I honestly cannot understand how Blizzard thinks this is acceptable. I bought Diablo IV as a full game. When I bought it, the Alchemist was an actual gameplay system.
You had potions to upgrade, elixirs to craft, incense to craft, different materials to collect, recipes to unlock and actual reasons to interact with the Alchemist and gather resources throughout the world.
Now a significant part of that system has simply been removed. And I’m sorry, but “it’s a live service game” is not a valid excuse for this.
A live service game can rebalance mechanics. It can redesign systems. It can change progression. It can add new content. But completely removing gameplay systems that were part of the game people purchased is a completely different matter.
If Blizzard thought the old Alchemy system was badly designed, then redesign it.
There were dozens of ways to improve the system.
Instead, the solution was apparently: just delete it.
What makes this even worse is that the game still contains references to these systems. Players can encounter quests, tutorials, achievements and other content that was designed around mechanics that Blizzard has now removed.
For example, players have already reported that the “Convenient Crafts” trophy/achievement can become unobtainable because it requires crafting an Elixir and an Incense, two things that have been removed from the Alchemist.
And this isn’t some obscure feature that existed for two weeks during a temporary event. This was part of Diablo IV’s core crafting system.
I have played a lot of live-service games, and I genuinely find this trend extremely concerning.
The game I purchased should not gradually become a different product because the developer decides years later that certain systems are inconvenient to maintain.
The comparison that immediately comes to mind is Destiny 2, where Bungie also started removing substantial amounts of previously available content from the game. I remember thinking that was an extremely questionable direction at the time.
I never expected Diablo IV to start going down a similar path.
And before someone says “you didn’t buy ownership of the game”, I know. Obviously Blizzard retains the legal ability to modify an online game.
I’m talking about whether this is acceptable practice from a consumer and game-design perspective.
There is a huge difference between:
“We changed this system.”
and:
“We sold you this system, kept the game running for years, and then decided to remove it entirely.”
The first is normal live-service development.
The second is something I strongly disagree with.
I don’t want every old mechanic frozen forever. I want Blizzard to understand that removing existing content should not be treated as the default solution whenever a system needs improvement.
Bring the Alchemist back to being an actual gameplay system.
Rework it if necessary.
Make it better.
But don’t simply delete content that was part of the game people paid for and expect players to accept it because Diablo IV is a live-service game.
