What happened to continuing d2r development?

General Discussion
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I’ve rarely ever posted anything at all, as I rather spend my time playing the game than just talking about it (positive or negative). The last thing I want is for the one topic I make in 5 years to become adorned with fecal matter disguised as text.

This game as a whole (art, flavor, mechanics, itemization, class power separation, everything) is one of the best games blizzard ever created, and by far it’s best ARPG ever created. d3 and d4 don’t even come close to how deep the hook sinks in.

Diablo fans wanted d3 to EXPAND on the mechanics of d1-d2, NOT replace them. D2R promised, and for a couple years now, has delivered this expansion. The changes that have been introduced have been fairly conservative (with the exception of Mosaic being juuuuust a weee bit on the strong side, but I like that it is relatively balanced by being almost completely useless in PvP scenarios.), and I think they have been extremely positive for the game.

Many of my friends lost interest in the game as soon as season 5 was announced to have no changes. I was very bummed, and slightly concerned myself. I still played for the entirety of the season regardless, but I had both big hopes and big fears for additional developments in season 6. Continued development in season 6 would mean maybe only every other season would have no changes. I think that would have been just fine! But alas, here we are. Two entire seasons with absolutely zero development including bug fixes/adjustments, back to back.

I’m concerned. Will D2R ever see continued development again? The answer to that question remains to be seen, but with recent changes in tech companies and the inherent lack of structure for monetization, things are looking as bleak for the games future as Sanctuary is itself.

“Why did d3 and d4 have to spend millions in development on things d1 and d2 players didn’t care about, and at the same time completely rebuild everything the games offered those players?
Oh, I don’t know… Why does the wind blow? Why do things happen as they do in dreams?”

Okay, that was a little on the extreme side of the spectrum of the point I’m making, and kind-of a stretch to relate to a (mis)quote in the game. But, I tried. And I don’t think I’m alone in the sentiment.

Now, to be CONSTRUCTIVE. As I said before, I think introducing development and bug fixes every other season would be completely acceptable, and understandable to most players.
For monetization… there are a lot of modern methods that… dare I say, would OUTRIGHT MURDER the game entirely. I mean NOBODY would ever play it again.
Including:

  • microtransactions of any kind hosted by Blizzard.
  • Battlepass
  • desirable in-game currency that you can purchase from Blizzard directly. (ie: anything like the wow token)
  • any other 2-bit cheap-butt garbage that is only purchased by people who can’t see what a blatant insult to their intelligence it actually is. (800% VALUE!!!)

Yeah… those would be bad. Don’t do it.

One idea I’m not super fond of, but hey, it’s an idea, would be a VERY, and I mean VEEERRRRY cheap subscription fee exclusive to the online servers. $3/month, MAYBE up to $5/month, but you can still play single player if you don’t have a subscription.
Again, not my favorite idea, but at least there would be some sort of taxation system to provide compensation to developers for content and bug fixes.

Now, an idea I like MUCH more:
Why don’t we just go back to purchased Expansions like in YE OLDE TYMES? New $39.99 expansion with full content updates every 6-12 months, with a ladder reset 2-3 times per expansion.
I could be wrong, I’m not a game dev tech company, but given modern gaming news and content that I have consumed, I have a big feeling that this sort of reversion back to the old way games were sold would resonate with a large population of gamers, and especially with Diablo fans. I think this idea would set up a solid foundation for re-establishing the Diablo series as THE premier ARPG series in the long-term.

I think that about sums up my thoughts. I’m really sad to hear there will be no changes for this up-coming season. More-so than I was to hear about season 5.

Have I lost hope? Just a little bit. Still got plenty left in the reserves.
Am I quitting/switching to another ARPG? HELL NO. I might dabble with PoE/PoE2, but I’ll still mainly be trading and gearing my extensive non-ladder PvP character roster, as well as doing single-player hardcore play-throughs and play-throughs with friends and play-throughs with mods and team PvP and PvE challenges and team vs team PvE challenges and Classic hardcore play-throughs and hardcore PvP and…
etc!

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Answer:

Rob Gallerani is no longer with Blizzard as of a bit over a year ago. He was the head developer for D2:R.

Elaborating further, D2:R doesn’t make Blizzard any money, so they are in no rush to replace Gallerani, or his salary.

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I didn’t know about the Gallerani thing, but as general practice you should read an entire post before you form your response.
Obviously monetization is the primary factor, and I did address that.
I’d like to hear more ways that could provide the monetization required for the games development/staffing/leadership/everything while also not alienating the current extended player base.

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I cut to the chase straight to the facts of the matter. There was no need to read the wall of text you wrote. You posed a question with your topic, that is what I replied to.

