Diablo 4: The Billion Dollar Tragedy | Asmongold Reacts

Diablo 4 the billion dollar tragedy on June 6th of 2023 Diablo 4 officially launched and it was in it was the Fair everybody that's [ __ ] addicted to the game bought the Early Access played it on the first but yeah for sure instant home run success twitch was booming the concurrent player base peaked at almost 7 million players long queue times and she was booming oh but where the [ __ ] like Diablo Force Peak player count what are people getting these numbers from wait did people just make this number up did people just make this up did this come out of nowhere I'ma be honest I don't think that it had 6 million concurrent players especially not 6.7 million concurrent players I want to see the methodology on how that number was arrived at let's look at uh CS go CS goes all time Peak players that it has ever had on Steam is 1.8 million pubg is the highest peak ever at 3.2 million that's the last five months bro well I knew that teacher was right my fifth graders with significant language-based learning disabilities could write better than non-disabled 7th graders can now if you're gonna tell me Diablo 4's Peak player count was more than double the highest game on Steam ever I don't believe it without evidence especially whenever this game has a 70 dollar price tag I want evidence I'm not saying it's a lie but I want evidence where are the receipts aren't player base peaked at almost 7 million players long queue times and celebrities partook in the ride well everybody thought this was the game they were going to call home I wish they had spent this money on making the game good maybe then people would still play it for a while now there are as little as 400 people watching Diablo 4 on Twitch players are forced to complete World bosses and events completely on their own and player population dropped by over 99 the economy between Eternal and popular how do we how do we get this number again Mission dropped by over 99 the economy between Eternal and seasonal Realms have been destroyed by rampant bugs season 1 content was an absolute disaster and season 2 looks to be the exact I mean because I just don't believe that over point six six percent of people still play I think maybe they lost 99.8 maybe 99.7 but only 99.3 oh guys come on come on is way more than that same how did this happen where did this once beloved franchise go wrong and what will it take to fix it today I'm going to explore the timeline of Diablo 4 from pre-release to what the game is now grab a cup of coffee and settle in because this is the complete timeline of how Diablo 4 became the biggest disappointment in gaming history I don't know if it's the biggest disappointment but it's a disappointment of course I want to give a big thank you to the YouTube subscription members who keep this directly support we truly could aren't those stats you only showed PC yeah they are only PC you can do it without you and we'll talk a little bit more about this later now ever since the late 90s Blizzard Entertainment has been a staple in the gaming world making some of the most popular and beloved gaming franchises of all time I had this the warcraft Starcraft Diablo Hearthstone OverWatch in their most popular the World of Warcraft I had that one too the Diablo franchise in particular was a real heavy hitter yeah it embodied the true heartons bro like it's like this is bro this is what Diablo used to be right there you see that that used to be Diablo heart and soul of what the company stood for at the time an incredible RPG gaming experience that is a mix of fantasies many people across the world just couldn't put down like I Diablo 2 released I actually feel bad I haven't played Diablo 2 and Diablo won the year 2000 and had a profound impact on the gaming world and revolutionized the arpg genre the social aspect alone fostered a sense of community among players Paving the way for future online multiplayer games and if you didn't want to play online you didn't have to the game left a permanent mark on the gaming World by introducing multiplayer features Innovative gameplay mechanics expansion packs and DLCs that influence countless titles that followed it this iconic Diablo was a um Diablo was like Dark Souls where like Dark Souls created a genre Diablo also kind of created a genre and I know obviously like there are other games Before Dark Souls that are white Dark Souls or other games before Diablo they're like Diablo but like they popularized it and turned it into a standard game remains relevant even two decades after its initial release leaving people hooked to this day by the time Diablo 3 went into production a whole new development team was in place and in many eyes this time period was the beginning of the end for Blizzard Entertainment [Music] with the game finally launching on May 15 2012 the infant and this was such a [ __ ] you guys have to remember like Diablo 3 was a massive [ __ ] and a lot of people weren't around for it or they don't remember it the same way I do I remember it it sucked miss error 37 plagued the internet leaving countless players it was the highest trending hashtag on Twitter in the entire world the night of Diablo Diablo 3 release error 37. and I said that blizzard I remember what I said about Diablo 4 is that they don't have the balls to make the disconnect error error 37. they should have done it there's in limbo on launch day but this is your message to the people he was so good the auction house doing more harm than good gave you the opportunity as a player to spend hundreds of dollars of your hard-earned real-life money on items in the game by the way I actually don't think that the