Blizzard announced a completely new mobile MMOARPG game in the Diablo franchise; Diablo: Immortal at BlizzCon 2018 this morning. The game takes place in between the ending of Diablo II: Lord of Destruction and the beginning of Diablo III.
Blizzard is collaborating with their Chinese partner NetEase (which publishes their titles in China) to develop the game. NetEase of course has several years of MMO (Revelation Online) and mobile gaming development behind them and will be using that knowledge and expertise to bring the Diablo game play experience to mobile devices (Android and iOS).
Based on other mobile MMO’s that NetEase has been associated with like Crusaders of Light, Onmyoji, Tome of the Sun (to name a few though they also have their hands in developing mobile MOBA’s and RTS titles as well), I’m not expecting anything groundbreaking in this particular mobile title either. The combat looks like it will utilize Nexon’s Heroes of Incredible Tales (HIT) mobile combat system that has been utilized in most every action combat mobile game.
This move to push the Diablo franchise into mobile (especially with it being a collaboration with an outside partner) has Activision written all over it IMHO (for an action combat franchise like Diablo, it does make sense though for the suits at the company); one that also comes two years too late. The somewhat muted reaction by the crowd to the announcement is to be expected since it wasn’t the announcement Diablo fans were hoping for after expectations were tempered a few weeks ago with telegraphing that “Diablo 4” would not be announced. Fans were hoping that in light of that, a remaster of Diablo II would be hinted at. Instead, classic games announced another highly anticipated remaster; WarCraft III: Reforged. After several interviews with David Brevik (providing insights on the technical challenges with remastering the original two Diablo titles), those are things the classic game engineers will need to crack first (I still believe it is a matter of when and not if) in order to make sure the feel isn’t lost.
Myself, I will admit that I had no real feeling as the cinematic (well done from a quality point of view) was being played because I know the limitations of the actual combat when it comes to mobile touch input. I still remember how much I was looking forward to the global version of Netmarble’s Lineage 2: Revolution mobile MMORPG but as soon as I played the first few minutes, I just could not get into it.
There’s also some ironies I cannot shake….the game I ended up sinking time into post-Diablo III was Devilian. Devilian’s original code name was Immortal and then its initial working title before it was renamed to Devilian. Before Ginno Games was acquired by Bluehole, the game itself looked and played terrible (like a very cheap Diablo-style rip off and nothing like what ended up launching in 2014). The game itself was heavily inspired by Diablo (to be a Korean MMO version of it) with its creator (and Ginno Games co-founder Park Won Hee) being a life long fan of the series calling it his “life game” in various interviews. I have a few earlier images showing just how much it drew from Diablo that I will eventually put up on my Devilian-Info site. I even had a game title proposed if Bluehole ever decided to revive the game in the future; Devilian Immortals. So the name Diablo: Immortal brought things full circle for me.
Digressing, as soon as the gameplay video was shown, I was sort of laughing and shaking my head at just how awful it looked because it is what it is with most of these mobile MMO’s; many are reskinned based on already tested frameworks. That isn’t to say this won’t have a degree of success (especially in Asia and more so China should it ever get approval through their currently roadblocked system); this will net Activision Blizzard a nice chunk of revenue amongst those who are primarily mobile users AND also not the most into Blizzard’s games.
So what is going to be interesting is how it will be monetized (buy-to-play, free-to-play, freemium?) The majority of Asian created mobile RPG’s are pretty much based around boosts (Blizzard made such changes for the Chinese version of Diablo III where it is free-to-play but has a micro transaction system that includes the ability to purchase paid boosts along with a rewards system similar to dailies in MMO’s where another currency in the form of platinum can be used to purchased similar boosts without using real money). Blizzard will of course try to create more of a balance to keep the progression boosts at bay.
The rationale for collaborating (instead of doing the work completely inhouse) will likely become more known once the Diablo sessions and panels are completed. I can already guess how parts of the community are responding to this announcement without actually visiting the Blizzard forums or Reddit. Unfortunately, the company was already caught between a rock and a hard place after the last 2 years of nothing and could not go a third year without anything (more so when the expectations are constantly racking up for the next version which they had begun hiring for back in 2015). Which is why this collaboration with NetEase also feels to me like it was not something long in the planning process. Nonetheless, it will be interesting to hear the PR from the Diablo team over this weekend regarding this mobile game.
