The thing with D3 is, it appealed to the lowest common denominator, in gaming this is of course, the uber casuals. This is one of the main reasons - though not the only one - it sold so well, but is also the reason why it’s such a watered down, boring mess.
I agree that DIII was designed around a different subset of game design. Diablo III seemed like it was trying to reach a whole different crowd of gamers that more than likely never played games in that period of time.
It’s unfortunate. If there is one good thing I can say about Diablo III is that it’s a good Gauntlet Dark Legacy throwback. This is something that I get from it from it’s console counterpart. Which honestly, was Diablo III’s strength.
Glad that Diablo II R is coming back to shine a light upon that time of gaming. I do need a game these days that actually has depth and not something that you just play passively or to simply pass the time. Diablo II was one of those games that may have been demanding, but that time you put into it felt rewarding. Almost meaningful in a sense.
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As an old D2 gamer that was very disappointed from the way D3 was build and played I have no faith and interest in D4.
D4 will be the next disappointment, cause Blizzard have no guys left that could make this game good.
So for me D2R is the new D4 and I will stay there even when D4 get released and fail (which I would bet on)
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Neither of those numbers are going to tell us how many D2R will sell. D3 appealed to a MUCH wider audience by dumbing down the game and making it for casuals who don’t want to think too much. Most of the people who bought D2 are in their 30-50’s, got kids and busy jobs and won’t make up the bulk of D2R by any means. It’ll be filled with mostly new people who maybe tried D3 but not necessarily. Since D3 kids won’t want to play without Ploot and unlimited respecs.
All that being said, i think D2R will sell several million. Nothing insane, but probably around what the original did.
idk about that, i mean I’m sure it will eventually but not for a couple years i don’t think.
in my opinion it will have a bigger launch than the original d2’s launch. because of more people and its already known to be a remake of one of the best games of all time, but the sales after launch i don’t think will rise as quickly or be maintained as long as the original did.
so i think it will take a while to pass the original.
I honestly think it would take an expansion using the same gaming mechanics and systems to do that. Some optional QoL things would be fine but not core mechanic changes.
The other option is temporary Seasonal themes -which they might do. It would be a temp change to the core mechanics but not carry over to the main game.
That would also generate interest maybe. Imagine, a ladder of charm inventory… Upsetting but also interesting?
I’m curious to know how much this is true. I feel there will be a significant showing from those who played the original D2. Perhaps not all of them will have time to grind it out, but will get the game to play casually for the nostalgia or even introduce their kids to the game.
Yep. And the cost is way lower than the original two without even taking inflation into account.
What is a dinner out? Movie for the family? Game you play on weekends of evenings after the kids go to bed instead of TV?
EDIT - I just spent the cost of the game on delivery sushi and chinese food because I had a really crappy day and was not up to cooking or even reheating. Several of my students had parents killed or injured and the person closest to me at the time was a first responder - and called me to tell me about the first plane in. I thought it was a tiny single engine thing. I had no TV. He said he was ok but was going in to bring out survivors. I drove to work…pentagon hit. I was then confused. Got to work and put on the news. Then the second plane hit. Note that he lived. They were outside assembling the team but the sign they were supposed to meet at was destroyed by one of the plane wheels. So they ran like hell, in a movie, as the debris chases you down teh road. Then came back and tried to get people out. But there were no people. There was only pink mist. Weeks of work turned into months into years. 20 years later they still have not IDed everyone. I did get a very personal tour of the site with commentary and yeah. Nothing the media says conveys the real thoughts. Those are too closely held.
I needed comfort food. I still need a hug.
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Significant? Sure. Majority? no. The vast majority will definitely be new players. There will be more people who played D3 playing D2R than D2. Why do you think we have so many people crying in the forums for ploot and talking about PoE? D3 kiddies. And thats just preorder whiners.
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I don’t know about VV and Blizzard doing an expansion. Perhaps maybe new zones or something? perhaps stuff added to Act IV? Act IV could use a bit more content to it. It’s by far the shortest act of the bunch.
I can see this. Especially for Ladder Hardcore. With every new ladder run could add some added modifier to make things fresh and unique.
