Diablo IV - A Return To Darkness

Alright listen here, enough is enough you leave some for the rest of us

If you need a shiny new pc with an rtx 4090, I’ve been seeing give aways for those on twitter lately :)

Put me down for 2 bucks for the QT3 lottery pool YOU are going to buy tickets for this week. Thanks.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2022/12/08/diablo-iv-release-date-crunch/

—> gift link: https://wapo.st/3FDqGBR

he company is incentivizing employees to “crunch,” an industry term referring to working late evenings and weekends outside of regular work hours, by promising them perks some workers say are paltry.

The best-selling Diablo series has not seen a new mainline installment since 2012, and fans have been eagerly anticipating the latest. Developers, in turn, have been afraid of disappointing gamers, and in interviews, they described a beleaguered process of trying to meet a release date that feels unlikely without many hours of overtime or cut features. The release date has already shifted multiple times, they said.

Fifteen current and former Blizzard employees spoke to The Washington Post on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about company operations. They described a mounting sense of dissatisfaction and malaise among employees as they endured leadership changes at Activision Blizzard and on the “Diablo IV” team. The Diablo team has been losing talent for over a year, as employees look for more competitive wages and better work conditions elsewhere, according to employees. One group of about 20 developers working on one portion of the game saw about half of its members leave within a year, according to two former employees. Blizzard did not comment on attrition on the “Diablo IV” team.

Seems to date back to Mesopotamian mythology, according to wikipedia!

Re: crunch on Diablo IV.

Jeez, just let them delay it to Holiday 2023. It’s not like we’re not used to waiting a long time for Diablo games already, and you’ll burn through less employees and still make your money.

Crunching seems okay if it’s for a week or two to reach a major milestone. “Crunching” for months isn’t really crunching anymore, it’s just oppressive work hours.

But this isn’t Blizzard of old. “When it’s done” doesn’t exist anymore. If it did, Diablo 3 wouldn’t have launched in the state it did.

I really don’t want to derail this thread, or cause an argument, but I wanted to ask:

As someone who decided to end my WoW Classic subscription and ignore all other Blizzard content when they punished Blitzchung for speaking for human rights, has anything tangibly changed in the company since then or any other recent factors that should change my attitude towards them? (I genuinely don’t know as have been ignoring all Blizzard related headlines)

If Microsoft wins their case and acquires them it might mean a different work environment / management.

You jerks had to keep mentioning Grim Dawn, which is of course going to make me re-install it yet again.

/shakes fist.

I haven’t been keeping up with D4 news and just saw the preorder prices. Ouch. $70 for the base game, and $90 and $100 for the upper tiers, which add a few more cosmetics and season battle pass.

Thankfully the WoW mount is included with the base version. I love mounts and transmogs for WoW, but I’m not sure I’d really care too much for cosmetics in Diablo.

Has there been much info about the battle passes yet? I suppose their content and how much you’d need to play to achieve them would affect whether I go for a higher tier.

There will be a physical Collector’s Edition but no game included.

I’ve resigned myself and bought the $100 edition on pc. I might buy the base game on Xbox digital not sure.

I’ll wait for reviews, D3’s terrible launch and the $70 price point makes me too skittish to pre-order.

They had a bunch of sex crimes that they ignored.

Otherwise nothing changed. Technically the sex crimes were ongoing, we just didn’t know about them.

I know this isn’t the trend anymore, but for me the Diablo series and similar games are always a solo affair. I don’t need/want a battlepass in a single-player game. Especially if the base game is already $70. Sorry, I think a cloud just stepped on my lawn…

Thanks; really good article. Covered more than just the crunch hours, for hose who haven’t clicked yet.

I’m thinking that the battlepass goals will probably be mostly single player attainable like D3 season rewards, although I wouldn’t be surprised if there were a couple of PVP related rewards.

This is the only official info I’ve found regarding battlepass:

Yeah I SUPER don’t want this now. It sounds more like “what if Diablo, but monetized like FPS games as an ongoing service (Destiny, etc) ?”

Yeah that article has dampened my enthusiasm for it. We’ll see how good the reviews and impressions here are. I guess it will depend on how much they crunch these next few months.

And if they don’t, maybe they’ll improve it over time after release like with D3.

Each season will be released with a fresh new gameplay feature and questline that introduces new challenges, mysteries, and possibilities into the level-up experience.

This immediately brings to mind the way PoE does seasons, which is a huge positive, imo. Diablo III seasons aren’t all that different, one from the next, aside from which class sets were featured. Not every new PoE feature has been a winner, but since have been really fun, and the popular ones get added to the base game.

Not sure why anybody is unhappy (edit: with monetization) based on that article. They are quite clear that you can’t buy power and the shop is strictly for cosmetics. And you can earn premium currency on the free BP track. If they are going to be adding new gameplay wrinkles, more build options, more quests, etc. with each season, why not let people support that ongoing development by buying cosmetics?

The one thing they don’t say is whether you can but the premium track unlock with that currency. It may be possible to earn enough in one season too but the premium unlock, if so.