Do I Even Like Diablo Anymore?

This is something of a counter-point to last week’s post where I noted that we were in an “Age of Diablo.”   Almost a golden age, really, what with being able to play various incarnations of the Diablo series while waiting for Diablo IV to come out later this year.  How much more Diablo do you want?

Enter The Butcher!

You would think, having put up such a post… and having been effusive about the series on multiple occasions, that I might have spent some time over the weekend… you know… actually playing some Diablo.

I was, after all, getting over a cold this past weekend, which was a perfect excuse to do nothing but sit around and play video games.  But did I play any Diablo?

Well, I did play a little bit of Diablo III on Friday evening, getting myself along to the end of Act I with my Season 28 character, yet another barbarian.  But I was not particularly enthused and I spent most of the rest of the weekend’s video game time playing WoW Classic and EVE Online.

Now, of course, MMORPGs have that whole sunk cost fallacy going for them, so it is hard to compete… but I am literally replaying old content in WoW Classic and was doing so during the EVE Online move op I wrote about yesterday… my time played in EVE is always under counted because I spend so much of it tabbed out and doing something else… so clearly I could have found time for Diablo, but just didn’t.

All of which got me to question whether or not I even like Diablo anymore?  Is it going the way of TorilMUD or EverQuest for me, a game that had a long past happy state that I am never going to relive, so it just exists as a reference point for posts about video game nostalgia and the good old days and whatever it is I have gotten up to here for the last sixteen or so years.

I mean, some of my early posts here were about EverQuest nostalgia, for a game that was all of seven years old at the time.  It is going to be 24 years old in about two weeks.

Some part of me longs to go play it, but some part of me longs to go play those other two titles as well, and that just isn’t going to happen.

It wasn’t as though playing through the story in Diablo III was bad.  The problem is that I have done it before, multiple times.  Many times.

Which led me around to thinking more about what it is I do like about the Diablo series.  Certainly the mood it conveys, and the simplicity of the game play.  Diablo III loses a bit on those fronts, being a little too well lit, a little too neon glowy at points, a little too much in the indirect lighting to get the mood thing on that the first two titles did so well.

Still, it kept me playing through back at launch, with the expansion, and through a few seasons, though not very many seasons.  Maybe that was too much.  There are a lot of games in my history that I have only played once or twice, where the story was good enough, but I didn’t really need to see if through again.

Or maybe I am just not in the mood.  I suppose the real test will be when Diablo IV comes out.  But I felt like I had to ask myself the question, even if I couldn’t really test it right now.  Some things just wear out by the residue of the old enthusiasm remains behind.

The Age of Diablo

It is 2023 and I am able to play on my modern-ish PC three generations of Diablo… four if you insist on counting Diablo Immoral… and we are waiting for a fifth generation of Diablo to be launched come June.

Seriously.  We will soon have all the Diablos available.

Over at GoG.com you can find the original Diablo in a form playable on modern PCs, which isn’t bad considering it came out 26 years ago.  It predates the launch of the Pentium II processor by 5 months.

Enter The Butcher!

When this playable version appears over on GoG.com back in 2019 I grabbed a copy right away and played through the game.  It felt very raw two decades down the road, yet you could still see the magic it kindled, the reason that people get excited whenever a new Diablo title is talked about.

Then of course, there is Diablo II Resurrected, the amazing remaster of the second entry in the series.  It is hard to explain just how much it felt like the original release back in 2000 when I first launched it and how startled I am every time I swap over to the original graphics mode… the fact that this is a feature is crazy greatness… and realize that somehow the updated graphic mesh in with my memories of the game so well that I accepted them as being authentic from the get go.

I don’t know how to explain how this is both NOT what the game looked like in 2000 and yet FEELS like the game felt in 2000.

At the Hellforge

I was honestly a little dubious about the remake at first, when it landed in beta.  But it quickly grew on me.  Vicarious Visions, the “nowhere close to Irvine” studio that did the remaster did a better job that we might have expected, especially given the fiasco that was Warcraft III Reforged.

Then there is Diablo III. As I mentioned in my post about the launch of Season 28, a bit of a troubled child of the franchise at launch, but things were sorted out and it has been the primary standard bearer for the franchise over the last decade.

Four players running in Diablo III

It doesn’t *feel* like its two predecessors in some essential way I am still working out… I’ve played all three now in the last three years, I should be able to figure that at some point… I think the lighting is part of it… but it is a solid ARPG title of its own accord and has found a way to keep fans engaged with the regular season mechanic that sees players roll fresh characters every so often to chase down specific goals and grab special cosmetic items and pets and achievements.  Not my cup of tea, not on a regular basis at least, but still solid in its way.