real money auction house had any sort of a negative effect on Diablo 3 because people bought and sold items for real money on d2jsp for years I actually don't think that it had a massive impact at all I think that the game was just bad and this benefited blizzard and also um keep in mind see again people that don't remember what I remember so the Diablo 3 auction house actually had a cap of both 2 billion gold and also 250 dollars which means that if you had an item that had a value of more than 250 dollars you could not effectively sell it on the auction house so you had to use it through a third party website like d2jsp obviously there was the echoing Fury selling for twenty or thirty thousand dollars that was the most popular one but many of the other ones also were sold for a thousand dollars two thousand dollars maybe three hundred and fifty dollars for example and all of the high value and high dollar items were actually sold off platform and it's ironic again that this is seen as like such a bad thing when the majority of the major transactions that occurred were not even with uh with the auction house again people don't remember what it really was I do because I sold items on it it was great greatly because they took a one dollar cut on every successful auction yeah and with the game's insane levels of progressive difficulty it meant that if you wanted to progress in the game effectively the perfect year was just in wallet's reach for nearly two years until it was finally removed it took many years of innovation to bring Diablo 3 to where it is I'll say again I think that towards the end of its lifespan after Diablo 3 was improved that Reaper of Souls was an overall downgrade to the game and removing trading caused more negatives than positives I would rather have rmt and trading than not have any trading that's what I think it's today DLCs Seasons be oh by the way oh bad take oh no really well then why is Path of Exile the better game even though it does that shut the [ __ ] up stupid you know [ __ ] being implemented greater riffs and non-stop updates for nearly 10 years a game with a disastrous launch and some fundamental problems with his core design has grown into one of Blizzard's most long lasting and beloved games that is currently being played and viewed as much as Diablo 4. I really don't like this revisionism Diablo 3 was a horrible game it was a horrible game period it's still horrible I think it sucked I played it thousands of hours that's how I know it sucks now with three games in the franchise under its belt blizzard was looking to announce Diablo 4 at BlizzCon but with the horrific Diablo Immortal announcement at BlizzCon 2018. but that Android and iOS we don't have any plans at the moment to do uh PC you guys not have phones yeah trying to build excitement for yet another wizard is the worst company their Blizzard game is something that seems very Grim in today's world the once King of Kings in game development has fallen very far from what they Wonder bro I remember I remember I watched this this was like two years ago whenever this came out were they're hoping oh our heavy hitter franchise like Diablo once again sparked life into the cold bitter shell blizzard is today it all started with a grand announcement at BlizzCon building hype so that trailer dude this trailer was awesome I really liked it easily being one of their greatest cinematics to date the Diablo 4 announcement trailer left fans excited and happy to see blizzard attempt and return to their truly dark and Gothic roots of Diablo 2. once the announcement trailer dropped blizzard was officially on the clock from the fans and then disaster struck more than 1500 Activision Blizzard employees are calling for the resignation of the company's CEO Bobby kotec he's still the CEO they didn't know this they thought they were in their world no they were in Bobby's World bro he's the main character they're just like NPCs that Kodak had known about things and he also had threatened to have an assistant killed at one point the company yeah again not in jail massively successful he made 200 billion dollars off of the purchase from Microsoft and he has multiple helicopters multiple Yachts uh he is again the main character but he began to truly unravel Midway through me one with a major lawsuit against Activision division filed for a near New Year running investigations from the state of California between the sexual allegations unfair and unethical treatment toward women in the workplace and more dark evil Secrets being surfaced hundreds of employees at blizzard walk out to protest against this frat boy culture and even more quit or step down from the company leaving everything in disarray and Diablo 4 was no exception to this the ongoing sexual harassment lawsuit took a major toll on blizzard and look at all the people that left well I mean I guess this guy you know he kind of just got rid of him but like uh [ __ ] uh Jeff Ben brode this is the guy that makes uh what's it called uh Marvel snap now and the company bled high quality developers and talent rapidly in Blizzard's earning report for investors they clearly stated that it has become apparent that some of the blizzard content planned for the next year will benefit from more development time to reach its full potential they also said they need extra time to complete production and continue growing their creative resources to support the titles after launch though not stated explicitly the wording in the report implies that neither OverWatch 2 or Diablo 4 will launch before 2023 so with no other option Diablo 4 was officially delayed for one thing that happened while during this time blizzard did