Does anyone think that Microsoft will do anything with D3? Or, are they mostly interested in the other franchises?
I doubt it. They face the same issues as Blizzard does, cost vs profit. Anything they do will likely not return the investment.
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I guess D3 will continue as planned. S29 will be the last “new content” patch and afterwards it goes into maintenance mode for a few years until the Servers get shutdown completely.
It is 11 years old by now. It’s released on all platforms. There is no further profit to be made.
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Maybe shut it down, but not for a long time yet.
Replace one evil garbage corporation that hates it’s customers and treats it’s employees badly with another even bigger one. Nothing will change
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That would be true regardless of who bought it, no one runs a for profit company that intentionally don’t make profit.
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Not immediately. But I’d buy a remastered version of Diablo 3 with improved textures, completely reworked numbers, reworked mechanics like area damage, reworked loot hunt model, reworked paragon, PC controller support, a new end game mode, 1-2 new classes (bard, druid) etc.
The game would have to undergo innovation to feel fresh. Expansion vs New Game, either release type, we’re reset to zero and embark on a brand new progression journey.
I’d love to see new concepts baked into the skill system. It’d be really cool to invest saved paragon points into our skills/runes to unlock new features, ie. Place 100 pts into the main Grenade skill to increases its explosion radius, I spend 250 pts to make Grenade Cache shoot a 4th grenade, and another 250 pts to get the 5th grenade. This method for handling paragon gives the player a sense of specialization.
If the existing paragon system were capped at 2000, something like this would intrigue a lot of players to return and try out their previous favorites many years later.
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Microsoft always chase the money, them doing something with D3 is a very far fetched idea.
Never knew that Microsoft was a company willing to lose money to show their goodwill to their audiences.
Almost everyone in Heroes of the Storm Reddit already assumed that Microsoft would save HoTS by resuming the HoTS development and esports. 
I still give credit where credit is due. Series X is impressive and supports Atmos!
This is a false statement. There were a couple people theorizing about this only.
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Yes, not to say that these companies don’t or can’t produce great things. But those are a result of the (usually) unappreciated and unknown employees in the background doing the hard work, often working against their under qualified leadership and project managers. The top leadership then takes all the credit and gets the bonuses. It has to said that such things wouldn’t happen nearly as much, if not for the resources available to large companies.
Microsoft used to use the employee hostile practice of stack ranking. I’m sure they’re not the greatest place to be these days either
Don’t sugar-coat it. How do you really feel 
This is common all over the place, to be fair. Anecdote warning: Years ago, I discovered something that would have caused a huge campaign for our company and saved us hundreds of thousands of dollars. My immediate boss reported out to top management in an email “I discovered…” and he got huge praise for it.
Bill Gates initiative?
I would like to see some more TLC to D3. There is no longer major stuff to tackle with this game.
I understand. However, they could make some small tweaks and then add a couple monetization features.
- sell extra character slots
- sell extra armory slots
- sell extra stash storage
If they felt ambitious, they could drop a couple new classes to play. That would sell like hotcakes at a festival.
…all that said, D3 is EOL. Outdated game engine; release of a successor (even if only in name lineage). They’re in panic mode with D4 right now anyway. They wouldn’t suddenly try to divert everyone’s attention back to this game.
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I’d love a Diablo 3 “Ressurected”
Add the Druid and maybe Blood Knight.
Some more rebalancing and polishing and of course modern graphics.
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They’ll either add some surface monetization or eventually scrap it entirely.
I am not sure why people think the servers will shutdown, D2R is 23 years old and the servers still run.
MSFT has a history of loving niche games and communities. It is already starting to surface, but D3 sold far more copies than D2/D2R ever will… at some point there will be a D3 remaster. Maybe not for 10+ years, but it will happen and it will get more realistic graphics.
The only way this won’t happen is if D4’s endgame becomes D3’s, because D3 is now showing it filled needs that blizzard wasn’t aware of.
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this is good advice but im just posting that.
This.
The advantage that D3 on PC has is that:
- D2 servers are still running. We would see D2 servers go down before D3’s will.
- it has no offline mode so shutting off the server would mean killing the game to all players who bought it (irrespective of whether they still play it or not)
- D3 on consoles has a higher chance of having their servers shut off. It supports offline play, and it relies on the console maker’s servers… not the first time Sony or MS has discontinued online mode support for games on their consoles (a toast to Resistance 2’s online co-op mode).
As for MS starting up development of content for D3 again… very doubtful. The game is at end of life. Yes, D2R gets new content but it’s essentially a whole new game… the original D2 and LOD client is untouched. They released D2R as a new platform for creating content on and we’d need to see the same done for D3 in order to get new content. Probably a Diablo 3: Reimagined where it has the dark gritty graphics of D2 and D4. I don’t particularly care for the grittier graphics but that would probably be the biggest selling point for a D3R.
But under MS’ control, I would expect to see something like the Halo: Master Chief Collection for Diablo probably in 10-15yrs time… D1 + Hellfire, D2R, D3: RoS, DI and D4 content all bundled into one package. And then, like how Halo MCC gives players more control over multiplay, I’d like such a Diablo package to give greater control over seasonal content.
For D3, it would be interesting if we could create NS characters and turn on specific seasonal themes for theme and the features for that theme would only apply to your game instance (i.e. you can start up a new Wizard with the Altar theme whilst your mate can start up a Barb with the Angelic Crucible theme and make an effective zdps WW barb). There can be specific solo LBs for each seasonal theme.
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Because Microsoft Doesn’t operate like Blizzard. They have traditionally shut off support for old platforms and games to force people to new ones. Then they sell you an updated version of a game that plays nothing like the old one.
I’m still waiting for my update of Freelancer 
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Nope.
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