of entitlement and deeply entrenched enfranchisement comes from. Sadly, it comes from a place of love, but it too often manifests itself as something vile and hateful. But that's the internet for you.

Also Boogie has often been someone that I've wanted to like and respect, but this is a really bad take and a lot of the things he's said recently have rubbed me the wrong way. I think I'm done with trying to give him the time of day.

So I'm seeing a lot of people saying, "they shouldn't have hyped it up so much". Was I the only one who had ZERO expectations for a Diablo 4 announcement?

LoD was 11 years before D3, and anyone who follows Blizzcon would know that the keynote lineup has NOTHING to do with news priority. On the Bombcast they said, questioned "if we need a Blizzcon". I think this is the fundamental problem and why the backlash is as big as it is.

People liken Blizzcon to E3, which is absolutely not the case. It is more like a comicon or anime expo. Not everything out of Blizzcon has to be breaking news, in fact more often than not it is rather minor but they have it every year as an opportunity for the community to come together and appreciate everything blizzard.

Considering the rather positive response at the conference, besides that one complete ***** during the Q&A, I would say most people poo-pooing Immortal just read it on the internet and aren't as invested in Blizzard games as everyone else there and this is just "another" thing to be mad about.

Blizzard gave a heads up days (maybe weeks?) before the show to not expect any major Diablo announcements at the show. And then fans got all pissy because (SURPRISE) they didn't announce any major Diablo news at the show.

Some might argue, "hey- those people bought their tickets a long time ago and wouldn't have known about the lack of Diablo news until it was too late." My response to that is:

A.) That's on them for buying a ticket to show, coming up with their own vision of what they want out of it and then getting mad when it isn't that.

B.) Blizzcon has been declining in quality every year. Every year they make these minor announcements about new DLC, Expansions, characters, etc. being added to their game and I'm always wondering who the crazy people are that are splurging money to see those announcements live (no offense if you enjoy that stuff, but it's something I can easily consume through a live feed or even just blog posts).

So on the one hand, Blizzcon sucks and Blizzard should just stop having it since there's like 5-8 years between any major game release of theirs and fans seem confused on what can/will be shown at the event each year. On the other hand, the angry fans shouldn't have anticipated something they were never promised in the first place.

@big_denim said:

Not responding to you specfically my dude, but this is what I was referring to with the misunderstanding of what Blizzcon is. People spend tons of money to go to Comic-Con every year, but is the announcement of another 20-ish page book really a "major announcement"? I will admit I know little about comics and maybe stuff comes out of there that people think is big news, but that's exactly my point.

I am a HUGE blizzard fan, so anything NEW coming to the games I love is major to me, even if they are patches. It is different than just putting out an article with patch notes because we hear the developers discuss the content and even the back story. Hearing the background behind the designing of Ashe was fun to watch.

It's not for anyone, but I think people that aren't hugely invested in Blizzard have a misunderstanding of what Blizzcon is and who it is for and those are primarily the people up in arms over immortal.

Having a chinese company that clones other crappy pay to win games to make a Diablo game is just not dumb it soils the brand of what people love about the Diablo franchise. It's a cash grab and the people know it. I could care less if it's a mobile game or not but Activision clearly did not understand who they were marketing this game to. This game is not for the PC hardcore gamer and why they thought this would please them boggles my mind. There are like 5 other games just like Diablo immortal that play almost exactly just with a Diablo skin on it now. It was only a matter of time for Activision to do this to Diablo brand.

Blizzard shouldn’t have saved this kind an announcement for Blizzcon - or save any “new game” announcement for Blizzcon for that matter. If Blizzcon’s supposed to be an event for the fans, let the fans pay hundreds of dollars to join up as a community and learn more about the games they already love. If you want to advertise a new game, put out a trailer and a press release. Quit mixing the two.

A lot of this is "normal" gamer bullshit. But there are a few factors that I think contributed

First and foremost: People don't understand that this isn't the 90s anymore. You see this a lot with wrestling as well. People think the final event of a show is the highlight and the biggest thing ever. It isn't. The final event/scene is the falling action where you are expected to be posting to social media and doing selfies of yourself and your laptop screen to show everyone how much you love... Hearthstone? If I had to break down the Blizzcon keynote I would say Warcraft remastered was the "main event" and Hearthstone was the gentle reminder that people can take out their phones and go on social media to make sure everyone knows to tune in after the keynote to see what they specifically care about.

