Oh Blizzard, how you have fallen (Diablo Immortal).

[Bakis]

JoshHays summed it up pretty well.
He doesnt mind that BLZ make money on a mobile game but the purposely and predatory design is just over the top by a longshot.
And the "clever" way of bypassing laws against loot boxes is too obvious.

That he ends it all up with pointing out that the game is the opposite of BLZ public stated values of player experience comes first etc made me chuckle.
"They made it fun to play, but just fun enough to make people spend insane amounts of ingame money when they could instead focus on making it as fun as possible. (which is what BLZ state as one of its core values)"

[Flaks]

That's basically marketing. Sales. Demo weapons. Nothing special. You play the game see a weapon you like - want to buy. And the last thing you want is for the player to buy the weapon and then go into a match that is that weapons nemesis and upset the player, which will obviously reduce any chances of them buying anything again.

But you of course can read it in a sinister voice with a mwuahahaha at the end and Bobby doing kaching.

Funny enough when this match making system thing was initially posted about everyone was saying how it's not used in any blizzard games and it's obviously and Activision only thing to be used in CoD and the like.

And here we are blatantly having it CLEARLY BEING UTILIZED IN A GAME WITH CLEARLY PREDATORY MICROTRANSACTIONS and you think a "sinister voice" isn't warranted?

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It wouldn't be free then. Unlikely they would have sold a lot at the price point they would set to match the expected revenue from the current model. Even a game store with cosmetic MTX would have been heavily criticized. I mean, let's not mince words: There's a certain group of people who are unwilling to extend any good will to Blizzard under any circumstances. That's their business and fine but it makes their criticisms less believable. The same goes for those who can't see any problems in Blizzard games either. It's a very low-information business here.

My recommendation (which others have called 'defending' Blizzard) is to load up the game, play it a while and see what you think. Your own opinion is the only one that matters. Not posters on this or any other forum, not streamers, not MetaCritics or anyone else.

Utterly wrong take. You are clearly 'defending' blizzard with your input here. This is the few times where your own personal opinion on the game is secondary to the overall perspective on it. And the overall perspective on it is that it's a horrid, disgusting cash cow that is pushing the envelope for microtransaction in gaming such that you can expect this and worse to seep into gaming as a whole. Anyone who wants to enjoy a mildly competitive game now has to go in knowing that more and more developers are going to jump on this ship of pay to win. Even WoW has gotten to a point that you can easily pay to be more competitive and blizzard's ridiculous laxity directly contributes to this (they've made it harder to report real money ads on group finder in retail even though they've "officially made it bannable"). It's a horrible precedent that makes the whole gaming environment just all around worse.

All they had to do was take a page out of hearthstone's playbook: absolutely make things that are worth lots and lots of money. But don't make it to the extent that free to play players are completely shut out of competing in any way shape or form. Hearthstone f2p players can easily make it to legend and even high legend without paying a single cent ever even starting out new. Hell even WoW still allows players that can be super competitive without touching RMT or bulk token buying/selling at least in retail. Why did this have to be this disgustingly over the top? F2p players getting stomped in pvp, having negligible contribution in pve. It's all just a bad trend being set.

[Ghost of Cow]

The irony of the Hearthstone comparisons is that I can load up D:I and just play any class through the campaign with no issues.

As opposed to Hearthstone where a new player is ages (or some money) away from just being able to make a deck they'll enjoy.

Of course, it's not apples to apples, I know that. But I can play D:I without investing a thing and do basically anything I feel like.

[Jastall]

I think the "Fans" of this disaster need to realize that this has both permanently hurt Blizzard and the Diablo franchise.

This game has a metacritic score of 0.2, the lowest in gaming history. People almost universally hate this game.

If you just search "Diablo Immortal" on Youtube you get auto corrects like "Diablo Immoral" and auto fills like "Diablo Immortal Pay to Win" and "Diablo Immortal Scam" as two of the top auto fills, and when you actually do a search for JUST the game's name, the entirety of the first two pages of search results are all negative aside from one that's a "top 10 noob mistakes" video.

Blizzard spent two decades building up goodwill of good games. Now Activision is trying to milk every last bit of built up trust among their fans before it's ultimately handed off to Microsoft. Some of you are making excuses for it, while the rest of us lament just how much damage Blizzard has done to their own reputation and the gaming industry.

Devil's advocate: Metacritic or Youtube isn't all the people. It's a self-selecting sample of more invested/hardcore gamers. These are not the target audience and in between a couple thousand people being angry on Metacitic and tens of thousands being angry on Youtube/Reddit and the millions, probably in fact tens of millions who downloaded the game and will probably shove money at it for most of them, Blizzard's clearly made a choice.

I got two coworkers who never played a Blizz game in their life save for WoW back during TBC/Wrath and they're loving it. They wouldn't touch game forums if their life depended on it so you won't hear about them but it's safe to say the mobile scene is choke full of people like them. They don't care about controversies and Metacritic ratings, they just hear about this cool mobile game made by a big studio, download and play while on lunch break or on the shitter. Games like Candy Crush or Clash Royale hardly get talked about in more traditional gaming circles but they still make far more money than even beloved juggernauts like Elden Ring that get showered with praise and GOTY awards and such. The mobile market is just different. Blizzard doesn't need us grognards this time around. Plus their biggest market for this title is in Asia which 1) loves Diablo and 2) is far, far more accepting of MTX as a rule. Immortal must be making absolute bank there.

