The release of Diablo II Remastered in its current state was borderline unacceptable. Before I go on to discuss some of the issues with the game and my input on the situation I just want to say that there are employees who did an amazing job on certain aspects of the game in which a lot of these issues are out of their control. This game has given a lot of the user base an appearance of a cash grab instead of a nostalgic experience of playing a game from their past. I have never played a modernized game that has experienced so many consistent issues released from a major game development company.
With that being said, some of the current issues are as follows:
- Consistent game crashing
- Bug with linking items where the items linked will show a previous linked item when clicked.
- Extremely inefficient chat system
- Not properly being able to control + Left click to move items seamlessly between stash and inventory. There appears that when holding CTRL down and left clicking it will select the item instead of moving it while CTRL is held down. This has been tested amongst myself and friends, the issue is CTRL + left mouse click is inconsistent.
- Periodically not able to create or join games.
- Items disappearing (could be related to maintenance on oct 09, 2021)
- Progress rollbacks (could also be related to maintenance)
- Consistent server connectivity issues (giving the appearance all characters are missing)
- Hellforge quest not properly dropping item.
- Animation glitches with the use of certain items
- Game freezing
- Audio issue where users will lose all sound temporarily in game
Now here would be some of the questions I would ask to get a better understanding of what is going on.
*How are there this many issues present in a game on production release?
*Would you consider D2 Remastered to have been rushed?
*Was there adequate time for testing?
*Would it have been worth it to wait for more thorough testing before production release?
Now with that being said I believe we can take the release of this game as a valuable lesson and learn from the mistakes. Quality control is extremely important and should not be overlooked. Not only does this reflect poorly on the company but has an everlasting impact on their legacy which in turn will dwindle profits more and more. When I used to think of blizzard games the first thing that came to my mind was “quality first”. If it was a blizzard game I knew it was going to be a game with the highest quality and attention to detail emphasized. Unfortunately, from my personal opinion, the “quality first” impression that blizzard once gave is gone. The appearance is that these new releases are just cash grabs for immediate profitable gains willing to sacrifice long term profits by diminishing the trust and expectations of the customer.
I’m by no means saying that this is applicable to everyone within blizzard. But there needs to be more of an emphasis on quality control before a mishap like this happens again. This is the first time in a while that I have personally regretted pre-ordering a blizzard game and will be hesitant to do so in the future. It is also our responsibility as the customer to hold the company accountable for poor quality. Next time you think about pre-ordering a game I want you to reflect on games such as WC3 remastered, D2 remastered, etc. Was this type of “quality” worth your investment or were you expecting a higher standard? We need to hold Blizzard/Activision to a higher standard, and until that standard meets customer expectations I will not be pre-ordering any games from this company anymore.