what they do best feed and pray off the Nostalgia of previous games from their fans The Nostalgia of the great times this company once had that went down the line and re-released titles of all their beloved games classical no like uh Warcraft 3 how about that Warcraft which led to what is now the re-release of the wrath of Lich King Warcraft reforgeous King now Isn't that cool so now you can buy gold disaster and finally Diablo 2 resurrected which by the way Diablo 2 resurrected I've only heard good things about this is like the one time where like they did it right and it was good it knew that by releasing these games it would make them hundreds of millions of dollars and give them more time to try and develop something new that the fans would come to love once again but time and time after they fail to follow through with that promise and always come up short with the new day and age of Blizzard's monetization where they squeeze everything they can take it finally took its toll classic era of World of Warcraft having expansion Mad Season was right nobody wanted to hear it I said it this is my favorite thing is that I said the same thing that Mad Season said but Reddit [ __ ] hates me so I was so happy whenever Mad Season made this video because I was like ah yes see now you're gonna have to [ __ ] so you're gonna have to agree with me yes and like everybody was like yeah this is really bad the dark portal pass oh my God the beginning of the end yep there it is in pack passes character boost and now a new WoW token across expansions where you can literally buy gold with real life money like how do people just gloss over that like what the [ __ ] you can just buy gold you can buy gold and buy anything dude what the [ __ ] Watch 2 being a copy of OverWatch 1 with egregious monetization and broken promises of new content and story that never came to light Warcraft reforge being a reskin with even more broken promises at this point in time it seems as if the company continues to make the wrong decisions based on Greed and simply takes advantage of its player base across every game they've ever developed we had no I also don't think that it's entirely because of greed I actually think that the people that make the game genuinely don't know what they're doing I really mean that I actually think they don't know what they're doing you're not going to tell me that some sort of executive told them to make the Fireballs on Uber Lilith's platform the same color as the platform Bobby codic didn't come into the developer's office and tell them to code it that way they did that on their own they're incompetent and it's obvious choice the only thing we can do now is hope that Diablo 4 doesn't follow this sad and beat down pattern and for many others including myself this would be Blizzard's last chance at repairing what is a betrayed and broken relationship the [ __ ] out of here can somebody please like [ __ ] find this guy like let's write this down on a sheet of paper and whenever Diablo 5 comes out let's see what he says get the [ __ ] out of here no it's not you really think you're gonna write a [ __ ] essay about this bro you're bro Bobby's got his claws in you so deep you don't even know they're there anymore you really think you're gonna write out a [ __ ] essay and then stop playing the game get the [ __ ] dude this guy's probably still playing Diablo for between us and what used to be he's one of the three people so stop holding out hope that blizzard is Gonna Come Back everyone who founded blizzard all the principles that blizzard was founded on are dead let blizzard go that's my main message is let blizzard go my mom bought me the oh I used to have it next to me I had to go put that back up I remember my mom bought me a shirt just like that's actually so [ __ ] cool for me to see because my mom bought me a shirt on the release of burning Crusade I remember I wore at the school the next day or the day after actually appreciate what was created back when it was done hold off for me at the midnight release hope hope is All That Remains in August of 2022 blizzard announced Alpha POI testing Diablo 4 Alpha play test running for friends and family of Blizzard employees by the way can we even get this hairstyle in Diablo I'm pretty sure we can't like the iconic like yeah the iconic Necromancer hairstyle we can't get it you can an immortal I said it once we gonna say it again Diablo Immortal has a better character creator than Diablo 4. and it's not even close Jason schreer a Bloomberg reporter States on Twitter a bunch of people are playing an early build of Diablo 4 right now thanks to a friends and family Alpha test these players are under NDA but I'm hearing mostly positive Buzz understand shooter also noted that there are no microtransactions in the alpha build so players won't have much of an idea what to expect from monetization although blizzard has previously confirmed that small Diablo 4 purchases will be cosmetic only small side from larger story expansions which has been true by the way Diablo has not implemented any pay to win into the game they have not implemented any pay for convenience into the game and whenever they do I will be very happy because I'll be able to farm I think probably five videos off of that depending on what they add so I'm looking forward to them adding that into the game but it just hasn't happened yet with that guy I do so if anybody forgot about this I have a standing bet with a guy that I told them I would buy him every single item in the Diablo for uh cash shop if six months after the game they had any form of stash tabs to be sold or storage for sale so we're almost four months through I've only