The Diablo 4 pre-order bundles, and their supposed cost

[kenn9530]

Fear not, thats exactly what I have and will continue to do. Until Blizzard start behaving like a good little studio again and start being more consumer friendly they wont get a penny out of me.

Diablo 2 (2000) was free online, and we paid for 1 expansion and the game itself lasted 15 years with people playing. Compare that to Diablo IV.

"but video games are so expansive to make'. Here's an idea, stop making expensive video games. Once again I redirect you to indy games.

Videos games cost what they cost, you know you have to pay salaries and such and not many indy games are actually that great or have long lasting gameplay, ppl have been playing D3 for over a decade so ppl with do the same with D4 and with it being more online based it should last even longer. Whats anti consumer about paying 60 bucks and playing that game for 1000 hours, it seems ppl dont know what anti consumer actually is.

[Sorshen]

Jesus Christ you people are cheap. If you don’t want the stuff don’t buy it. It baffles me people will pay $1600+ for a gaming rig but oh no $30 season pass? This is an outrage

Games that have a 'box' price, specially in this "AAA" 60-70 tier should not have paid battlepasses. Fuck that noise, the guy in the video is right. It's money grab design. D3 made them at least 1.5 billion before taxes. And then factor in the RMAH cut, that's in the tens of millions tier at least.

[PixelFox]

As someone who spends an inordinate amount of time messing with transmog stuff in WoW and GW2, I can honestly say that I've never cared much at all about my D3 character appearances. Maybe because I almost always play in single player mode. I will probably be perfectly happy with ordinary drops.

The season pass thing IS worrying though, as to what they might lock up behind that.

Getting really tired of the monetization strategies targeted at finding the whales who will spend $1,000 on a phone game etc.

[DeltrusDisc]

We all need to hold off on buying. Blizzard needs to be humbled - and the only way to do that is by voting with our wallets and saying no.

We've all lived without D4 in our lives up to this point, you'll live without it for a bit longer. Wait at least a month, if not 6, if you can! The game will still be there, but so will your own dignity.

[Kallisto]

We all need to hold off on buying. Blizzard needs to be humbled - and the only way to do that is by voting with our wallets and saying no.

It's not just blizzard that needs to be humbled though. Everyone who acts as if this is a blizzard thing are not seeing the big picture and are just doing it to pile on blizzard. Every gaming company big or small is doing this and this needs to be a "refuse to buy anything" instead of "Look at company x".

No gaming company, regardless of it being AAA or that lovely little Indie darling gives a shit about any of us, all they care about is how to get every $,£,Euro,Whatever from our pockets into theirs. Best thing to do is to tell them all to go fuck themselves instead of "Hurr durr company x"

[DeltrusDisc]

It's not just blizzard that needs to be humbled though. Everyone who acts as if this is a blizzard thing are not seeing the big picture and are just doing it to pile on blizzard. Every gaming company big or small is doing this and this needs to be a "refuse to buy anything" instead of "Look at company x".

No gaming company, regardless of it being AAA or that lovely little Indie darling gives a shit about any of us, all they care about is how to get every $,£,Euro,Whatever from our pockets into theirs. Best thing to do is to tell them all to go fuck themselves instead of "Hurr durr company x"

Oh, I agree.

Though, I do think Blizzard is the most offensive about it right now. After everything over the past few years between shit expansion after turd expansion, lawsuit, WC3 Reforged... how can we hold Blizzard in the same about anything with other companies right now? I had hoped maybe they were going to be humble for once and put out something decent and in a show of decency, not ask the world for it.

Boy, I was wrong. Between this and Dragonflight, I thoroughly believe they've learned nothing.

I should add, in the ARPG space right now, I've refused to give GGG any money for any of their supporter packs for years because I've not felt like they've really done anything truly good for the game since 2020. I refuse to support them heading into PoE 2, if they keep it up. I like what I am seeing with next week's league launch, but I need to see it for more than one expansion/league in a row, and GGG has a bad track record right now. Really, ever since they sold most of their company to Tencent Gaming. Big surprise there.

Square Enix are the only ones I cannot fault right now. FF 14 has been a breath of fresh air and while I'm playing less lately, I cannot complain about the game. I log in and I smile at what I see. I'm happily playing more Hades, DOOM Eternal, and No Man's Sky, lately, which are totally different genres.

[Ampt69]

But also interesting - Platinum, an ingame currency used for buying - you guessed it, ingame cosmetics.

So what? Cosmetics? Who the fuck cares besides the poor people that wanna look like special little snowflakes? I hope they offer a hundred times the cosmetic options on their store than even the most pessimistic of people think they will. Let them make all that cosmetic money off the morons willing to pay for that crap all so they "look cool".

