So now the clock turns on Diablo IV

 And the wheels turn on the Last Chance

Diablo Immortal has finally arrived and caused a much bigger splash then I ever expected if I'm being fully honest with you. I always expected Diablo Immortal to be one of those games that you see blink in and out of existence for a split of a second, active for a summer and then shut down before it's first anniversary because of lack of interest, the sort of tile that becomes a footnote in somebody else's 'series retrospective' video. But it would seem that I was woefully misjudging the impact it was carrying behind its one-two-punch because the rest of the world just can't stop talking about what a landmark moment this is for Blizzard as a company and mobile games overall. It marks an absolute lie, as a game sold on the heart of it being fair and equitable to non-paying customers, only for a technicality allowing the team to sell power directly to it's consumers through the gem-buying storefront. It is a capitalistic hellhole run by the biggest whales who feed off the little non-paying plankton for whatever sustenance they can before the F2P players reach the end of their masochism sticks and move onto the next F2P gaming ecosystem that treats them like human waste. But in the eyes of Blizzard it was a success.

Yes, Diablo Immortal is one of the worst user-rated games of all time, something which isn't at all related in the reviewer score because review copies of the game issued and judged on a version of the game without the money store turned on, but even then- it has been a cultural touchstone. People have talked about it, which means people have played it, which means whales have flocked to it, which means that Diablo Immortal has made enough money to keep it's lights on for the first year at least. Now they can go through their well-laid-out-in-advance plan to slowly pull back on the absolute deluge of Pay to Win systems so that they can go "Sorry, we didn't know that people liked to play their games without spending their live savings every thirty minutes just to stay competitive!" and they can try and farm the good press points that generates once they're praised for flipping the switch they've had ready months before launch. We've seen it before and we will see it all again.

Which brings us to Diablo IV, a game with the gall to show itself off and announce a release window just a week or two after Immortal has scourged the earth before it. There's definitely some level of bravado involved with a decision like that and no doubt Immortal was pushed into such a time frame to try and score as much money and press, good or bad, that it could before 4 dropped like a reset switch and reformatted the brains of fans. But the question that really should be on everyone's lips right now is whether or not a company that allowed Diablo Immortal to exist with their brand's name on the box is the sort of company who is going to make the best out of Diablo IV? Or is Immortal the prelude to a game which is likely going to be a lot less blatant, but no less insidious in the manner the team go about staging its monetary systems?

And yes, I acknowledge well the much repeated talking point that 'Diablo Immortal wasn't made by the same team yada yada', but that isn't the point here. Diablo Immortal was greenlit and approved by the same people who are overseeing the production elements of Diablo IV. The same eyes that looked over everything that Immortal was doing and put their thumbs up to say "This is okay" is judging the design elements of IV to make sure it lives up to their standards. And if those standards are 'money hungry blood sucker game that exists for the motto: Here for a good time not a long time', then it behoves us to be forewarned about what might be heading our way before that game hits the digital shelves. Oh and for the record; I absolutely blame the Immortal team for everything that has gone wrong with that game. Either they've planned meticulously for all this backlash and their proceeding apology tour to try and have their cake and eat it for scamming their audience and getting the good karmic points after reversing course; or the team are so utterly incompetent that they really thought a game with over 20 in-game currencies, and which loot-box-ifies random dungeons, isn't going to become a pay to win hellhole within five minutes. Either way, they're not a team fit to be making anything else in the gaming world without totally new and stringent oversight.

During the Xbox/Bethesda Conference we got a chance to really take a look at Diablo 4 once again, this time apparently running of the Series X, and it looks spectacular. Obviously. I can't get over the visceral nature of the combat nor the spot-on mood of the setting and ambient atmospheric touches to the visual and sound design or the squelch of the bigger monster as they pop into puddles of blood. It's one of the reasons why I think Diablo has maintained it's spot as the best ARPG of it's field despite POE surpassing it in all manners related to actual gameplay. These games just feel right, and this one feels even more right than that! The final member of the base release classes was revealed with the Necromancer, who I'm going to have to prevent myself from playing because I'm almost always a necromancer in these games, and now all we have to do it wait for that 2023 release window to come to us. Then we can finally dive into all the new open world with it's random events, world bosses, and semi-MMO connected world design.

Or at least that would be all we have to wait for. But unfortunately the bad taste of Immortal left in our mouth mandates that we must also remain vigilant for what is going to happen with Diablo IV, because the law of common business sense makes it so. Are we really supposed to believe that all the money that Immortal made ripping of it's consumers isn't going to affect Diablo IV's design in the slightest? The developers are begging us to believe that over twitter, but the director of Immortal claimed the very same thing in the lead-up to that game. As it turns out he misled us through a technicality, and right now the Diablo IV team are telling us everything except "You can't buy any gameplay effecting items in the cash shop." Why not? Is it because they're hoping to wiggle by on the 'technicality' clause again?

At the end of the day, Diablo IV and the discourse around it is the consequence of a company who has killed itself and just doesn't realise yet. Building an empire on the back of player trust and that utterly cutting all that off in a single fell swoop has left people feeling on-edge and antsy to the point where they can't trust a single word out of Blizzard's mouth. (Very much the same sort of reputation that Bethesda is heading towards if it doesn't nail it with Starfield.) They can show us hours of gameplay with content that is markedly better than Immortal, which was only an average ARPG at best I might add, (I literally don't understand people who think it would be a brilliant game without the microtransactions. It's utterly barren of challenge until the paywall hits.) but none of that is going to matter if the world doesn't believe they're rich enough to wring the sort of fun out of the game that they're looking for.

And so the clocks turn on Diablo 4, as the team have to really sit back and wonder if this is really the game they're selling or if they maybe need to make some adjustments to the premium currency systems that the game already has ready. Because make no mistake, they are waiting to catch us in the bear trap. Immortal is the practice run for what is supposed to be a more subtle and artful con game in IV; but I wonder if even their own predictions foresaw just how hated Immortal would become in it's brief time available. If I were Blizzard, I would mark well the backlash and take to heart the excuse that 'it's just a mobile game' doesn't exist in my repertoire anymore. I would call this Blizzard's last chance, but the truth is that they spent that chance long ago; this is just the flailing of a diseased beast which once resembled a storied game company, now languishing in a puddle of it's own ignominy.