If you want D2R to receive attention, it needs to make money. I in no way support this, however I still recognize this might have to be a compromise endured for basic updating and bug fixes, or solid new content.
Average amount of users seems to be about 48,000. Let’s round down to 30,000. $1 per month leads to $360,000 per year. That’s enough to hire 2 devs for support.
Would you pay $1 per month for 2 eager/motivated Devs who, founded on community engagement and attentiveness, release 3 patches a year? Each Patch includes gradual changes to QoL, itemization, Act IV missing quests, etc. The Devs would stay on for 3 years, marking their Saga.
I’d say they owe all of us money to compensate for their continued false advertising and broken promises. The game is lacking basic features from over 2 decades ago and the chat doesn’t even work. Except for the graphics wrapper, about 80% of the changes have been negative, some extremely bad.
Bro if you say the average amount of users is 48k, I’d say about 30k of those are bots and botfarms, which have been quietly approved by Blizzard because as more and more people spend money on fishguts or use fishguts for items, more and more botters buy more and more keys.
We’ve given them probably close to 100 ideas to make money since launch. It’s very evident they don’t care about you, me, or D2R as they’ve chosen to side with the botters since very shortly after said launch.
No disrespect intended, but… Don’t you think they’d keep the servers clean if they cared about us? It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to ban bots. All you need is 3 people getting a fair wage and another 3 with rotating shifts incase the botters get cute. Maybe 3 people for rotating weekends, too.
This one single change which is getting rid of bots would bring back 10’s if not 100’s of thousands of players.
It would be a nominal investment by blizzard while they could code in the money generating things we’ve been discussing since before D2R launched, and they would easily recoup their money from that investment and gain additional money from the influx of people coming in.
People keep screaming whenever one of us mentions cosmetics, but are they really that happy with the current state of D2R? It’s not terrible, but it could be worlds better.
EDIT: Quick note: It used to be possible for them to monitor games, so I’m assuming it still is. That team of 9 would also be able to go into bot suspected games while not patrolling general chat.
It really doesn’t take a rocket scientist. I’m barely middle class, and I came up with that years ago in less than 5 minutes. WHILE DRUNK.
Back in the day, Warden was the tool they used to monitor players and what programs they were running while playing. It didn’t collect any personal data or anything, all it did was look to see what programs were running and if there were any programs accessing the memory registers of the game. If it detected a program that was known to be a cheat for the game and detected that it was reading the games memory registers, they’d be automatically banned a short while afterwards.
However, a service like Warden running on the computer is a potential security risk. If Warden were to ever be compromised without Blizzards knowledge, it could be used in malicious ways, so it was deemed “spyware”, and they can’t use it anymore. (Even though a plethora of antivirus products monitor your system in real time much in the same way Warden did, but they’re not labeled spyware)
They have probably done more and more to use pattern detections as a grounds for detecting botters, which honestly the use of machine learning/AI/player profiling is the best route to go. It’s completely non-invasive, and all the AI would need is your gameplay button inputs and time to profile your play history which you provide to them anyways while playing.
These threads have been done a billion times, all real d2r fans would say yes and many would happily pay MMO-like subscription costs if it meant proper updates on a consistent basis but the truth that most d2 fans cannot accept, is even if we each paid $20 a month, immortal makes more in 1 hour. Blizz is spending on money on things that make them more money. No matter how much money they dump into d2r, it isn’t gonna take off anywhere.
This is a 2nd gen corolla with a new coat of paint, they want to work on and sell you a new current generation corolla!
100% you’re right.
But here’s the thing. Any organization that respects their origins and where they came from would consider a project like diablo 2 resurrected to be a “labour of love”.
While they may not make the big bucks off it, diablo 2 is a really big part of their success story, and the reason diablo is as big as it is.
For the sake of heritage, they should at least have a couple of people maintaining the community, and focusing on bug fixes and improvements.
ALSO, last I saw there were about 8 million copies of d2r sold.
That is INCREDIBLY successful, and profitable, especially that no physical copies were manufactured or shipped.
They made money off of this. A LOT of money. We don’t need to pretend this is charity for them.
Blizzard suffers from “yeah, but what have you done for me lately?” Syndrome.