I suppose I will allow Diablo: Immortal into the club as well.  Despite its expected predatory monetization practices, if you can just play the game and steer clear of the cash shop, it does come across as a decent ARPG.

A tiny crusader slaying undead

It has a different “flavor” to it in some ways than the rest of the franchise, but it does capture the dark and brooding atmosphere at times and Blizzard did go and make it playable on the PC rather than just being a mobile only title.

Finally, we have Diablo IV coming up this year.  In fact, this month.  Early Access Open Beta or whatever terms they are using will land soon for those interested in getting an early look at the first 25 levels of the title.

Coming soon

So, at some point this month it will be entirely possible for somebody to play all of the flavors of Diablo in the same week.  And come June and the actual release, we will have five versions of Diablo to choose from spanning the 26 year history of the franchise.

I am trying to think if there are other long lived franchises that offer similar options.  Did they not remaster the Grand Theft Auto series at one point?

Blizzard Resurgent in Q3 2022

The Activision Blizzard Q3 2022 financial were delivered at the start of the week, but I had some much other stuff queued up that I am only getting to them now.  Also, the whole financials routine remains very low key because the company believes that the Microsoft acquisition means they don’t have to put in the effort for the public, just their new overlords.

Activision Blizzard

The overall company reported revenue of $1.78 billion, up from the $1.64 billion earned in Q1 2022, but still well off from the $2 billion a year ago in Q3 2021. Blizzard, once again, was not the problem this time around, with blame landing on “reduced engagement” with Call of Duty on the Activision side of the house.

Blizzard itself was up, ringing in $543 million in revenue for Q3 2022, up from the $401 million in Q2 2022 when Diablo Immortal gave them a boost, and the largest quarterly numbers in well over a year.

The company has the Diablo Immortal launch in China as well as the run up to and launch of Wrath of the Lich King Classic to help buoy its numbers, as well as pending anticipation for the Dragonflight expansion.

Blizzard highlights from the financials:

October 4 saw the global launch of Overwatch 2, with a free-to-play model designed to allow more people than ever before to experience the acclaimed team-based action game. Over 35 million people played the game in its first month, including many who were new to Overwatch. The expanded community is engaging deeply, with average daily player numbers for the first month of Overwatch 2 more than double that of its acclaimed predecessor. Player investment is also off to a strong start, positioning the title to be a meaningful contributor to Blizzard’s business in the fourth quarter. Blizzard is looking forward to delivering an ambitious slate of regular seasonal updates for Overwatch 2 that introduce new characters, maps and modes, including the game’s much-anticipated PvE mode planned for 2023.

In the Warcraft franchise, the September 26 release of World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King® Classic contributed to a strong increase in WoW reach and engagement at the end of the third quarter. On November 28, Blizzard will release World of Warcraft: Dragonflight, the innovative next expansion for the modern game, as the team increases the cadence of WoW content for the community. Elsewhere in the Warcraft franchise, mobile title Warcraft: Arclight Rumble is progressing well through regional testing.

On mobile, Diablo Immortal expanded its global reach with a strong launch in China in July. The title reached the top of the download charts and has ranked in the top 10 grossing mobile games in China since launch. Around the world, Diablo Immortal is being supported with major new content, features, and events aimed at keeping the community engaged. Meanwhile, work on Diablo IV and its substantial ongoing post-launch content continues to progress very well ahead of its launch planned for 2023.

Blizzard’s third quarter segment revenue grew double-digits year-over-year against a year ago quarter that included the release of Diablo II: Resurrected. The third quarter benefited from the recent launch of Diablo Immortal, while Warcraft franchise net bookings were stable year-over-year. Segment operating margin was lower year-over-year, due to marketing investment to support the strong release slate and the shift in the mix of business in the quarter.

Currently, we have licensing agreements with a third party covering the publication of several Blizzard titles in China. These agreements, which contributed approximately 3% of Activision Blizzard’s consolidated net revenues in 2021, expire in January 2023. We are in discussions regarding the renewal of these agreements, but a mutually-satisfactory deal may not be reached. We continue to see substantial long-term growth opportunities for our business in the country. The co-development and publishing of Diablo Immortal is covered by a separate long-term agreement.

So they should have some good news coming in Q4, with Overwatch 2 and Dragonflight launching, which will help boost numbers even further.  Quarters with a WoW expansion launch tend to be peak financial moments.