Besides, people said the same about D3's launch or WCIII: Reforged and Blizzard survived those just fine. Diablo 4 will release and tons of people will still buy it assuming it's not evident they completely screwed the pooch pre-release.

[kaminaris]

Blizzard spent two decades building up goodwill of good games. Now Activision is trying to milk every last bit of built up trust among their fans before it's ultimately handed off to Microsoft. Some of you are making excuses for it, while the rest of us lament just how much damage Blizzard has done to their own reputation and the gaming industry.

Its not activision. Blizzard did it themselves.

Anyways, im having so much fun not playing it because all the drama surrounding it. 10/10 would not play again.

Why would i play worse version of D3 that is copypasted with MTX on mobile?

[Fullmetal89]

Why would i play worse version of D3 that is copypasted with MTX on mobile?

Funny, I played Immortal for about an hour, and it made me want to redownload D3. Been playing Monk in season 26 and having a blast. The game is still relatively fun.

[everydaygamer]

People acting like the user score on metacritic means anything.

[cocomen2]

game feels like it was made in 2010, but people were still without phones that able to run game of such shit quality.

[james2400]

More people are willing to pay than are highly skilled. That's not even arguable. Therefore, there should be no confusion that games for certain types of markets are designed this way. Frankly, it's substituting one elite ("the skilled") for another ("the disposable income person"). Video games, with a very few exceptions, haven't been about "who has the most skill" in a couple of decades.

Diablo Immortal is still salvagable! there is a great game under all this crap just needs a overhaul a Square Enix type of intervention heck they removed the d3 RMAH they can do the same overhaul to this.

[afishman]

Im level 26 and its pretty fun so far? It probably sucks at max level lol

[SinR]

I actually wonder how many people watched the YouTube Hate Train videos, thought "It can't be that bad?", and gave it a shot.

[Lolites]

If a mobile game like this makes a ton of money, then why bother developing something on PC which may be more wholesome, but only generates a fraction of the profit? This is a slippery slope, and if it isn't stopped now, then gaming as we know it will become a gaming as a service hell hole.

we are on this "slipery slope" for years, decades even, and pc games are still being made... even games that are buy2play with no microtransactions...

[Jerot]

Nobody cares about scrubs in Diablo PvP, they gotta get gud and master the CC

"scrubs"
"Ranked #1 on his server"

Pick one

[Darkeon]

we are on this "slipery slope" for years, decades even, and pc games are still being made... even games that are buy2play with no microtransactions...

It's hilarious that, in order to prove to you that the 'slipery slope' is real, the most extreme example would have to be reality and not, well, the slipery slope.

[Lolites]

Can you imagine the good will Blizzard could have gotten

good will? from blizzard "fans"?!
blizzard is getting negative reactions for things people ASKED FOR, there is no chance anything they would ever do would bring solid amount of good will...
they could make a pill that prevents cancer and people would whine that you have to use it too often...

[Jerot]

It's hilarious that, in order to prove to you that the 'slipery slope' is real, the most extreme example would have to be reality and not, well, the slipery slope.

We've watched the decline from laughing at the idea of selling cosmetic items for money, to accepting and even preferring it as the better alternative to garbage like this. People have short memories. There's already a bunch of people in here defending this as "not pay to win" and "fairly priced". "You don't have to pay, so its okay." Like charging tens of thousands of dollars for stats is acceptable anywhere.

The future of gaming is going to suck.

[Lolites]

Diablo Immortal is now the worst rated game on Metacritic - and probably many other rating sites as well. Its user score has fallen to 0.2 and even the professional reviewer score has dropped since launch.

Burning crusade classic - you know, the one some people on this site praise as second coming - have user score of 0.7 on metacritic, while SL - which is "worst thing ever" - have 3.0...
user score is useless (not that the critics one isnt) bcs people are nowhere near objectivity

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Jesus it has a 0.2 rating on Metacritic its officially the worst game of all time.

game quality aside, metacritic user rewiev (critics too) is about as acurate as throwing shit on darts target and checking what you hit

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People acting like the user score on metacritic means anything.

it does, its important proof of how people ignore logic and only use raw emotions when rating something, and how people are able to rate something they literaly brag about never even trying

[sam86]

so a company under leadership of someone who hates video games and so greedy he can't even hide it and wanted to increase game prices since decades, is doing that?
i'm shocked....
of how long it took for Bobby to show his real face, their PR did amazing job telling him to shut the f8ck up after few interviews in the 2000s era showing how much he hates video games
Seriously if we had social media back then as strong as now doubt Bobby would been left on top of blizzard that long

[Elim Garak]

"scrubs"
"Ranked #1 on his server"

Pick one

Binary thinking is not welcomed these days. You should be more Rank-fluid.

Everyone is a scrub for #1, but also everyone below #2 are scrubs for #2.
End even a scrub topping the wooden league at the bottom - thinks everyone below them is a scrub.

[tikcol]

The sad part is that even though the lashback is huge, they are going to make so much money out it that I don't know if Blizzard will be able to hold themselves back in the future.