Blizzard have been getting a lot of attention recently and not with such a positive light, their reveal of the mobile action-RPGDiablo Immortalat Blizzcon left some fans a little unsatisfied. While there are rumours that Diablo IV is being worked on, still no confirmation from Blizzard themselves on their upcoming projects.
Diablo III Second Expansion and a Separate Dark Souls-Like Project Cancelled by Blizzard
In a recent article posted onKotakuby Jason Shreier, it brings some focus to some previous projects that in fact once upon time were in the works. These shed light on a supposedly second expansion forDiablo III, an unnamed developer shared that the project was then scrapped because the heads at Blizzard didn’t believe in Diablo III was successful enough, this was before the launch of the Reaper of Soul’s expansion.
What they told the team was, ‘You’ve finished Reaper of Souls, it’s really good. But we think the best thing for the IP is to move to Diablo IV in whatever form that’ll be.’ The overall sense on the team, at least in my impression, was that there was a vote of no confidence from the executives.
Due to the cancellation of this project according to Kotaku, the team responsible was then split up to work on multiple other Blizzard projects. It was after these events when a smaller team were put on the development of a project known by the code name “Hades”, this was led by the same Reaper of Souls Director Josh Mosqueira and was a project not quite like others in the franchise.
Hades was described as:
A Diablo take on Dark Souls…[and] would use an over-the-shoulder, third-person perspective
While it could sound like Diablo IV, according to the article Blizzard did not want to consider calling it this due it being so different in nature to previous Diablo games, described by some as a “gothic, challenging dungeon crawler”. The development was then halted due to having multitudes of problems and production then stopped during 2016. Blizzard then switched their focus to the DLC content for Rise of the Necromancer for Diablo III.
Blizzard did give a response in terms of these cancellations to Kotaku, stating that 50% of their projects do not reach fruition or are end up in someway part of other projects which was what happened with Overwatch and even World of Warcraft. This is due to quality, making sure that these meet the expectations of the developer:
As far as game cancellations, we see that as a strength—a reflection of our commitment to quality, and how we’ve always operated. Historically, we’ve launched about 50% of the total projects we’ve worked on over the past three decades—those are the ones we consider representative of Blizzard quality.
Not shipping a game is never an easy decision to make, but it has always been the right decision for us. Canceling Titan led us to Overwatch, and as another example, canceling Nomad led us to World of Warcraft.
Kotaku also reconfirmed that their sources have told them that Diablo IV or its code name Fenris is the current iteration of Diablo IV. Blizz have continued to work on this project since 2016, it has gone through a few different directions but according to Kotaku sources it is still in its early stages, which would support the reason why there was no announcement for it at Blizzcon this year.
Blizzard have not commented on the subject of Diablo IV. Lets hope that Blizzard will continue to think about its core fan base and not only about reaching new markets such as mobile.
Diablo IIIis the current entry to the franchise and is available on PC, Xbox One, PS4 and Nintendo Switch.
For more Blizzard news read about it here inBlizzard Announces Diablo Immortal Mobile Game And Fans Are Less Than ThrilledandBlizzard Reveals Multiple Diablo Projects In Progress. For a rundown of recent news find it here inTop RPG News Of The Week: November 18th (GOTY 2018, FF13, Sony And More!).