Try to go explain all that to their stakeholders and in their board meetings… open up any of activision blizzard financial year end statements. Google it, each year end doc is readily available on their main site. After the launch year of d2r, they have yet to discuss the impact of d2r on their financials. It makes no money for them, why would anyone in their business think it would be alright to spend even $1 more on this just to keep a small core fan base a little happier? Most of us were never going to buy immortal or d4 so where is the return for them?
The whole goal was to spark a little interest in the diablo series in preparation for immortal and d4 and grab a very good development team for their actual money making projects…they succeeded, next.
Please.
World of WarCraft is subscription based and it still has spam and bot problems, despite this.
And I’m certain its one of their primary incomes.
Keep in mind that if blizzard wanted the grey area removed it would be gone. It’s more likely that they get a cut from anyone who uses it. If you recall they tried it in Diablo 3 and it ruined itemization to the point that it became just a numbers game.
If you don’t know this some items go for what would equate to 40000 jah runes in Diablo2. So don’t go thinking that a legitimate way to trade that would exist. It’s true that pvp keeps this game alive. You can bet your bottom that if the government steps in and gos after the sale of digital goods like skins and in game items this games servers will be shut down. It’s only a matter of time before the cancel culture clowns set there sights on them. We have destiny counter strike and mobile games to thank for making it main stream. Get ready for the next phase of the grand plan.
yes, i would pay even 10$ per month if they would constantly improve the game.
you could still have the basic single player which requires no subscription but Ladders would need to be similar to PoE leagues (something different every time) to keep the subscribed player base engaged.
this way they could experiment with the game balance more, introduce or remove items/runeworlds and get quality feedback from the player base.
I really cannot understand people, who unironically want more nickel & diming in their games, or in the case of D2R, added in the first place. Dude if you’re bored, just do or play something else! D2R is not the kind of game that demands your undivided attention, you lose nothing by just dropping it for something else.
having played PoE that was probably the biggest hindrance to me, was that they had a million different league mechanics going on in a new league, it got over saturated and annoying. they needed to take out old league stuff while implementing new things. the game eventually had too many things going on and it was annoying AF if you ask me.
but i’m not worried. i don’t think anything else is happening with this game, unfortunately, since you know… they messed it up with d2:r a bit. needs some tweaking.
My best guess is there’s some sort of clause where the original developers get a portion of proceeds from any kind of monetization. Because it sure as hell makes zero sense to me why they didn’t monetize d2r to keep itself going, when Acti-Blizz is greedier than Scrooge.
There isn’t a ratio of money where it would ever make sense for them to go hard against botting or JSP.
I mean perhaps out there there is someone willing to pay 10 million per year to play D2R but they’d be the only person left. But ban waves and JSP members not existing would limit any funding by your subscripting far too much. And by the time you increase the subscription cost high enough to make up for the lost botters and JSP users you will have priced out the core user base that is left in monthly fees.
This pyrrhic loop of funding subpar games needs to stop. It’s just not a sustainable direction and the latest Diablo games are proof of that.
I refunded D4 out of principle. It’s not a good Diablo successor yet. Maybe in time it will be.
I disbelieve that games need to be live services to be profitable. Before WoW came along D2 was a very big financial success for the company. Diablo as an IP wouldn’t exist without D1/D2.
So a lot of mixed reviews on D4 are thanks to either D2 or D3 fans voicing their distaste for the game and the direction it went. D2 fans want better itemization and D3 fans want that too. So there are things both camps agree on.
D3 players probably won’t ever touch a game like D2 but that’s the thing they don’t need to. D3 is in its own bowl. So is D2. They both have niche audiences.
So how do you continue to provide content for smaller more niche audiences? You can cut a lot of stuff out. Namely the expensive cinematics, the expensive marketing campaigns (because your audience is niche anyway) and the expensive new Art.
What D3 and D2 fans just want is their game to receive regular updates to acts, bosses, game modes, etc. As the games continue to get new developer energy put into them their fans will come back and play the games. Now you just need to monetize those small updates.
The stash is still primordial by comparison to the pay-to-own stash of PoE. So small for-profit updates to the game could be how you deal with the developer cost. I’m fairly sure D2 fans would pay for new items, new acts, deeper crafting with the cube, skill rebalancing, new game modes, etc. Bundle that up into a seasonal expansion and maintain a legacy standard mode which is nothing new for the business.
They could continue to have the “big tent” ideology of giving everyone some of what they want but D4 is proof that doesn’t work. People are just different and want for different things. As a for-profit company you just have to find a way to work that.