Even MAUs have climbed up.  They keep an eye on that over at Massively OP but, as both I and they agree, MAUs are still a bullshit metric used to obstifcate what is really going on with titles in the company.  MAUs may have hit 31 million in Q3 2022, but a subscribed WoW player and a free Diablo Immortal player have considerably different effects on the company’s actual bottom line.

Then there is that last paragraph from the Blizzard notes about the licensing agreements in China, which highlights the problem with MAUs.  In Q3 2022 they were up, no doubt in large part due to the launch of Diablo Immortal in China, but the China market contributes just 3% to the company’s revenue.

Remember that.  Blizzard beshat itself over the Blitzchung incident to make sure they held onto that 3%.  Granted, we have learned since then that kow towing to China was only one of their sins.  But the upshot it that any MAU counts that include China are a doubly garbage numbers.

And all the while Activision Blizzard is whistling a happy tune about being purchased by Microsoft, something that is not a done deal yet.

Related:

• Activision Blizzard – Q3 2022 Financials
• MOP – Q3 20200 Financials Review

Blizzard Gets a Boost in Q2 2022 from Diablo Immortal

It is time once again for the Activision Blizzard quarterly financials and once again they are playing the “we’re being acquired so we don’t have to answer questions” card, just dropping the numbers on the investor relations site and calling it a day.

Activision Blizzard

Whatever.  Bobby Kotick is going to get even richer out of this.  There is no justice, but we were already pretty sure of that.

The overall company reported revenue of $1.64 billion, down from the $1.77 billion earned in Q1 2022, and even further down from the $2.3 billion a year ago in Q2 2021, but this time around it wasn’t Blizzard dragging down the team… not as much as last quarter at least.

Blizzard revenue in Q2 2022 was $401 million.

For once of late that was an uptick, as Blizz brought in just $274 million in Q1 2022.

Still, that was down from $419 million in Q4 2021, the $493 million posted in Q3 2021, the $433 posted in Q2 2021, and the $483 million posted in Q1 2021.

As for news about Blizzard, which is the only part of the company that I can be bothered to care about, the report had this to say:

The June launch of Diablo Immortal™, a deep and authentic Diablo experience designed for the mobile platform, marked the start of a rollout of substantial content across Blizzard’s key franchises. Diablo Immortal received high player ratings on mobile app stores around the world, and reached the top of the game download charts in more than 100 countries and regions following its launch. Over half of the game’s player accounts to date are new to Blizzard. The game ranked in the top-10 grossing games in U.S. app stores for the month of June.

Diablo IV, the next-generation installment in the genre-defining series, is planned for launch on PC and console in 2023. The title will support cross-play and cross-progression across platforms, and is designed to be the foundation for an engaging live service, providing ongoing storytelling and new content for many years to come.

In the Warcraft franchise, Blizzard plans to deliver an unprecedented level of WoW content in the coming months, with Wrath of the Lich King Classic launching on September 26 and World of Warcraft: Dragonflight, the innovative next expansion for the modern game, slated for release later in the year. Blizzard is committed to growing its development resources to meet and exceed its community’s expectations, and at the end of the second quarter significantly bolstered its World of Warcraft team through the acquisition of Boston-based studio Proletariat.

During the second quarter, Blizzard unveiled Warcraft: Arclight Rumble™, an action-packed mobile strategy game that gives both new and existing fans an entirely different way to experience the Warcraft universe. Public testing of the game is underway in select regions.

Overwatch 2 is planned to launch in early access on PC and console on October 4. With a free-to-play live service model designed to provide frequent and substantial seasonal updates, this launch kicks off the next chapter for the acclaimed team-based action game.

Blizzard’s second quarter segment revenue and operating income were lower year-over-year but higher versus the first quarter. World of Warcraft net bookings declined versus a year-ago quarter that included the launch of Burning Crusade™ Classic, offsetting year-over-year growth for Hearthstone® and the contribution from the June launch of Diablo Immortal.

The one other thing that Diablo Immortal did was revive the long sinking Monthly Active Users number, the BS metric that Blizzard pulled out when reporting WoW subscribers became a litany of woe.  But they couldn’t even keep that metric up, and it has been in a steady decline since 2018, as noted over at Massively OP.   But Q2 2022 saw the MAU finally rise to 27 million, up from the 22 million in Q1, the nadir of the MAU reporting.

So Blizz has had some luck with Diablo Immortal, but they really need a strong Q3 with Overwatch 2 and Wrath of the Lich King Classic as well as a big Q4 with the WoW Dragonflight expansion to get back on track.

