Kotaku - Jason Schreier on "The Past, Present, and Future of Diablo:"
https://kotaku.com/the-past-present-and-future-of-diablo-1830593195- 11 anonymous sources, past and present, from Blizzard talked to Jason, over the years.
- Sources have given information about Diablo projects (cancelled, ongoing, etc); Activision; Blizzard; and whatnot.
- Around late 2013 to early 2014, Team 3 (the team behind Diablo) finished up Diablo 3: Reaper of Souls (which was beloved by fans, fixing a lot of D3 base's issues).
- Team 3 planned a 2nd expansion, but it was cancelled.
- Their bosses wanted Diablo 4 (Diablo IV).
- A lot of that team was not happy about this.
- Some of Team 3 was moved to another project w/ Blizzard, left the company, or stuck around to work on Diablo 4.
- One version of Diablo 4 being worked on was code-named Hades.
- Hades was an over-the-shoulder ARPG like that of Dark Souls (and not an isometric ARPG like D3).
- At some point, it was even thought they would not even brand this game as a Diablo game b/c it was not like Diablo in so many ways.
- Team 3 got split again; some moved on, some left, some stuck around.
- Team 3 that stuck around, they either worked on D3: Rise of the Necromancer DLC or a new project code-name Fenris.
- Fenris is, right now still, the current incarnation of Diablo 4 that is still in development.
- Fenris is also said to be very dark and a lot more like Diablo 2, in terms of the gothic and dark aspects of the art-work & characters.
- Plan for Fenris is not to be cartoony in any shape or fashion.
- Fenris is also said to have social and MMO aspects, such as strikes like Destiny 2 and instances like WoW.
- They were supposed to have a demo ready for D4 by May (2018), but didn't.
- Some of the development team said D4 was supposed to at the least be teased at BlizzCon, but that didn't happen.
- Developers not with D4's team said it was never planned for D4 at BlizzCon to be there in any form.
- One of the theories why it wasn't announced: b/c Titan MMO was announced and never released; and that specter still haunts them.
- Also, it doesn't help that StarCraft: Ghosts is another one that was announced and also never released.
- Some Blizzard vets wanted to so something different and/or were burnt out on doing big 7-10 year games, so they are at a new department called "Incubation."
- Wyatt Chang is one of those and is lead on Diablo: Immortal w/ NetEase.
- Diablo 3 was released in China as F2P and has made a killing in their market w/ MTX's.
- Some dev's have said that China really wants this game and that it's really built for them.
- Blizzard is looking to expand games globally across all markets now, which is why Diablo: Immortal is also coming to the West.
- Incubation is also working on a Warcraft-based Pokeman Go style mobile game.
- In Spring 2018, CFO Amrita Ahuja decided that they all needed to save money and cut costs for the first time in the company's history.
- In 2016, Overwatch was a smash hit (and was a major salvaging of some stuff from Titan, which costed Blizz and Acti a fortune)...
- ...But in 2018, weak performance from Destiny 2 & Blizzard not putting out much of anything new has caused all kinds of shake-ups in positions and intervening from Activision.
- Some Blizz dev's feel like w/ crossover characters in different games (not something Blizz normally does) and non-Acti games at Battle.Net, a lot of Activision & Blizz are getting closer and closer together.
- October 2018, Blizzard lost their Co-Founder Mike Morhaime (who was beloved, by the studio) and was replaced.
