Blizzard
It has been a rough couple of days for Blizzard and Diablo fans alike.
The Diablo franchise was hyped up going into BlizzCon 2018 and that left many fans excited to see where the series was headed to next. While fans received an answer to what’s next for the series it wasn’t necessarily what they wanted to hear.
The Diablo franchise is going mobile with the announcement of Diablo: Immortal which is game releasing exclusively for mobile devices and takes place during the time period between Diablo 2 and Diablo 3.
This announcement was met with severe backlash from fans which might stem more from the way it was announced more than anything. It hasn’t been pretty for either side as we have fans asking Blizzard if the game was an April Fool’s Joke and we have Blizzard asking if we own phones.
The two videos Blizzard released showing the game have been met with heavy dislike. If you want an idea of how fans are taking this just go and check out the ratio of likes to dislikes on the gameplay trailer and the announcement trailer as well as reading the comments.
Today Blizzard took to the Diablo 3 forums to let fans know that they are listening:
We want to start by saying we hear you.
Since the moment we stepped into the office on Monday, we have been discussing everything Diablo non-stop. We’re fully committed to listening and engaging—so please keep the constructive feedback coming. Our primary focus right now is poring over that feedback to inform internal discussions, and we’ll follow up with further thoughts as soon as we can.
The team is looking over all of the feedback and are actually encouraging fans to keep sending it. The message was met with a mixture of positive and negative responses which is to be expected since the wound is so fresh with the fanbase.
This looks to be the first step Blizzard is taking to repair the rift between the developer and fans. The Diablo subreddit is still in a state of chaos so it will probably take some time for that to cool down but it looks like Blizzard is taking the necessary steps to do so.
If you’re interested in pre-registering for Diablo: Immortal you can do so here. Blizzard has not yet announced a release date for the title.