Related:

• Activision Blizzard – Q2 2022 Financial Report
• MOP – Activision-Blizzard Q2 2022

Friday Bullet Points about Blizzard and BlizzCon and Overwatch and Other Items

Activision Blizzard remains in the limbo between its scandals and its future as a wholly owned subsidiary of Microsoft.  In this interim period, Bobby Kotick remains firmly at the helm and the company has to keep making money or they might pooch the deal.  And, while we get abbreviated quarterly financials from the company, they still have to keep enticing us so we have gotten some news from Blizzard.

• BlizzCon in 2023

There was an interview in the LA Times with Mike Ybarra, head of Blizzard that contained some interesting tidbits.  It is behind a paywall, but other sites have picked up the stories, so they get links instead.  One of the things that came up was the return of BlizzCon.

BlizzCon in Blue

Blizzard would like to go back to having a live BlizzCon event, starting back up in 2023 when, presumably, the Microsoft acquisition is over and some bad actors in the executive suite at Activision have been paid off and sent on their way.

• Immortal Defense

In the same LA Times article Ybarra went to bat to defend the predatory monetization practices in Diablo Immortal, telling the press that 99.5% of the game is free to play and that the paid part is in the end game.

My most charitable thought on that was maybe he hasn’t played like… a minute into the game? Because that is about how long it takes before it starts hitting you up to buy things.

It will just take a minute of play to show you

Anyway, this did not cement much credibility for the head of Blizzard with those who know the truth… but it is always spin and disinformation that wins with those unfamiliar with the situation.

• Blizz Buys Out the Proletariat

The proles will now be a wholly owned subsidiary of Blizzard, which is an oddly appropriate frame for the company’s labor relations.  Proletariat is/was an independent game studio that produced the title Spellbreak.  Blizzard has bought them to boost the workforce focused on developing content for World of Warcraft.

Blizz needs WoW to perform, because even Diablo Immortal bringing in a million dollars a day doesn’t match Azeroth’s ability to bring in a billion dollars annually as recently as 2020.  Even Ybarra said in that LA Times interview that Blizzard needs to increase their content output, and Blizzard has had success with groups outside of Irvine reviving their products.  Diablo II Resurrected is a prime example of that.

In a no-doubt related story, Spellbreak will be shutting down.

• Blizz Spending Money on Making More Developers
  

Also announced was Blizzard’s plan to spend some of its $250 million diversity fund to start a 12-week program called Level Up U with a goal of creating more full-time game developers.

As with the above item, this is no doubt related to Blizzard’s desire to increase content output in order to sustain its bottom line.  I have opinions about “more” being “better” and “n+1” being able to increase output in any sort of predictable, linear fashion, but if you have the budget and some patience, you can make something happen.

• WoW Freebies on Prime Gaming

Speaking of needing WoW to perform, Blizz is pushing promotions for the game as well.  I brought this up somewhere else, but I figured it deserved a mention on

its own.  So now, if you are an Amazon Prime subscriber and you go to Prime Gaming, you can get some free transmog items over the next few weeks.

Just link your account to claim

They aren’t great transmog items.  At least I don’t think they are.  And they certainly are not new ones.  They are three of the head transmog items that have been in the Blizz store for ages now.

The trio of head gear

Two out of three of those are literally vying for the ugliest head transmog items ever in my book, and the third only excels in comparison to the other two.  I remember these landing in the shop and thinking they were garbage and I would never buy them.  But now I can own all three for free I guess.

I found this worth noting because, first, it is not something Blizz has done before with WoW.  And, second, the Prime Gaming give-aways tend to be the domain of free to play titles, with League of Legends and World of Tanks/Warships often in the lineup, along with online games without a subscription fee, like Grand Theft Auto V Online.

• Warcraft III Reforged Might Be Finally Ready

Maybe?  The early 2020 launch of Warcraft III Reforged was a master class in how to piss off the core audience for your nostalgia focused project.  At launch it lacked critical feature parity, contained onerous new agreement to make sure nobody would create another DOTA mod that Blizzard didn’t fully own, and forced all owners of the original title to upgrade to the new version, basically stealing functionality from their installed base.

Blizzard acknowledged their complete screw up by offering a no questions asked refund policy for those of us who pre-ordered a copy before it was clear what a fiasco the whole thing was.

But Blizz didn’t kill the project.  They kept working on it.  And now, two and a half years after it launched, the game finally has ranked play and leader boards.  They are finally achieving parity with a 2003 title!

• Overwatch Surges on XBox

NPD put out their June sales numbers and Overwatch jumped up to fifth place in sales according to their numbers.