got two months left I think I'm gonna make it Diablo 4 in-game beta invites go out in October of 2022 and the play test officially Begins the play test itself gave lucky testers a chance to go up against Lilith in the post-campaign sanctuary and test out Diablo for his end game modes and instances this included The Whispers of the Dead system the progressively challenging nightmare dungeons reason why hell Tides the fields of hatred PVP and the Paragon board progression system this was the only endgame test they hosted before launch with enough time to make changes and this also keep in mind um apparently this end game test was very short this is going to be important any big conversation topic later a couple months after that a massive article comes out on the Washington Post stating that Diablo 4 developers are working overtime to meet the release deadline and it also includes their own staff stating there is mismanagement and disturbing script changes that might contribute to delays it's a process I must say it again I don't give a [ __ ] like I this is not my problem like I think that this is yeah this is like there has been a this like weird cultural shift where the players are meant to feel sorry for the developers and it's like we do commiserate it does suck that you had to push the game out early we understand that it sucks but if you push out a bad product it's not the customer's responsibility to to eat that cost like how many of you guys have like you work somewhere and there's crunch time yeah I mean it happens now I will say that is indicative of what is crunch time indicative of it is indicative of poor planning bad decision making and whenever you're in a rush to do something it's probably not going to be as good that's been plagued by mismanagement and employees being promised perks for working late evenings and weekends outside of regular work hours but employees stating they were simply negligible perks such as a 25 doordash credit if they worked more than 10 hours a day wow that's almost as bad as the rewards in game I wonder if the rewards designer for Diablo 4 also does the rewards for the company oh you know what they probably fired that guy because he was giving people too much stuff and they hired the one that did OverWatch 2 instead they described a mounting sense of dissatisfaction and Malice amongst employees as they endured leadership change constantly and that the Diablo team has been losing talent for over a year as employees look for more competitive wages and better work conditions elsewhere Activision blizzards why would you want to work at blizzard right now the company's a meme uh you get constantly assumed that you're like somehow complicit with the sexual harassment stuff the pay sucks where's the where's the upside here CEO Bobby kodek attributed the company's stock price drop to the game delay of Diablo 4 and OverWatch 2. it's probably right rather than the ongoing sexual harassment lawsuit filed against the company in July of I agree with Bobby I think he's right about this I think that if Diablo 4 came out and it was really good and OverWatch 2 came out and it was as good as people wanted it to be nobody would have cared about the lawsuits like the truth is that Riot and Ubisoft had these same problems that blizzard had but the difference is that with riot at least it had a very good community of people that like their games so nobody really cared about this because you have to keep in mind that these lawsuits came out at the exact same time that World of Warcraft which is Blizzard's biggest game uh was in the worst state that it's ever been in so it's like not only is the game bad but you're also [ __ ] around at work like what is this right so I think Bobby's right I don't think the lawsuit would have had any impact on the company whatsoever if the current games were good were good 2021 he quotes I think What affected the stock price more than the sexual harassment investigation is pushing out the release dates of OverWatch 2 yeah and Diablo 4. his comments frustrated some of the company's developers who felt he was blaming them unfairly stating it's no it's it's true he's yeah he's right we felt very much like he just drove the bus over on top of us as you can see the relationship in chemistry within the company seems to begin crumbling a person familiar with senior leadership found the performance shares unnecessary and even destructive arguing that they incentivize leadership to cut Corners say um keep in mind that the reason why they had to delay was partially because of the lawsuits so the lawsuits did indirectly cause the stock loss so if you're an internal person at the company um it actually makes sense that they were unhappy about it and I can see their perspective But ultimately if those games had come out then I don't think the stock would have gone down so it's like yes but indirectly advise and ship products that are not ready to be released instead of doing what is the best thing for the long-term value creation wow shipping products that are not ready to be released I can't believe that and it's it's what's not best for long-term value creation really I had no idea employees State they just went to work every day and got angry either [Laughter] I don't know why I just find that so [ __ ] funny it's just like the players because the tools were slow or they simply did not like the game that much they also stated that it wasn't just employees it was many with institutional knowledge and Decades of experience leaving brand new employees and developers brought in from elsewhere to fill in Diablo I will have to say I do like Jay Allen BRAC I feel like and this is somebody who