MMOCulture once again has covered the Asian angle with NetEase’ interviews with the Chinese media regarding some of the technical details for Diablo: Immortal. Wyatt Cheng (per his interview with IGN) is going to have to answer why he lied about the game being built from the “ground up” when NetEase confirmed the game is being developed using their in-house created engine (Messiah) which they also confirmed was created around 8 years ago and used as the basis for some of their other mobile titles. They of course are not going to say Diablo: Immortal is a re-skin of an existing game they developed which is pretty much a forgone conclusion given there is only so much screen real estate to do things any differently.
Now I have always liked Wyatt as a person but I’ve grown to dislike how he deals with technical design related topics as if all of us out there are clueless about some of those details. Let me put this another way. Blizzard has the resources and technical know how to create their own mobile version of Diablo (which they would have full control over unlike this project). This partnership with NetEase is (despite what Cheng has said as having been in development for awhile) something much more recent with several different angles including tapping the mobile demographic. It however comes across as something to help fill the void left by what could have been an aborted D4 announcement (after the surprise announcement of Torchlight Frontiers and it being an MMOARPG). Secondly, it provides immediate access to the Chinese game market which right now, has a roadblock in place with approving new games from outside the country.
Basically, it’s a win-win on the business side of the equation for the two companies. NetEase being Blizzard’s publishing partner for China will have a major say in how this is monetized in China. Blizzard will control their monetization for their primary regions (Americas, Asia, Europe). I am sure Blizzard is going to try to pressure NetEase to not go full on P2W in China so as to not mar the Diablo name. Unfortunately, Chinese mobile players don’t think much of NetEase as it is because of all the tactics they’ve used there when it comes to how the P2W manifests itself. NetEase is naturally going to prefer this being totally F2P with micro transactions in China. And since they are the ones primarily coding the game, it will be easier for them if there isn’t a lot of deviation for the design when deployed elsewhere.
At this point, there is no use with continuing to postulate or venting out endless verbiage about this game because Blizzard sees nothing wrong with how and where it was announced and believe the product will speak for itself when they launch it (probably next year while their PC and console players who are still playing D3, will go another couple of months without any new content since the Necromancer was released in June 2017). This content drought with the franchise is something they seem oblivious to which again, speaks to how out of touch they have been with their own community.
P.S. Maybe “Happy Reaper” (their 2014 April Fool’s joke) would’ve actually been a huge mobile seller if Blizzard actually made it….