If implemented this way, I could give charm inventory a chance. Like for Hardcore ladder for instance, there could be a skull type modifier, The skulls being from Halo that would give missions more varied gameplay results. As an example, a skull called “Black Eye” would have the player melee an enemy to gain shield recharge. Such example for hardcore ladder could be 50% decrease duration on shrines. Or all shrines are the ones that summon exclusive unique enemies.
No need to turn a fun topic into another ploot argument. I’m an original launch D2 player, and played D3 pretty heavy until RoS. I support it, though I would have rather had instanced loot, but not my first choice of updates I’m burning for. The vast majority will be people that have played D2 before. The majority of newer players will probably be on console.
I am constantly surprised by the amount of folks who were PC gamers when D2 released who now game console with their kids and family.
So much has changed in 20 years! Almost everyone has a PC of some sort, Consoles are everywhere, mobile gaming is a thing on phones.
I honestly enjoy seeing what the data brings in on these. It is not what it used to be.
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Its not a ploot argument. It’s JUST an observation based upon reading thousands of comments since announcement. You’re the one now turning it into a ploot debate. Going to ignore what you said since that wasn’t my intention. It was only that this forum is OBVIOUSLY filled with lots of D3 kids. And even more evidence that we will be dealing with more D3 players than OG D2 one’s on launch. D3 sold nearly 10x more copies than D2, and the kids who played D3 are still young.
if you combined all the consoles together? maybe. Does anyone have the console specific numbers for D3? Pretty sure the vast majority of copies for D3 was PC. Might be wrong. Controller play was fine, but it definitely felt awkward af and D2 does not work for console in a lot of ways.
its all about d2r. d4 does not matter
I apologize if you were not intending to do so, my response is that not all of the loot arguments were made by “D3 kiddies” but many of us that are OG D2 people support it as well, it was one of the aspects of D3 I did enjoy. I’d imagine most of those initial launch D3 purchasers, were D2 players.
It is hard to get a decent estimate of total sales of D2 since launch. VGchartz has D2 at 4 mil and LoD at 2 mil, with the following from wikipedia: As of June 29, 2001, Diablo II has sold 4 million copies worldwide.[82] Copies of Diablo: Battle Chest continue to be sold in retail stores, appearing on the NPD Group’s top 10 PC games sales list as recently as 2010.[83] Even more remarkably, the Diablo: Battle Chest was the 19th best-selling PC game of 2008[84] – a full eight years after the game’s initial release – and 11 million users still played Diablo II and StarCraft over Battle.net in 2010.[85]
D2 is also harder to nail, even if Blizzard would give us numbers due to how many bots run the game over the course of it’s life.
So basically, it’s really hard to tell how many people that have ONLY played D3, have showed interest in D2R.
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Don’t have numbers but I’m sure there are a mix of old school and new school advocating ploot. Not everyone who played original D2 wants to keep it exactly as is.
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Even more of interest, looking at VGchartz for D3 (who knows how accurate this thing really is) but:
D3 in total shipped 30 million across all platforms by Oct of 2020
PC sales of base game as of Jan 2018, was 12 million.
RoS 2019 3.7 mil on PC
No other data to show, but with this limited data, it could be inferred that the majority of people that bought D3, were console players. Hence, drawing a logistical conclusion that most D3 players, are probably purchasing D2R on console.
I feel like New World releasing at the same time may have some effect. They’re entirely different games, but there is some overlap in people who try MMOs and people who want to play D2 again. New World also has substantially more content for the same price.
I’m probably not going to get NW for now since I’ll want to play D2 first and NW seems a bit clunky to me, but I’m sure some people out there will try NW first.
Hmm according to Wikipedia, I believe the 20 million sold was just on PC. I saw the 30 million figure at another source but did not include it since it seemed to include console sales.
" List of best-selling PC games"
" This is a list of video games for personal computers (including those running Microsoft Windows, macOS, and Linux) that have sold or shipped at least one million copies. If a game was released on multiple platforms, the sales figures listed are only for PC sales. This list is not comprehensive because sales figures are not always publicly available."
Also unsure how accurate these numbers are.
12 + 3.7 = less then 15?