Warcraft was impaling the guy in the chainmail shirt. Hearthstone was brutally murdering Dan Hedaya and young Alyssa Milano giving the camera a thumbs up. And Diablo was the credits sequence.

That aside, the "I paid for this surprise, I am entitled to what I want" is kind of a symptom of how society has changed. These days, it is incredibly rare to be surprised. Everyone buys gifts based on amazon wishlists. We all research every restaurant in a twenty mile radius before going out to dinner. We whip out our phones to see if a movie or video game has an after credits sequence. People aren't paying for adventures anymore. They're paying for the ability to say "I was there".

Anecdotal, but a few coworkers/friends and myself went out to a fancy restaurant while on travel a few weeks back. We largely decided to go with the four course special meal. When the waitress came by we asked the important questions (allergies, basically) and then were content to be surprised (as per "the chef's" wishes). Whereas I could hear a fairly young couple one table over interrogating the waitress and insisting they need to know exactly what each course was and how much food was on the plate.

So for most of those people, they went to blizzcon assuming all the leaks were real. And when a lot of them either weren't (or more likely were rescheduled), they lost their shit. It was like a kid who convinced themselves that gift from grandma was their favorite video game and it was actually socks. But, because they've probably ever gotten socks instead of Brood War, they threw a temper tantrum. And then The Internet, as is its way, encouraged that by praising them for their "snarky" shiftfit.

And, for what its worth: I have a friend who went to blizzcon this year and the general atmosphere was "that sucks. Whatever". People go to that shit to have fun and hang out. The keynote announcements are just a bonus. But nobody wants to read about "Yeah, we totally talked about the consistency of Zerg blood for five hours" (I am not a hardcore enough Blizzard fan to understand the con).

----

Personally? Yeah, I'm disappointed. I wanted an expansion or at least a teaser of Diablo 4. But I also remember how the D3 teaser led to the controversy that spawned Whimseyshire. And I've already "pre-registered" for the mobile game to give it a go. I suspect I'll uninstall fairly quickly, but whatever.

If someone buys and accepts anything a company sells, they're labeled sheep blindly following a corporation. If someone complains or dislikes something a company sells, they're labeled entitled consumers. There's no way to please anyone, I guess.

Personally, I don't care at all about Diablo games, but I think there's no entitlement and people have fair reasons to complain about a reskinned game being sold as the next major step on a beloved franchise. I think context is extremely important to understand this situation and it's the context that explains why people reacted the way they did. However, I'll admit that there's some overreaction to it.

But, to be fair, there's also been an absurd overreaction from the other side, the one of people reacting to the original overreaction, generating some incredibly dumb and out of touch hot takes, specially coming from some members of the press.

I also wonder how all of these reactions would pan out if it was from some other company like EA, instead of Blizzard.

It's ridiculous for people to berate Blizzard for this, but it was also a dumb and crappy way to end Blizzcon. I can completely understand why people are disappointed, but I think there are appropriate ways to express that.

People need to stop treating game companies like they are their friends. They are companies selling products. The same thing seems to happen with Cdprojeckred too.

Part of that is blizzards fault. They often push that. and I do think saying you dont like a direction a company is going is fine.

Yes there is a but.....I think if you went in expecting something they didnt say they were gonna announce you can only getting so mad about it. In fact they stated before the show they were holding things off. It didnt stop the rabid fanbase though.

My other issue is they made it pretty clear that stuff is still coming. They arent even taking a team away to make immortal. "just put up a logo" is not what Blizzard does so that wasnt the answer either.

