Following BlizzCon 2018’s ‘interesting’ showcase, many Diablo fans were left confused and more than a little worried about the future of the franchise. But that worry goes beyond a simple mobile came announcement with Immortals, it comes from a rocky past with the previous game in the series and some decisions that heavily impacted how Diablo moved forward.
Kotaku dove deep into the history of Blizzard in relation to this franchise, and because of that we have a clearer understanding of what the future could be like. As noted, shortly after Diablo III’s Reaper of Souls expansion made its debut, Blizzard made the internal decision to cancel future expansions. This didn’t necessarily “shake things up” at the time, due to the fact that the team responsible for Diablo, Team 3, hadn’t made a lot of headway into the second big DLC.
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“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,’” said one anonymous developer to the site. “The overall sense on the team, at least in my impression, was that there was a vote of no confidence from the executives. They thought Diablo III was a giant fuck-up.”
The reaction to Diablo III was certainly mixed, with long-term fans of the franchise not liking many of the directional changes the series made, including the real-money auction house. That, and the “Error 37” that rendered the game virtually unplayable at launch seemed to doom the game’s reception from the get-go.
Though the team did make a ton of overhauls to the game to help it match fan expectations, for some – it was too little too late. That all changed when Reaper of Souls made its debut, the intense expansion seemed to change the minds of many that were fed up with the latest entry. With that expansion seeing so much success, the aforementioned cancellation could seem like the wrong move.
According to the person that mentioned the “F*ck-up” earlier, “A lot of people felt stunned by it. I think a lot of them felt like, ‘We made mistakes on Diablo III, but we learned and we made Reaper to show what we could do. We have fixed it, and Reaper‘s really good.’ I think a lot of people felt like we’d figured it out and we know how to do this, and expansion two, whatever it would’ve been, would’ve been the highest expression of that… To have them pull the plug without really seeing how Reaper did really sting.”
With the overall vibe that “the team messed it up,” many of the devs were left conflicted on the sudden plug pull. They saw their work begin to pay off, were excited to take it even further, and felt that the blame for the initial negative reaction overshadowed it all.
But why didn’t Blizzard address the cancellation? “As far as game cancellations, we see that as a strength—a reflection of our commitment to quality, and how we’ve always operated,” a spokesperson said. “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. Cancelling Titan led us to Overwatch, and as another example, cancelling Nomad led us to World of Warcraft.”
Following that rift, many developers working on that project went their separate ways. Team 3 “lost its swing,” which caused the beginnings of Diablo IV to take off to a very rocky start.
With many of the team working on a project that at the time was codenamed Fenris – which is slated for a 2020 release – it’s time to revisit what made Diablo, Diablo. “There’s a lot of people who felt like Diablo III got away from what made Diablo Diablo in terms of art style and spell effects,” said a current Blizzard employee, adding that Fenris is aiming to look more like the beloved Diablo II. Said another: “They want to make this gross, make it dark, [get rid of] anything that was considered cartoony in Diablo III… Make what people were afraid of in Diablo II, but modern.”
To read even more about the progression of Fenris and the developmental woes that followed Diablo III, you can read the full editorial right here.