June 2022 – NPD’s Top 20 US Video Games by Revenue

I tend to be dubious of NPD.  As I often noted back in the SuperData Research era, their numbers are US only, heavily influenced by physical retail sales, with only some digital sales being counted, and very console platform focused, as well as focusing only on “Premium” games, whatever that means.  I used to compare/contrast NPD and SuperData to demonstrate how their collection methods yielded very different results.

So the June overall number reflects strong sales on XBox and PlayStation, where the title hit 3rd and 7th position respectively.

As for why Overwatch jumped in June, the following was noted:

Overwatch returned to the top 20 best-selling titles chart for the first time since October 2019, ranking 5th overall. This jump was driven by the release of the Overwatch 2 Beta on June 28th.

So, within the scope of what NPD tracks, Overwatch has a very good June… or last three days of June, if sales jumped on the 28th.

• Heroes of the Storm Officially Done

Finally, this is the end of the tale for the long troubled title Heroes of the Storm.  July 8th was the seven year anniversary of the title’s launch and Blizzard marked the moment with an update about its future status.

Heroes of the Storm from early 2015

It isn’t getting shut down.  Blizzard does try to keep its products alive and available in some form long past the time when most other companies would bother.  But eventually the new content and regular updates tap gets turned off.

And so it goes for HotS, which will join Star Craft and Star Craft II in the Blizzard maintenance mode club.  The lights will stay on and the store will remain there to take your money, but there are no new features or heroes planned going forward.

So it goes.  Another bullet point post is done.

Josh Strife Hayes and The Immoral Design of Diablo Immortal

Diablo Immortal has been out and about for more than two weeks now and has gotten a lot of flak for its monetization.

The push starts small, but it starts right away

I made my own post about the game after playing it for a little over two hours and pretty much walked away from it.  It is uninstalled and I have no plans to go back to it.  I certainly didn’t have any plans to post about it again.

And then I watched the Josh Strife Hayes video about the game and thought I ought to post that as well.

First, this video has a pretty good and detailed look into the monetization scheme for Diablo Immortal.  I didn’t have the patience to go this deep, so it is nice to have a video example that does go far and explains clearly what is going on.

Second, it is actually a reasonable look at the game play of the game, which has its good points.  JSH does see some good in the game and he is always willing to acknowledge when something is done right.  That is part of why I enjoy his videos.

Third, while he likes the basic game, he also manages to pick out almost every issue with the port to windows, beyond just the mobile terminology that is still in the game, that bugged me, and even clarifies one or two problems I saw but couldn’t quite nail down.  But it solidifies what I wrote myself, that Diablo Immortal on Windows is not the solid, polished Blizzard title we have come to expect over the years.

Overall, worth a view if you want a dive into the game and a reminder of what happens to your reputation if you place it in the hands of somebody who doesn’t share your values. (Cue jokes about Blizzard values.)

Blizzard has had to go out of its way to state that Diablo IV will NOT be monetized the way Diablo Immortal has been.  It doesn’t matter that the scheme was the model NetEase uses.  It was launched under the Blizzard banner.  The Blizzard logo is all over it, so Blizzard owns it.  They don’t get to say, “It wasn’t us.”

Diablo Immortal on Windows

The TL;DR – It’s kind of okay, until it starts asking you for money.

If this were a $20 indie title with no cash shop, people would be praising it.

But it isn’t.  Instead it is a mobile title ported to Windows from a company that has previously prided itself on polish and who has set the benchmark for ARPG titles.  And while it is free to start playing, that state only lasts for so long.

Granted, it is still in beta, but the cash shop is fully up and running and, as I have said before, if you are doing that you are effectively live and should be treated as such.

Diablo Immortal on Windows

As such, there are still some issue and oddities that are no doubt artifacts of translating the game from the phone to the PC.  I keep getting told to tap on things and I don’t have a touch screen.

Tap? How? Also, clicking doesn’t seem to work reliably, or the hot spot is off or something

It also feels oddly sterile for some reason, the way Minecraft Dungeons did, where there is nothing particularly wrong with the title, I just don’t feel compelled to keep playing.  It has the sort of vibe you might get from a low budget clone of a Diablo title that repurposed the artwork and some ideas.

NetEase?  Is that you?

So things look familiar but don’t always feel right.

Kill streak

And the world is a bit weird.  You see other people on your server.

Other players with me

But out in the world things can seem oddly out of sync.  You’ll go fight an overland boss and see other people obviously fighting their own version of the boss but visibly attacking nothing from your perspective.

But if you’re dying for a freebie ARPG clicker, it isn’t bad.   And it has the usual online things to try and keep you coming back every day.

