Do you think Diablo could work as a MMORPG (like World of Warcraft)?

[OwenBurton]

Diablo and Warcraft share certain overlapping themes and motifs, such as the presence of mages, paladins, demon hunters, the presence of the Light, corrupted human kings and paladins; the millennia-long war against demon lords who seek to conquer their respective worlds, etc.

Warcraft: Orcs and Humans first came out in 1994, while Diablo 1 came out three years later in 1997, and they are two of Blizzard Entertainment's most successful and well-known franchises both in the USA and internationally. Many WoW players have also played one of the Diablo games at one point, and vice versa also.

Paralleling the "Vanguard of Light" in Midnight is the "Wardens of the Light" introduced in the upcoming Diablo 4 expansion, where the player paladin champion the "timeless virtues" of Valor, Justice, Hope, Fate and Wisdom.



Wield Divine Might as The Paladin



Even some of their animated lore videos and cinematics are visually similar:





I think even Diablo 4 technically counts as an Action RPG. Do you think then that it would be a decent long-term investment if Blizzard today tried to create a kind of full-scale Diablo-style MMORPG?

An explorable and far vaster open world with different continents and home cities and even factions in which players could play as many as 12 different classes, just like WoW (but with slightly different variations, such as barbarians, necromancers, witch doctors, vampiric blood knights, tempests, a different style of monk and druid, so on and so forth)? Complete with stuff such as treasure goblins and secret levels? Would it be nearly as successful as WoW and other games today?

[SpaceMistakes]

I don't think MMOs in general have the pull that they used to have, so personally I don't think a Diablo MMO would enjoy anywhere near the success it would have in the genre's heyday.

That said I don't think it would flop, either.

[OwenBurton]

I don't think MMOs in general have the pull that they used to have, so personally I don't think a Diablo MMO would enjoy anywhere near the success it would have in the genre's heyday.

That said I don't think it would flop, either.

Well, they made Warcraft into a MMORPG from a much more basic single-player game, but maybe that was the early 2000s

[jackofwind]

The time for new MMO's to be hugely successful has come and gone, even ones based on popular existing IPs.

[SpaceMistakes]

Well, they made Warcraft into a MMORPG from a much more basic single-player game

I played the original WC games, I'm aware.

[Redwyrm]

Starcraft would have better chance at being an MMORPG.

[Biomega]

ANYTHING can work as an MMO if it's done right, because you can adjust the mechanics and flavor as needed. It's just a matter of some thing being easier to adapt than others.

That being said, I don't think making a Diablo MMO is a good idea, simply because it's already got its own genre and because making a modern-day MMORPG is such a titanic investment you need something with wider appeal than Diablo. It'll practically have to be a more stylized, cartoon-adjacent property like WarCraft or LoL because that makes it easier to capture more demographics. An M or R-rated demonic slaughterfest has an intrinsically lower reach, to say nothing of the Christian moms who'll climb the barricades if their 14-year olds all start going on about that devil game. And whatever new MMO gets big, it'll absolutely have to appeal to the 14-year olds.

So "can it work"? Absolutely.

Can it be financially successful enough as a modern-day mainstream MMO? Probably not.

As people already pointed out, StarCraft has a much better shot at this. Already more stylized, appeals to the shooter players, etc. And even THAT I highly doubt Blizzard will try their hands on.

[Iliena]

Story and lore wise they could make it work, but Blizzard is not the same calibre of company it was 25 years ago when it made WoW, so I would struggle to see the money men signing off on billions in development costs for a genre that overall is struggling.

[Boomer Thor]

I would unironically like the opposite...

warcraft as an arpg (top down ofc)

[Mysterymask]

The time to of made Diablo an MMORPG was back in 2005 when wow came out hell if the coin flipped and they made Diablo the MMO it might of been the success
now, probably not.

Business wise MMOs were a giant financial risk back then and a bigger financial risk now. Back then when the formula proved to work and was popular we could of had a Diablo MMO

Consumer wise I always feel MMOs are something people always think would be cool but reality always hits and it just falls flat. There's always that feeling of "I'm in a big world and what if all the NPCs were people" then they start to play it and realize we just don't have the tech to make it what you want or the playerbase just isn't there.

[Just Passing through]

Starcraft would have better chance at being an MMORPG.

My gut feeling is that it would be true, based on the fact that we would have 3 factions. While there are people that already hate the two factions approach of WoW, I feel this was part of the initial draw.

That said, when a Blizzard MMO was announced waaaaaay back, I hoped for a MMO in the world of Diablo.

But I guess they will play it safe with the 30 million copies or so that at least D3 sold. For D4 I only find the number of 10 million in the first week. That and the x-pacs are probably a safer bet for them?

[Nihilist74]

It would work for blizzard getting all those extra monthly fees.

[NineSpine]

There's a few problems with the MMORPG space right now that really prevent the genre from moving forward.

The promise of the MMORPG genre is getting the RPG experience with lots of other people in a shared online world. If someone knows nothing about MMORPGs, what they expect when they hear about the genre is something closer to Skyrim with lots of other people playing. They don't expect endless cosmetic farming powered by instanced content with a handful of other players in it. Regardless of whether you enjoy the latter, that's not really the dream promise of the idea of an MMORPG.

The flagship MMORPG is modern World of Warcraft, which does not deliver on that promise, at all. Investors are afraid to make an MMORPG that doesn't look like WoW because it's the flagship. This has been the problem for 20 years. Your choices are mainly a game that doesn't deliver on the promise, bad clones of that game, or very dated and idiosyncratic older games that are still running.

Ironically, there is a genre delivering on that promise better: Survival games. Valheim with 20 players on one server feels a lot closer to what the mind wanders to when it hears "MMORPG" than Guild Wars 2 or FF14 do. Delivering the MMORPG promise means allowing rough edges and emergent gameplay, and that really is totally antithetical to what companies are willing to invest big dollars into these days.

So, could we get a Diablo MMORPG? Buddy, that's what Diablo 4 is. It's just as much an MMORPG as WoW is.

[OwenBurton]

Starcraft would have better chance at being an MMORPG.

If that is so though, it makes you wonder why Blizzard has never attempted doing so with either. It could pay off for them like their gambit with Hearthstone has.

[SpaceMistakes]

If that is so though, it makes you wonder why Blizzard has never attempted doing so with either. It could pay off for them like their gambit with Hearthstone has.

They have attempted to do so. But they pulled the plug on it.

[Mysterymask]

If that is so though, it makes you wonder why Blizzard has never attempted doing so with either. It could pay off for them like their gambit with Hearthstone has.

-MMOs are expensive to make
-MMOs are expensive to maintain
-MMOs as a genre aren't at a point where it would be profitable to do so
-Starcraft as an IP isn't exactly huge
-RTS's are a super niche genre at this point
-turning a super niche genre (Starcraft the RTS) into an expensive niche genre (Starcraft the MMO) probably wouldn't be worth the money
-Then because of how MMOs work your now competing with yourself.


There's damned good reasons why Blizzard isn't making another MMO.