I will even defend the battle pass. So what? The game has a box price? What's your point? Do you think a one time fee to access the game forever will pay the upkeep on the servers forever? Are any of you that stupid you think that? Because if so do yourselves a favor and just go back to elementary school and start over. Electricity prices are inflating faster than ever before. Businesses are finally giving out proper cost of living raises, including Blizzard, they have at least 4 years of R&D to pay for that's already out of pocket. If they need to have a battle pass to make the game profitable then so be it.

And this guys hate for blizzards monetization is actually really stupid. I am 100% sure all the crying he is doing is over Diablo Immortal, which is a mobile game meant to be nothing but a disgusting cash grab because people who play those kinds of trash games spend money on them like mad. No one with a functioning brain didn't see that coming.

But lets look at WoW, you used to have to pay $15 a month to play, now you can play for free using in game gold to buy tokens. Yeah, Blizzard is so horrible.

So many babies with so little understanding of simple concepts like overhead costs.

[Sorshen]

But lets look at WoW, you used to have to pay $15 a month to play, now you can play for free using in game gold to buy tokens. Yeah, Blizzard is so horrible.

Blizzard makes $20 when you play for 'free'. And they were assholes enough to remove the b.net balance 1 month playtime option. There's nothing to defend here.

[Biomega]

I'll reserve actual judgement for when things become actually available for me to evaluate.

But in principle, I'm 100% fine with both cosmetic/convenience MTX and with season passes - as long as they're done right.

When I say "convenience" for example I really do mean JUST convenience. An XP boost in a system like D3's paragon for example would not be just a convenience, it'd be straight-up power; but an XP boost that only works from lvl 1-70 would just be convenience and would be entirely fine (useless as it may be). Don't know enough about D4 to find an equivalent there, but I wouldn't be surprised if the lvl 1 to max lvl thing was also just a fairly irrelevant part towards getting the actual journey started.

Season passes are fine IF THEY DELIVER ENOUGH CONTENT. I've said it for years about D3: I'd have been more than willing to pay a monthly sub if they had actually pumped out content. In fact I begged them to do that, so the game doesn't slowly die the death of neglect it eventually did (though there's still some twitching left). If they deliver on kickass content I'm more than happy to pay for it - the deal breaker would be soulless, generic filler bullshit churned out just so they can say they did something. We have no idea how things will work and what they will look like, so we can't really judge this feature yet. We don't even know if it's REAL yet (though it wouldn't surprise me).

I'm fine with "gaming as a service" as long as it's GOOD SERVICE.

[Usagi Senshi]

So what? Cosmetics? Who the fuck cares besides the poor people that wanna look like special little snowflakes? I hope they offer a hundred times the cosmetic options on their store than even the most pessimistic of people think they will. Let them make all that cosmetic money off the morons willing to pay for that crap all so they "look cool".

I will even defend the battle pass. So what? The game has a box price? What's your point? Do you think a one time fee to access the game forever will pay the upkeep on the servers forever? Are any of you that stupid you think that? Because if so do yourselves a favor and just go back to elementary school and start over. Electricity prices are inflating faster than ever before. Businesses are finally giving out proper cost of living raises, including Blizzard, they have at least 4 years of R&D to pay for that's already out of pocket. If they need to have a battle pass to make the game profitable then so be it.

And this guys hate for blizzards monetization is actually really stupid. I am 100% sure all the crying he is doing is over Diablo Immortal, which is a mobile game meant to be nothing but a disgusting cash grab because people who play those kinds of trash games spend money on them like mad. No one with a functioning brain didn't see that coming.

But lets look at WoW, you used to have to pay $15 a month to play, now you can play for free using in game gold to buy tokens. Yeah, Blizzard is so horrible.

So many babies with so little understanding of simple concepts like overhead costs.

*slurp* *slurp* *slurp*

[Unholyground]

They already confirmed expansions will not be free. This is pure greed.

It is a live service.

[Cthulhu 2020]

It is a live service.

Box price, battle pass, cash shop with its own currency.

Man I'm sure Blizzard isn't going to make any money unless they charge money for expansions!


This "Blizzard is a company and needs to make money" excuse for scummy cash grabs is awful. Blizzard made money in the past off only box prices. We know why all these cash grabs are in the game. Greed. That's it.

But then again, ActiBlizzard MAU's and revenue are down, guess they need to milk the remaining players for all they're worth.

[Zyky]

it works for poe because that game is free and offers decades of actual content,if d4 is anything like d3 its gonna be a joke and just interesting for people who enjoy the barebones seasonal stuff

i mean heck its so tragic in a way that one of the biggest gaming companies in the world can make literal trash like d3 but then you have tiny indie companies that make stuff like poe or grim dawn(this game has such a tiny team but my gosh the content in it can last you years)

I'm not debating that, I entirely agree. It's disgraceful what Blizzard has been doing to all their franchises and how they've been doing every little cash grab possible to milk fans.