A reward for your first kill of the day

As long as it is free everything is fine.  And hell, even early on when it is offering you some low price items, it isn’t a big deal.

Spending some beginner money on a beginner pack for 800% EXTRA VALUE

Even with the one offer only, huge value pressure I was able to say “no” to that, though the fact that the game was very insistent on telling me about this offer was probably a sign.

Okay, game, can I just hang out with Juicybumbum for a moment in peace?

But it does get more persistent as you progress.  There are other items, a battle pass, and the whole “you could spend over $100,000 to max out a character” aspect of the game, which would really tick me off if the game was strong and compelling enough that I wanted to keep playing it.  But after a couple of hours playing over the last week… Diablo Immortal isn’t that.

I suppose, intellectually I appreciate a game I can put down at a moment’s notice and not feel deprived.  But playing… and paying… lives in the emotional part of my brain.  A game that is easy to put down is also easy to simply not pick up again.

So, barring any new controversy or big change, this will probably be my one post about playing Diablo Immortal.  It is okay, and not much more.

Others those, who have found it compelling enough to go deep on… well, they are kind of pissed.  Carbot has a video about the game already that, in his usual style, sums up the feeling of the masses.

Meanwhile, others have written more about the game than I will, so it is a chance for me to be community oriented and link out to others.  Go me.

Related:

• Massively OP – Diablo Immortal launches on mobile and PC today with hellacious microtransactions
• Massively OP – First impressions of Diablo Immortal on PC
• Massively OP – Diablo Immortal players estimate being fully geared up will cost $110,000 in microtransactions
• WCCFTech – Diablo Immortal Players Could Spend over $100,000 to Max Out a Single Character
• Blizzard Watch – How does playing Diablo Immortal on mobile devices compare to playing it on PC?
• Blizzard Watch – How to play Diablo Immortal without spending a dime
• PC Gamer – Diablo Immortal is a game designed to exploit your love of Diablo
• PC Gamer – Diablo Immortal microtransactions have sparked a brutal backlash
• Massively OP – The Daily Grind: What counts as ‘gear’ in MMORPGs?
• MMO Fallout – Wyatt Cheng Lied, Very Simply
• Tales of the Aggronaut – Diablo Immortal
• Blessing of Kings – First Impressions of Diablo Immortal

Diablo Immortal Launches Today on Mobile and Enters Beta on Windows Tomorrow

I guess I have to stop yanking Blizzard’s chain about not shipping Diablo Immortal after having a playable demo back at BlizzCon 2018.  That “Don’t you guys have phones?” line seems as old as “You think you do, but you don’t” these days.

But today we get to see Diablo Immortal at last.  On our phones at least.  It was supposed to be tomorrow, but hey, early release for mobile.

Phone Diablo

I actually saw Mister “Don’t you guys have phones?” Wyatt Cheng on Twitter saying he was pre-loading the PC version last week, which I first thought was odd because his profile says he is the Game Director for Diablo Immortal, so I am pretty sure he had access already.  And then I went to do the same and was a bit confused.

I mean, first I had to remember my Blizzard password since I haven’t logged into the launcher for about six months. (Hint: everything says it needs an update.)  And, after looking that up, I remained confused because it said I could only download the beta.

The download option says Beta

It took me a minute to remember that today tomorrow is really only the live launch of the mobile version.  The PC version is just going into an open beta of sorts.  Also, the PC version is really only on Windows, so should probably specify because some people do have Macs.  Not enough to keep the Lord of the Rings Online Mac client viable, but EVE Online did just go back to supporting a native Mac client.  So somebody out there is still using a Mac for some games.

Anyway, I should be a little less nitpicky and a little more appreciative that they put it on Windows at all, because that certainly raises the likelihood of me actually playing it.  I, too, pre-loaded the PC beta in order to give it a try… which is good, because it is tiny to the point of being unplayable on my iPhone 8.

A tiny crusader slaying undead

The early reviews seem to find the game good, but the business model sketchy.

Great ARPG-on-phone production values hampered by terrible economic decisions.

–Ars Technica summary

There is, of course, the usual Blizzard global launch schedule for its mostly global launch, complete with time zone map, to show you exactly when you can start playing the game on your PC… since it is already on your phone.

The world wide launch tomorrow

7pm in Paris seems a reasonable kick off time for Europe.  I won’t be playing at 10am Pacific time tomorrow, but I have the option.  We will see how “beta” the PC beta is tomorrow.