Boy, there are some takes in this thread. First off, just because the word "entitled" can be used in different contexts doesn't mean using it in this context is illegitimate. Yeah, the people we are talking about are entitled, they think they were owed something and they are wrong. Attaching your personal identity to announcements at a press conference (or video games in general imo) is a childish and silly thing to do. Did Blizzard eff up? yeah, I was pretty bummed that they didn't announce the thing I wanted but that doesn't translate into me going to Blizzard and being like "Why didn't you do the thing I wanted you to do instead of the thing you did?". It's okay to be bummed and it's okay to voice your bummed outedness but there's a difference between that and being shitty. You're entitled to have an opinion you're not entitled to get the thing you want and be shitty when you don't get it. If you think you are, that's cool but you're going to be critiqued and crying wolf that someone isn't respecting your opinion because they critiqued the way you expressed it kind of shows your hand at the game you're playing.

I identify with the people not happy about this announcement. Just don't be an a-hole about it and you aren't likely to be met with backlash. I don't think it's that complicated.

Remember about a month ago when Blizzard said it would be a big year for Diablo and people got super hype for 4, and then Blizzard said 4 wouldn't be at Blizzcon but they were working on it? Did they all think it was a trick so Blizz could spring a super awesome 4 trailer on them at the show?

IMO, it's pretty simple: If you don't like what you see here, don't buy the game. It's as simple as that. Dumping on the devs while at their major fan event is pointless and I personally think it's childish.

From my perspective, I actually did expect a mobile Diablo to be announced here, so I was interested in it. A lot more of my gaming is mobile these days because of being a single dad and not having a lot of time to plant myself in front of my PC.

I hope this game is great. I admit that I'm skeptical because I've played some of NetEase's other titles in this genre and they didn't hold me the way Diablo 1, 2, and 3 did.

Now I just want to go play D2: LoD and visit my ear collection. Ah, simpler times...

Anyone surprised by Blizzard jumping into the mobile market hasn't been paying attention. They have done more to normalize shitty business practices than most studios and like Rockstar and a couple others just get a pass for it. At the end of the day,If you don't want it, don't buy it. However, please realize the people jumping down Blizzards throats and the people calling those people names are basically the same damn thing so don't pat yourselves on the back too hard for being all grown up.

In a previous thread i said that if i was CEO of blizzard i would get all my valuable IP out on mobile in some way. The next day i wake up to the news that they are in fact doing that. Blizzard should just find a way to let this make sense to their audience. Final Fantasy fans are not angry at the mobile games because they know they still get their big MMO& mainline RPG's. They know that they don't have to pay attention to the storylines in those mobile games because it's mostly based around events from previous games. Or it has some slapdash multiverse storyline as a way to hop between all those older games. Same goes for the Gears fans that are not raging against Gears Pop. And the Bethesda fans against Blades. This is not an unsolvable unique problem. Other studio's had to deal with this already and succeeded way better than Blizzard did here.

You need to actually give the main audience something to work with, something to look forward to. You can't promise them big diablo news early in the year to get people excited to attend blizzcon & then only show a mobile game made by an external party with their mobile engine. A game that is not catered to those people at all. You want them to see these mobile games as the revenue streams that help Blizzard to make their big projects even bigger & more spectacular than ever before. I bet some of those people might actually quite like having this game on their phones as long as they don't have this extremely negative image of the product. This 'new future' where Blizzard only cares about the cold hard cash and focuses solely on the mobile marketplace. I can play Triple Triad & Final Fantasy Record Keeper on my phone and have 0 worries that it will be a thing that leads to square stepping out of the 'big games' industry.

It’s easy to say “if something doesn’t appeal to you, move on,” but I get it. Silent Hill HD collection was a bummer that still stings a little.

We all have our trivial things we get attached to. It’s good to get invested and care about nonsense here and there...to a point.

I get the impression that for some people, Blizzard is like red material for a bull at a Spanish bullfight. Is the most important issue in people's lives the announcement of a new game? My friends and I play different games we find together. Right now, we're passionate about the game Paladin, which we found in a review on https://www.yesgamers.com/diablo-2/runes. I love this game. When the Diablo update comes out, it will be his turn too. I don't dispute that unreasonable expectations can be frustrating for fans, but making a fuss about it is inappropriate.

...So does anyone actually care about this game anymore due to Activision Blizzard's various lawsuits including but not limited to unpayed overtime, discrimination, sexual assault, and the likely possibility of employees committing suicide?