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Man, you’re a real constructive force in this community, huh?
Yikes.

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Just because a game generates revenue or even more revenue doesn’t mean a company is going to use it to fund continual updates. WoW would literally still have a team of 1000’s if that were true. Not to mention that even if you were to increase the revenue this game generated it really wouldn’t amount to much, certainly not enough to get the game back on track. It is more likely in a phase where it would have to be someone’s pet project before anything was done for it. Sure there might be some weak/rushed efforts eventually if there is enough downtime, but nothing serious will be done for this game.

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I understand why there haven’t been changes.

I relay that knowledge to those that wonder why there aren’t any changes.

And they get mad at me about not reading their wall of text laundry list of changes they want for the game.

It’s OK, I get plenty of venting from people who want massive changes to this “remaster”. :smiley:

Money makes the world spin, my friend. Don’t ever doubt it.

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Agreed. I just see not doing anything for the game as such a mistake, and waste of potential. They spent much MUCH more than I imagine it would take to set this game up for the long-term success on the development of d4, and d4 can’t hold a candle to the long term potential this game has.
I struggle with the illogical reality that the short-term gains made by d4 are seen as more important than the much larger and more consistent gains that would be observed over time by d2r given it’s careful nurturing.

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What happened?
Diablo 4 happened, son. Diablo 4 happened.

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And right now, they are in no rush to make D2:R a better game to compete with that cash cow.

Again, money makes the world spin.

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Okay first for the potential: They’ve already used 100% of the potential by suckering people into buying D3/D4.

Second if you look at it from a greedy business standpoint and resource allocation. There is most likely nothing you can do, to make D2R a solid use of effort. Let’s say you add in a few things sure it might generate millions, but it will take a team some time to do this. Meanwhile they could be working on their next 60/80/100 dollar game which will generate billions. There just isn’t a ton of appeal. The only avenue where D2R will maybe be visited is perhaps a good patch a year before D5’s release.

D2 has long term potential sure, sure it might even outlast D3, but it still won’t have a fan base large enough to generate enough revenue to be noted.

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If you actually read the post, you’ll find the question RHETORICAL. Since you don’t read much, i’ll explain. That means you aren’t supposed to answer it. I already answered it.

Nobody is “mad” about your reply, I just don’t see WHY you would reply if you didn’t read the post. how could you possibly contribute to the conversation when you didn’t hear the conversation?

I guess my expectations were too high. My bad.

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OK… You said in the following reply to my first post that:

Which is a credible reason why there has been no continued development for D2:R.

So please, drop it.

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Accurately past-tense. The cow was already cashed.
My point is that they should have spent all that development money on giving the game mechanics and itemization that would provide actual longevity, or just put it towards the game that already has those things and use it to expand on them.
If this was d2r’s path from the get-go, I think we really could have had a consistent and long-lasting revenue more alike what we see with WoW.

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Maybe if someone come up with a new good d2r mod, like PD2 did back in the days, just maybe with that Microsoft will start caring about the game again? And, if someone also makes a mod and makes money at Microsoft’s expense, it could make the company open its eyes to the game’s potential as well. Or else, we can expect path of exile 2 to end end diablo 4. I doubt Microsoft or the current diablo team will add in diablo 4 the features which made Diablo the greatest ARPG of all times. (they even refuse to add simpler things like map overlay)

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There have been so many ARPGs in the past 20 years, but why isn’t there a 99.9% D2 clone? Why did we have to wait 20+ years for D2R to be released?

If you were to develop a new ARPG, and having seen D2 and all the others, what would you do? Make up a completely new, arbitrary, contrived skills system, combat mechanics, and classes, and hope that people will like it, or just copy D2 almost wholesale? I know what I would do.

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Torchlight? Right?

Also I’m sure there others.

Anything closer would probably fall under copyright infringement.

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Yup. Game dead, left for the botters. I had hoped that with D3 being done and in a good place for seasons, Matt might do something with D2R. Guess it died with Gallerani leaving. Sad, since there were obvious ambitions with the Season 1 livestream. Its a good game, with amazing updates through first season, but after heavy play the first year, and playing actual season updates in D3 and D4 since, find it hard to keep playing. Still might play a week of new ladder, if only to kill a week before 7 Rebirth drops.

Say what you will about 4, but Blizzard has been reacting and patching pretty quick. Season 3 started from being meh, I’ll play one character to me working on my second now.

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Diablo 4 happened. It is a gigantic fail of a game. Everyone I know hates it so much. They sink ALL their manpower into it, and it will not change a bit.

Now they ruin all their other games as well by trying to rescue D4.

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There are D2 mods though. Ones with plenty of content, QoL changes and even realms.