Related:

• Ars Technica – Diablo Immortal Impressions

Blizzard Declines Hard in Q1 2022 While Diablo Immortal Finally Gets a Launch Date

Activision Blizzard pushed out their Q1 2022 financials at 7:30am Eastern Time yesterday which, while it isn’t the Friday at 4pm routine, still strikes me as an hour suited to attracting less attention or getting bad news out of the way quickly.  And Elon Musk promptly buried that news by buying Twitter.  So there you go.

The date was a bit earlier than I expected as well, the pattern generally being that one gets the announcement in the first week of the second month of the quarter.  But I guess if you aren’t going to do anything fancy you can get things out more quickly.

And Activision Blizzard isn’t doing anything fancy because of the Microsoft acquisition.  They don’t have to impress analysts with a cool slide deck or an engaging conference call or throw out a buzzword salad because Microsoft has said they are going to pay $95 a share when the deal closes, which puts a pretty hard ceiling on the share price.

Of course, Activision Blizzard also has to not screw things up between now and when the deal closes because I am sure the contract for the acquisition is miles long and contains many provisions where by Microsoft can pay less or walk away if Bobby Kotick and company degrade the value of the company in any substantial way… or more so than they have already in any case.

This is the part where I tell you that they aren’t doing very well on that front at the moment.

The overall company reported revenue of $1.77 billion, down from $2.28 billion a year ago in Q1 2021 as both the Activision and Blizzard portions of the company slipped hard so far in 2022.

King, however, was up.  Candy Crush Saga abides while Call of Duty and World of Warcraft fall.

I am only really interested in the Blizzard corner of the business, so how badly did they tank in Irvine?

Blizzard revenue in Q1 2022 was $274 million.

For comparison, Blizz brought in $419 million in Q4 2021, which itself was down noticeably from the $493 million posted in Q3.  That was also off from the $433 posted in Q2 and the $483 million posted in Q1.

The holiday season was off for Blizz because they had nothing new to sell, but the new year was brutal, as even the low point of 2021 looks pretty sweet when compared to how 2022 is breaking for the division.

To go along with that, the Blizzard Monthly Active User count went down another 2 million users in Q1 2022.  Over at Massively OP they have been tracking the user count decline, which went from 38 million users in Q1 2018 to just 22 million users in Q1 2022.  Even during the peak COVID lockdown Blizzard’s user numbers were flat.  Now we’re closing in on losing half of their user count in four years.

So not happy times down in Irvine.

What did they have to say about it?  It was the usual hand waving about the product cycle of World of Warcraft and promises of better things to come.

Blizzard’s first quarter financial results were lower year-over-year, primarily reflecting product cycle timing for the Warcraft® franchise. Blizzard’s teams reached important milestones across its key franchises in recent months, and the second quarter represents the start of a period of planned substantial releases across Blizzard’s portfolio.

Blizzard continues to work on numerous new experiences to delight and expand the Warcraft community. The newest Hearthstone® expansion, Voyage to the Sunken City™, launched on April 12. Blizzard’s teams are working on major new content for World of Warcraft® including World of Warcraft: Dragonflight, the innovative upcoming expansion for the modern game, and World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King® Classic. Blizzard is also planning to unveil more details about its first Warcraft mobile experience in the coming weeks.

Diablo® Immortal™ will launch on June 2, 2022 in most regions around the world, with the remaining regions in Asia-Pacific gaining access a few weeks later. Over 30 million people have already pre-registered for the game. In addition to offering a deep, authentic, and free-to-play Diablo experience on the mobile platform, Diablo Immortal will also be available free-to-play on Windows® PC, initially as an open beta starting on June 2, 2022, and will support cross-play and cross-progression.

Development on Diablo 4 and Overwatch® 2 is also progressing well. Company-wide internal testing of Diablo 4 is underway, and external testing of the player-versus-player mode of Overwatch 2 begins tomorrow, April 26, 2022.

This is a reminder, once again, as to how important World of Warcraft is to the company and its bottom line.  Nothing delivers as much revenue as reliably as WoW, so the company is chained to it.  They can never walk away from WoW as it keeps the lights on and the paychecks flowing while the company farts around trying to create a new cash spigot from one of its other franchises.

So the forward looking good news was about WoW Dragonflight and Wrath of the Lich King Classic and the recent Hearthstone expansion and some empty milestones related to the Diablo and Overwatch franchises that won’t be anywhere close to launch in 2022.  I think they would have pre-orders open if they had any confidence in a 2022 release.  Remember how far in advance Shadowlands pre-orders started?

The one release with a hard date, the one new thing that Blizzard has lined up to sell in 2022, is Diablo Immortal.