like actually talk [ __ ] about me directly right like somebody emailed them they're like what do you think about asthma gold and Jay Allen Brack himself apparently responded to this email he thinks oh he doesn't know [ __ ] and it's like okay fine right I can appreciate the honesty but like the dude I did the math and like within six months of him becoming the president the lawsuit happened bro he got left holding the bag and I think it's obvious right like look at the picture was his hair that color whenever he left no for his unannounced internally 2021 to December of 2022 then got pushed back further to April 2023 and then finally June of 2023. a former employee stated we're at the point where they're not willing to delay the game anymore so we all just have to go I don't think it would have mattered if they delayed the game more because uh Blizzard's problem was that they weren't willing to respond to feedback so it doesn't really matter how long you're gonna delay like they could have delayed shadowlands for five years and they still would have released it with covenants so was it the pr the delay wasn't the problem the problem was the the mechanics the design go along and figure out how much we're willing to hurt ourselves to make sure the game gets released in a good enough state to help Diablo 4 get over the Finish Line Activision Blizzard enlisted industry veterans such as Rod Ferguson previously Rod would hold weekly Zoom meetings known as rodcasts which during them he would talk about celebrities he's met in movies he enjoys employ foreign it's like I know obviously people are supposed to get mad about this but it is kind of funny it is like because at least with this guy it feels like you're not getting like a corporate chill Ed that not much actually came out of these discussions stating to me he came off as a bit of a clout Chaser about where he came from like Gears of War we all thought he was gonna come in and fix the game yeah nothing happened that's when you started to see this massive turnover the Blizzard entertainment company that was one so dedicated to Quality and putting out the best product they possibly can is currently rushing out Diablo 4 in a good enough state every game gets released in a good enough State that's live service that's the truth they all do so it's like I don't see this being really a problem the problem is that they didn't respond to feedback fast enough people said they didn't like doing Renown in the beta people said they didn't like like losing the reset instance button the problem is that they made changes to fix problems that nobody had and they just made the game worse in a number of ways just to make things take longer so like the problem really wasn't the release it wasn't the developers they didn't listen employees and team members who don't get along and leaders who are poor at taking care of their team members all of this inside of an environment that is polluted and numbers more than anything with launch just a few months away Diablo 4 is looking grim on February 21st the developers officially released the inside the world of sanctuary video where they've had many developers speak upon the art Direction environment Monsters gameplay Innovations and World building they made promises and stated they wanted to bring the game back toward Diablo 2. we wanted to bring Diablo for artistically they did the art in Diablo 4 is great they did I I think it's it's great I like it now I do wish there is a grim Bleak masculine fatalistic tone that Diablo 2 has that Diablo 4 does not even come close to however I will settle for Diablo Four's art and more back towards like Diablo 2 the much darker style and they also emphasize non-repetitive gameplay features so you never feel like you're always doing the same thing the pacing is always a little bit different on March 1st they released a video showing the Gameplay trailer for the beta early access of Diablo 4. announcing that you could play the game on March 17th through March 19th if you pre-purchase The 90 digital Deluxe or 100 ultimate edition of the game the 100 Ultimate Edition gives you the advantage to play up to four days early over everyone else which in my opinion again I think the Early Access to play games early is awful it's player unfriendly it's stupid it's a waste of money and if I was making a game I would do it it's a good idea The Accelerated seasonal battle pass unlock mounts Cosmetics emotes and even rewards for their other blizzard games such as World of Warcraft yeah you get that mount with that [ __ ] flying thing I think this is all totally fine like I don't care about this stuff in arpg uh oh about the gameplay repetitive yeah I really don't care about this this had nothing to do with the game being bad Diablo Immortal and Diablo 3. by this point it is very well known that Diablo 4 was going to have a battle pass that was cosmetic only and a big reward for buying this set of additions it was it was was a small boost through the battle pass it's important to note that the battle pass was not available until the launch of season one which didn't come until a month and a half after the game's launched you had to complete the Early Access weekend for Diablo 4 arrived and the game was in the hands of the public allowing you to go up to level 25. this weekend was only available to players who have pre-ordered the digital deluxe edition and you can play as the Barbarian Rogue or sorcerer it only allows you to play through Diablo 4's prologue in one zone and that is fractured Peaks once and this first beta was very well received I enjoyed it a lot again no end game testing at first the servers were plagued with horrendous