It’s not looking good with the D4 dev team dodging questions about future expansion development in recent interviews, especially after they said that the game would get annual expansions and quarterly seasons last year. What does “the next era of the live service” even mean? It could be anything.
If they are following the D3:RoS route, seasons need to be way bigger. None of the 5 seasons of the base game added any new areas on the map to explore. If they can’t get the funding for more expansions, it would be nice to at least revisit some of the more iconic locations like Tristram and Mount Arreat. Maybe even get Diablo as a seasonal boss.
The modern game development landscape is really bad with projects being halted for seemingly no reason.
We don’t know if VoH is the final expansion. And it is smart on the Dev’s part not to say much if anything on future expansions because things change all the time. They have learned what happens when they reveal future plans, But then changes are made and the rage begins towards them.
Imagine they never do a second extension and the game never gets a paladin! Haha
Anyways I am sure they said 2 expacs are being worked on at the same time. Probably expac 2 is already shaping up internally. Anything more than that though…
That was more than a year ago. Now they’re being a lot more sheepish when talking about future development plans, which doesn’t bode well. It’s very possible that Microsoft is moving resources towards the development of D5 already and relegating future D4 content entirely to seasons.
It’s also possible Microsoft is doing nothing at all. It is not uncommon that, After an acquisition like this, That the buyer (Microsoft) Allows the acquired company (Blizzard) to maintain autonomy.
They fired more than 2000 people, appointed a new president, cancelled several projects and allocated more resources towards the development of mobile games within Blizzard’s franchises.
Edit: and there are rumors that they are going to fire 650 more people next month.
Much like Diablo 3 , the Blizzard devs plan on working hard on Diablo 4 for the long haul, so long as there are players out there interested in the title. While they can’t predict the future, Fergusson explained that Blizzard will “support the game for years to come, whether through seasons or expansions and those sorts of things.” We’re already seeing the team’s dedication to making Diablo 4 a game in it for the long run too, particularly through Blizzard’s attempt at constantly improving and evolving the seasons and introducing expansions.
Oh yeah, actually you jogged my memory. Mike Ybarra’s departure was almost under the radar for me. Idk the circumstances or reasons.
Notable, now that I’m remembering things… a AAA survival game was cancelled. And it seems there were differences of opinion between devs & leadership about which of 2 engines to use… the devs were apparently hoping the incoming MS bosses would override the decision, so they split their time between the two engines.
I deleted an earlier reply that was all about staffing. But yeah, it’s all about staffing: if it doesn’t gel, and if there’s no unifying vision for each project, things get rocky.
Why would anyone want to say anything about anything when people like you take a note of the time and date something should be ready and scream blue murder because things didn’t turn out the way it expected
Where do you go to see this flight of fancy?
It’s also possible that you are just making things up and no basis in fact whatsoever, it’s not like any Diablo game has ever had such a short run ever
D3 had 1 “expansion” and the 2nd one was cannibalized & released as free content. There’s also the necro pack. The line between different types of addons is blurry - but a reliable definition for an expansion (in Diablo) is something you pay premium for & which ‘expands’ the general content.
