I fully expect this message to be screaming in the abyss. I don’t anticipate any grand change, or even from anyone from Blizzard to read it.
I’ve played D3 since the PS3 era. I hadn’t played any Diablo games before but I was familiar with Blizzard through WoW and even StarCraft, both of which I’ve had a long history with personally. Recently I was gifted a copy of the next expansion, so (for now) I’m still playing that. D3 for whatever reason sucked me in. I definitely don’t have as many hours as others (I’ve only got around 700 hours registered on PlayStation) but I enjoyed it. There were some quirks, but ultimately it became a very solid game.
I’m not going to get into Diablo Immortal’s monetization scheme, or Diablo 4 being $70 and still charging free-to-play prices on digital currency. Instead, I’m going to be uninstalling Diablo 3, and never looking back. It isn’t the gameplay loop, or the art style, or anything like that. I’m grateful for all of the additions made over the years.
But for something as basic as a confirmation that features were seasonal only, after leaving up blatant misinformation concerning the upcoming patch, and for all the ambiguity concerning whether the Rites of Sanctuary and Visions of Enmity were seasonal, I can’t for the life of me figure out why. Not only did Pez acknowledge (even if vaguely) that these features were coming to nonseason mode back in August, the initial page I reviewed appeared to support the idea that that features were coming to Nonseason.
Now, I’m a dev myself. I get that there are instances where stuff doesn’t get switched on properly, or maybe it was supposed to come out on Friday for NS mode, or something. But then the Twitter thread was replied to, and the same person that seemingly confirmed these NS changes backtracks hard enough to break an ankle. Why did it take four months and a call-out to get clarification? Why was that clarification then posted to the trash heap of the Internet, where people without a Twitter account cannot even see it? Why did I have to find official clarification from a Twitter screenshot posted by someone else on the official forums?
I know those questions will go unanswered by any Blizzard rep. I fully expect management to do nothing, wait for this to blow over, then ignore it entirely and keep pushing premium currencies on Diablo 4 and Diablo “Don’t you people have phones” Immortal. My only question that I actually want to try to find an answer for is this:
Is this debacle reflective of the Diablo team, or is this same level of communication the norm across all Blizzard products? The reason I ask is because if I went through this with WoW, I would drop it in a heartbeat. I would have no qualms moving back to FFXIV, and bringing my friend group there if that’s the case.
A public acknowledgement of this by Blizzard would go a long way for a lot of other people, not just me, but it feels like another case of just ignoring this problem until it goes away. To reiterate, I’m definitely not expecting anything to come from a simple forum post, but it does feel better getting it all out at least.
So long, Diablo franchise, and thanks for all the fish.