queue times and error codes a simple explanation is that there is a repeating cycle going on where players would sit in a sometimes over hour long queue you finally get logged into the game and only then get disconnected and be put back in an even longer queue after about five to ten minutes is this happening this continued through most of the night until blizzard put out a patch that seemingly fixed the problem this angered many people because they spent additional money to play that said Early Access weekend and it started to raise some eyeballs I don't think that at the beginning did they sell early like I don't like this idea like oh I bought the Early Access like uh I don't know about that like I don't think it was sold with that value ad but maybe it was I'm not sure uh point is like this was bad but it's still just a beta thing browse in the community overall though it's a test guys it's a it's a it's a beta test like it's a [ __ ] beta test like what the [ __ ] gameplay perspective people were relatively happy with Diablo 4 as a game so far yeah they were but of course there were concerns and there were a few in particular that stood out to the community and like a dagger coated in Poison issues that seemingly never went away some of these include that there isn't anything in Diablo 4 that's redefining what an arpg can be tedious grinds that you're forced to do and aren't even fun the first time including Renown Alters of Lilith waypoints and instead of it being fun challenges it was simply a Google search to find the location and run around and collect them all I thought that doing Renown once was okay and I know that some people were unhappy about that opinion but I actually think that it was okay but the problem was having to do it every season and for multiple characters Etc UI across the board needed work and I will go even farther I think that you should not have included side quests into the Renown um calculation because what that caused people to do was speed run the side quests and some of the side quests were genuinely good but because there was a goal attached to them people ignored them because they just wanted to achieve the goal being forced to play online and having no offline mode worried player bases about server stability and I don't care about having an offline mode I think this is a complete false problem and there's only a handful of people that actually care about this or they would use it um the truth is that Diablo 3 had an offline mode this is like it's like such a [ __ ] red herring it's totally [ __ ] irrelevant felt like Diablo 4 wasn't created with the same heart as Diablo 1 and 2 were little did they know it only got much worse moving forward the open Beta weekend arrived allowing everybody openly to play the game and all five classes up to level 25. everybody says bad take no I don't think so I think everybody has the internet and they just find something to complain about because it's not the same as the old games I think they're totally [ __ ] off their rocker I think it's a made-up problem that Boomers have because it's not like video games were in the 90s it's just total [ __ ] like of course everybody has the internet uh like oh wow you're gonna lag out in a game yeah well your internet can die too like your computer can die like who cares just don't play hardcore imagine except hardcore players dying because of DC's if you're if you're playing hardcore in a video game you are signing up to have your time wasted I have no sympathy for any hardcore player that dies to anything stupid in a video game because it is a pointless method of difficulty it's stupid so if you're gonna sign up to live on the razor's Edge and you fall off that's not my problem you shouldn't have done that you're intentionally handicapping yourself for no reason it's silly yeah I think that the whole idea of having an always online mode being an actual problem I think that nobody really cares about that and people just pretend to care five immediately players are noticing the difference in power between the Druid and The Necromancer and coming to the conclusion that classes like the Barbarian and the Druid lag behind significantly in terms of kill speed unlike the other classes leveling which ironically again the barbarian was the best class at the beginning but it just felt so bad to play people want offline so they can cheat guys you're not going to convince me you're not going to commit I think it's just stupid I think people are completely faking it and it doesn't actually move the needle at all I think it's complete fake outrage nobody is actually not going to buy a game because of the I don't think it's true the balance was so bad about the Druid that memes were being made and the class was nothing but a laughing stock for 17 damage oh no players feel as though wrong that was like that was probably the best meme out of Diablo 4. that the game is missing key features such as the gem tab skill loadouts more Bank storage inventory filters and more quality of life features that are widely seen across gaming between the issues with the Early Access and open Beta weekends players are starting to believe that the game is poorly developed and there is a lot of fine tuning that needs to be done other than that the base it's like not being able to have wasd in the game why do you release a game without wasd why game of combat animations and story seemed good enough for now after the open Beta weekends the official Diablo team releases the into the end game developer update video breaking down everything the game has to offer once you reach the end game and developers made incredibly bold promises that were sadly