[exochaft]

As someone who spends an inordinate amount of time messing with transmog stuff in WoW and GW2, I can honestly say that I've never cared much at all about my D3 character appearances. Maybe because I almost always play in single player mode. I will probably be perfectly happy with ordinary drops.

If I had to hazard a guess... this is one of the reasons why D4 is going to be an MMO-esque game: having other people see you will likely cause more people to want to show off (i.e. buy cosmetics).

In the isolation of single player games or games where you don't see the other players, there are people who care about how they look and would buy cosmetics anyway. However, shifting the game towards having more and more random people see you would just increase the rate at which cosmetics would get purchased. By how much? Who knows, but it's pretty much guaranteed that it would be increase.

Now, I don't think it was the sole reason D4 is going MMO-esque, but I have zero doubt that one of the main reasons during development was for the sake of monetization. While there's nothing wrong with wanting/needing to make money, there's still the moral aspect of decisions that need to be asked and answered. Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should... but if you lack any sense of morality or guiding principles, the question of whether you should do something just gets overlooked. Considering the state of Blizz and how they've been operating/executing as of late, I don't blame anyone thinking that there's a severe lack of their actions being checked against any sense of principles or morality.

[Relapses]

Before we get too carried away on the "Blizzard is greedy" circlejerk can we all take a look at ourselves and realize the reason this game is being launched with all this fucking monetization is because we, as gamers, eat this shit up time and time again. Want to make a difference? Don't buy D4.

[Raven]

We all need to hold off on buying. Blizzard needs to be humbled - and the only way to do that is by voting with our wallets and saying no.

We've all lived without D4 in our lives up to this point, you'll live without it for a bit longer. Wait at least a month, if not 6, if you can! The game will still be there, but so will your own dignity.

Or wait until we see what the real prices will be instead of go crazy over prices in a survey.

[VinceVega]

I actually am thinking of WoW. And I find most of the shop stuff just bad save for a couple exceptions. All of the coolest mogs and mounts are found in-game. If it's like that then I'll be fine.

Agree (except mounts) Two posts up from the one you quoted i basically said the same thing^^

[thilicen]

LOLLLLLLL

I am out, each time they release some new information my desire to play the game goes down. WTF even is a battle pass? Can't I just buy a fucking game and play it? Thankfully POE 2 is also coming out, hell even POE 1 is still kicking ass.

Have you been in a coma the last 10 years?

[Orby]

Videos games cost what they cost, you know you have to pay salaries and such and not many indy games are actually that great or have long lasting gameplay, ppl have been playing D3 for over a decade so ppl with do the same with D4 and with it being more online based it should last even longer. Whats anti consumer about paying 60 bucks and playing that game for 1000 hours, it seems ppl dont know what anti consumer actually is.

anti consumer is all the bat shit FOMO tactics they are putting into the game, and I wouldn't have an issue if they just put in a shop and made some cosmetics to buy, but Blizzard being Blizzard they go that extra step to be scummy, it doesn't end at a shop, its extra currency that that can only be brought through real money, its the battle pass, its the other shit they add that's made to squeeze money out of the consumer that is anti consumer. Predatory practices that prey on people spending money regardless of it isn't pay to win or not. Though we'll see how long that lasts, they'll probably throw in some XP boosts and other stuff AFTER the game is released. The Activision model for monetization plans is to withhold them for 3-6 months until reviews have gone out and THEN put them in. Has happened several times with the last few Call of Duty games.

Aside from that Diablo 4 is open world, I have no interest in open world, its not 2014 anymore open world doesn't carry the weight to impress me, all open world means now is busy work with no substance. touting that the zones will be HUGE outs me off it doesn't encourage me to play. Good for those people who have the time, but I don't.

Regardless I still think the game looks really nice, some nice looking zones, no doubt if I were to buy the game I'd be spending years in that character creator and as usual with Blizzard their gameplay is smooth no doubt. they got all this awesome talent it just sucks they got this horrible stuff that coats it in shit thats probably peddled by their execs and CEOs.

Before we get too carried away on the "Blizzard is greedy" circlejerk can we all take a look at ourselves and realize the reason this game is being launched with all this fucking monetization is because we, as gamers, eat this shit up time and time again. Want to make a difference? Don't buy D4.

Not going to be enough, a lot of these companies are too rich to fail. You can only score a self moral victory against the company, if I don't buy the game it wont matter when 50 people spend $50 on micro transactions each, me not playing doesn't matter. The only way to stop companies from greedy practices is if there is government intervention. Yet governments are living in the pockets of these big companies now too, so we're fucked either way. a self moral victory is all we have really, these companies will flourish without us, because as you said, we eat this shit up.

[kranur]

Jesus Christ you people are cheap. If you don’t want the stuff don’t buy it. It baffles me people will pay $1600+ for a gaming rig but oh no $30 season pass? This is an outrage

It's not about being cheap but about not wanting to be ripped off at every turn.
If someone spends 200k on a house is it acceptable that a game asks 100k to max out a char?