There was a certain amount of hype surrounding this year’s BlizzCon 2018 with Diablo sinceBlizzardhad announced they had been working on “multiple projects” and the schedule included a Diablo focused event. They revealed one of these Diablo projects that fans were not exactly thrilled about, Diablo Immortal an action MMORPG for mobile.
Blizzard Announces Diablo Immortal Mobile Game and Fans Are Less Than Thrilled
There have been a few quotes that fans of the Diablo franchise have been holding onto going into BlizzCon 2018. While nothing new was announced apart from theSwitch versionfor the franchise previously, and game shows such asE3orGamescomthis year had little focus on Diablo, this led a lot to believe that there might just be a big reveal at Blizz’s own homegrown event. They did however share with fans running up to it, thatnot all their projects would be revealed at this year’s BlizzCon.
They did make one major reveal but its significance was not in the way you might expect. A mobile game called Diablo Immortal was unveiled, taking the Diablo experience from console and PC to a much smaller device. The reaction was less than welcoming, this was probably the first time at Blizz event when the actual audience was left stunned, people started to leave the presentation mid-way. Its safe to say the live Twitch audience who were viewing this worldwide also had something to say and it wasn’t positive.
BlizzCon goers had a chance to ask a few questions during the panel. When a fan questioned if there were any plans to bring this game to PC and expressed the interest as it contains “many mechanics” that were demanded by Diablo fans since Diablo III, Wyatt Cheng the Principle Designer of Immortal who presented and helped field questions replied with an answer fans were not hoping for:
The current plan is mobile…we don’t have any plans at the moment to do PC.
Another fan also asked if this was some “out of season April fools' joke” hoping that Blizzard were doing a sort of “gotcha” moment, but this was not the case.
There’s definitely a high expectation when it comes to developer events, usually bigger reveals are saved for their fans. If the news of the mobile game had come alongside say a Diablo 4 announcement, I think the reaction would have been quite different. A lot of their core audience are the ones who turn up to these live events, long term fans of Blizz’s titles.
The publisher of the mobile game is none other thanNetEase, who have had a long standing partnership working on bringing many games from Activision’s portfolio including Overwatch andWorld of Warcraftto China.
The mobile game helps Blizzard in reaching another bigger audience, having a chance to break into the mobile gaming world is quite lucrative with many other developers such as Bethesda withElder Scrolls Bladesalso moving in this direction.
Diablo Immortal is a mobile game that follows the well known series of games, an online action multiplayer RPG that allows players to play anywhere, anytime. The story is set during the events in between Diablo II: Lord of Destruction and Diablo III, setting up players to fight against the Lord of Terror and his minions in the aftermath of assumed dead Archangel Tyrael.
You can check out the trailer below which has already gained a large viewership has already racked up over 200k dislikes:
No release date has been revealed for Diablo Immortal as of yet but BlizzCon goers have already had a chance to play the demo. Diablo III Eternal Collection has just released on Nintendo Switch which joins current platforms PC, Playstation 4 and Xbox One. What’s your reaction to this news? Let us know in the comments below.