I have been more than a bit dismissive of Diablo Immortal since it was announced at BlizzCon 2018, referring to it as Candy Crush Diablo at the time.  But it was primarily the tone deaf aspect of the announcement… gather all your PC and console fans in a big room and tell them you’re launching a mobile game… that struck me.  How do you get that so wrong?  The phrase “Don’t you guys have phones?” will live on for a decade or more due to that event.

And, the other thing I have harped on about Diablo Immortal was its long development time.  They had a playable demo version at BlizzCon 2018.  Here we are in 2022 and we’re just now getting a release date.  Diablo Immortal will finally launch on June 2, 2022.  How does this take so long?

As it turns out, Blizzard seemed to get it that their core player base was not on mobile, so they ported Diablo Immortal so we could play it on PC as well.

That is actually a pretty impressive demonstration of the company actually trying to listen and respond to user feedback.

I am not sure I would have delayed the mobile release for too long, and technically PC users are only getting access to the open beta of Diablo Immortal on PC on June 2nd, but getting it at all on PC was completely unexpected for me.  (System requirements for phone and PC are up now.)

Pretty exciting stuff in that.  But is it enough?

I am going to guess that the Diablo Immortal release date, with PC only in open beta, is primarily in place to shore up expected ongoing declining numbers for Blizzard.  They need people to get in and spend on that cash shop.

After that, though, 2022 is looking light.  Wrath of the Lich King Classic could easily be a Q3 2022 launch, which would carry the company another quarter, but I am not really feeling like WoW Dragonflight is going to make Q4 2022, which would make for another light holiday season.  And, as I noted above, WoW is what makes or breaks Blizzard.  They need players subscribed.

There we go.

I will say that at least Activision Blizzard knows how to mitigate bad news.  They hit us with the bad news in the earnings announcement, then turned around and gave us the Diablo Immortal announcement with the good news about it being available on PC.  Going through the gaming news headlines, there are bland entries about financials and excited ones about the ship date, PC compatibility, cross platform play, and all of that.  Diablo Immortal on PC will dominate the news cycle compared to the financials.

They did not, pulling a random example out of the air, give us a bunch of bad news on a Friday afternoon and then opt to let it fester for two weeks with a vague promise of good news to come.

You may not like Activision Blizzard, but they know what they are doing in many regards… though that is sometimes the problem as well.

Related:

• Activision Blizzard – Q1 2022 Financials Announcement
• Activision Blizzard –Diablo Immortal Announcement
• Battle.net – Diablo Immortal Information Page
• Massively OP – Activision-Blizzard Q1 2022

Diablo Immortal Possibly Set for Launch by June 30th

Blizzard is going to do something in 2022 that it hasn’t done in quite a while… it will ship a new game.

Phone Diablo

Diablo Immortal is reported up on the various app stores with a text preview available.  Here is the lead-in from the Apple Store:

The Lord of Terror rises again! This time he’s bringing his limitless power to your iPhone and iPad in Diablo Immortal—the mobile debut of the celebrated action-RPG franchise.

Diablo Immortal™ is a brand-new game in Blizzard Entertainment’s genre-defining action role-playing game series set between the events of Diablo® II: Lord of Destruction® and Diablo III®. Explore the nightmarish realm of Sanctuary like never before, now a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) where angels and demons wage an endless war over dominion of the mortal realm. Join forces with countless other players on an epic quest to collect the shattered fragments of the corrupted Worldstone and prevent the Lord of Terror’s return. Fans of Diablo and new players alike will embark on an adventure across a vast open world where they will clash with armies of demons, collect epic loot, and gain unimaginable power.

Well, “brand-new” for specific definitions of term I suppose.  There was a playable demo back at BlizzCon 2018, which was also the scene of the “Don’t you guys have phones?” fiasco where the core PC and console fans were present in the audience and… well… they were not expecting a mobile game, that is for sure.  Talk about subverting expectations.

Over in the Apple Store you can… uh… pre-order the free to play app.

Is it really a pre-order if it is free?

There was an image going around online from the Apple Store that said the expected date for the launch was June 30th, though that appears to have been removed since the image was taken.  (This was later explained to be a placeholder for the final date.)

Backing that date up were past Blizzard plans from the Q2 2021 report that said the title was planned for the first half of 2022.  June 30th is the last possible moment to make that first half of the year goal, so we might even get it earlier.

Currently the official Blizzard site for the game doesn’t say anything and is still referencing beta.

As for what you get when you click the GET button to “pre-order,” well… it is just a marketing pitch for the game with some images that might be screen shots.  You can see it all here in a browser.

Now will it run on my aging iPad Air 2?  We’ll have to wait and see.