Back in June…. Game director for unannounced Diablo project….
Since then, all kinds of wild speculation have taken place with a lot of it reaching fever pitch over the last month.
One thing that is certain is that Blizzard is not going to throw away one of their most valuable intellectual properties and iconic franchises. The game is experiencing its current malaise because it probably has to do with some major decision making behind the scenes as to which road to proceed down; expansion OR reboot and continuing the story arc from there.
What is known is that this year marks the 20th anniversary of the franchise. What is known is that the D3 core design requires a complete overhaul if the desire is to bring it back closer to its ARPG roots.
What is also known is that many key figures from Team 3 (D3) have moved on to other franchises at Blizzard (like Don Vu and John Yang) while a whole bunch have departed Blizzard over the past year including two key VP’s (Chris Metzen & Nick Carpenter) and several members of the D3 team including game director Josh Mosqueira, Leonard Boyarsky (lead world designer), Brian Kindregan lead writer).
Does an expansion for the current D3 make any sense at this juncture when parts of what were supposed to be for that expansion were released as content updates over the past year (that includes the cube, Ruins of Sescheron, and the Greyhollow Island zone)? And there are probably other bits and pieces that were being worked on that could be used to provide further smaller updates. But the logical answer to that is no, it doesn’t make any sense at this time when the time to do that was in 2015.
Which leads to what one can only assume is the next logical step, and that is a Diablo IV; something that would be at least 1-2 years away from being launched if all the recent job postings for this “unannounced Diablo” project are indeed related to this.
Which leads to what if any announcements might be made at BlizzCon 2016? I’ve written before regarding how Blizzard has a tendency for doing rather public teaser reveals beforehand in order to generate hype. Whether or not some of the recent speculation including some concept art “leaks” are part of this remains to be seen.
But if they do announce the next road for the Diablo franchise at BlizzCon 2016, it is something that will require the patience of players as there isn’t going to be a whole lot of information to go around at this point in time. Likewise, Blizzard does not operate in a vacuum and will need to find ways to keep that part of their player base satiated/engaged while they go through the actual design phase that leads to the actual coding of the initial core game systems.
ADDENDUM: I completely forgot to mention specifically that I do not actually anticipate any major near term announcements at BlizzCon regarding the time frame for anything that can be construed as being D4 related. All I am saying is that this franchise is an important revenue source (for its given business model) to not eventually have something that goes beyond the current game.
I also believe that Blizzard understands the franchises place in terms of genre; that is as a single player/co-op ARPG (though town hubs could be made persistent ala Path of Exile where it is only in that small area, where there players in a channel can interact with each other via their actual characters).
