This is genius.
Watching that train wreck of an announcement was so painful. He could not muster enough personal enthusiasm to sound authentically excited, which made the announcement even more disappointing. He knew they were not giving people what they wanted but was still surprised and defensive.
Free games push cash shops.
This is a revolutionary idea, that they don’t actually want people to play for free because it costs money to make games.
I’m more annoyed with cash shops in pay to play games like WoW and FF14 than free games.
It’s actually MUCH less than most gacha games do it.
The game is for China.
Blizzard has a market now in the east. Look up articles on gaming culture differences between China and the West.
According to CNBC, In China, the world’s largest market for the sector, micro transactions accounted for 88 percent of PC games spending in 2016.
According to gamedeveloper. Com: It made sense for Blizzard to collaborate with NetEase after their partnership to bring Diablo III as a free-to-play game in China, where it was very successful.
“Essentially it exists because we’ve heard that China really wants it,” revealed a current developer. “It is really for China."
It’s interesting to know that due to how and when video gaming was developed, Eastern populations couldn’t afford to buy the AAA games. So free games with microtransactions were more popular. This led to the current culture where they’re more widely accepted in eastern countries. Where in the West, AAA games with no to little microtransactions are more accepted.
Personally I’d rather spend x amount of money. I like spending $60 once to own the full game. Then spend $100 a month to progress in a “free” game. Also didn’t blizzard EXPLICITLY say it’d only be cosmetics? And now that’s already been super disproven.
Diablo is a very good mobile game , i hope they make lot of money so we can have a better WOW experience and not in Bobby’pockets
Yeah no kidding, im pretty sure Gacha collectors arent even this disgustingly predatory, its estimated that to get a full max tier set of gear with all maxed out gems and everything, you would need to spend somewhere in the realm of 50-100 THOUSAND dollars from what ive read of people doing the math. For real if any of you are for gaming and good games, do not spend money on this garbage.
thats like every mobile games , i bet Clash Royale is the same
Here’s an idea. Just ignore the micro transactions and play the game?
Hmmmmmm
Yeah. It’s obvious they were going to do that regardless of how people feel. They’ll keep doing this as long as people spend since that’s far more profitable. It’s the sad truth.
I’ve played a couple Gacha’s al ittle bit and the worst I’ve seen was 10k. Which is… super bad. But compare that to 5 to 10 times that holy duck.
If you don’t like the microtransactions, don’t play it or ignore them. The game is fun to pick up and play in short bursts. It’s also easy to play it on the go anywhere. If you’re trying to take it seriously/competitively, better hope you have the $$. But for casual play, it’s fine.
Diablo Immoral
Actually you only get like two in-your-face popups when you first log in, but you can close the popup and play, so it is not like you are forced to buy anything. I did buy the $4.99 battlepass upgrade, because it is worth it if you plan on playing for the long term. You can play the game just fine without ever spending any money, so who cares if the shop is there for people who want to?
IIRC prior to the announcement they were hinting directly at D4 and then did a bait and switch. That on top of it being mobile only caused the perfect storm they should have expected at a PC gaming convention.
Imagine even downloading Diablo Immortal…
Shame, shame, shame…
It’s basically the way it is with mobile games these days. I play a few and can tell you, they’re all designed around getting the player to buy micro transactions, doesn’t matter weather it’s using a licensed or original IP, weather it’s an RPG or an action game or whatever, all of them, their ultimate goal is to cause you to feel FOMO (IE: Fear Of Missing Out) so that when you burn through whatever freebies you’re given, you feel compelled to pay to keep up.
Usually these games are designed in a way that it’s quite easy to stay F2P (As without a big community, such games will typically be unlikely to attract big spenders. Such people want a community they can both interact with, fight and show off too) but still always (ALWAYS) looking to try and get you to buy.
You really just need to expect that going into mobile games (And more so even PC/Console games 
)
I’m fairly sure Arclight Rumble will be the same when it releases. Lots of other companies are making bank with these game,s it was only a matter of time before Blizzard joined in (And really, we all saw this coming the instant the game was announced as a mobile game way back. It’s why the blizzcon announcement was so heavily booed)
It was a lot of Diablo franchise PR. Given it was like 6 years after Diablo 3, I think 99% of us figured it was D4.
Imagine actually playing it and finding out that you are not forced to pay a dime!