never delivered upon brand new activities that provide meaningful progression no matter their play style there's going to never be an absence of something to do Paragon Wars place where we allowed to have a lot more depth a lot more customization many more options as you go there's over 120 dungeons to play through and find in Diablo 4 and any one of them can become a nightmare dungeon we later found out that this one that's not true because you only have a certain amount of them that you can do each season well simply not true being that there was only roughly 20 nightmare Dungeons and a rotation at a time forcing you to do the same ones over and over again a few days later the Diablo 4 team announces they are making significant changes to character classes don't design UI changes and more yup this leaves people very excited that the developers are listening to player feedback and are excited for the future they listen to the wrong feedback and they added they like they got rid of the dungeon reset button only to add it back in like I I don't know like how are they I don't know how they do this they made the teleport longer well that was long that was later on in the game months before launch the Diablo 4 developers assure us that they're going back to their roots of Diablo 2. well the initial Direction was Diablo 2 the fantasy of a dark Gothic Medieval World right darker and grittier and Diablo 2 is kind of the inspiration we wanted to bring Diablo 4 artistically more back towards like Diablo 2. have we heard this story before is this something that blizzard is doing once again to tug on our Nostalgia is history going to repeat itself like it did with Warcraft reforged OverWatch I don't agree with this argument I think that blizzard trying to make the game like Diablo 2 isn't really playing on Nostalgia it's just that they realize that they deviated from what was the artistic Norm of the franchise it was a good idea I don't think I don't think it's farming Nostalgia to change the vibe of the game because a lot of people didn't like how bright and high fantasy Diablo Diablo 3 was yeah I just I think it was it was a good idea like I like you I I there's no problem them with fan service like fan service is great like oh wow we're gonna give the people what they want everybody wants this they want to have the old character come back or whatever great let's do it that's not bad at all World of Warcraft classic the only thing left to do now is Hope what they say is true and await launch day before you know it the internet is absolutely slammed with Diablo 4 marketing whether it be the KMC Junction one was better operation the non-stop Megan Fox promotions relaunch dinner parties with big names in the gaming industry the Diablo 4 Cathedral painting in France the hall CD Outlet four song and even a launch live action trailer they also announced the Diablo 4 hardcore leveling competition where the first 1000 users to reach level 100 on Hardcore will be eligible to have their battle tag engraved on a physical statue of Lilith on the blizzard campus blizzard held nothing back in wanting all eyes of the world on Diablo 4 and they knew this launch was going to be a big deal for them it was either going to make or break the company moving forward and they were ready to show the world what they had in Diablo 4. at least that's what we thought on June 1st of 2023 The Early Access launch of Diablo 4 finally arrived it doesn't matter too much how amazing a game is or even how well received it is shareholders Executives and accountants want to know how well a game is selling yeah they revealed that in just five days sales of Diablo 4 had surpassed 666 million dollars in Revenue estimating nearly 10 million game copies sold that's not even including the additional micro transactions so heavily apparent inside the game in corporate eyes Diablo 4 was booming and it was nothing short of a Monumental success absolutely I mean like again the first like 50 hours of the game or maybe 30 or 40 I don't know it depends like we're actually very good I think that the game really starts to fall off once you get to world tier four maybe World tier 3 or so like at the beginning like the the campaign was was fun like it wasn't crazy awesome amazing but it was fun it was a good campaign and like getting into World tier three was good you know you got to fight the new boss in like the dungeon and it was actually kind of challenging like I mean not really but like a little bit right and then you go through World tier three and then you do World tier four dungeon and like Elias was was pretty hard right especially if you're doing it under leveled and then you get to world tier four and it's just the same stuff like really it's the problem is that it fell off so early there just wasn't enough content but yeah at the very beginning like Diablo 4 was a great game especially for really casual players the real problem is that like the people that are interfacing with like reviews and things online these are the people who are very invested into video games to begin with so they're the ones that are going to be playing all the time and they're not getting what they want it became officially Blizzard's fastest selling game of all time there it is so Activision Blizzard was back on top right well that statement couldn't have been more untrue shortly after launch the internet was flooded with reviews about Diablo 4. oh God the early game being relatively good from a gameplay perspective quickly dissipated as people headed and it's like remember whenever I said that Druid and Barbarian played really badly at early level and then people kept [ __ ] on me and they said yeah it's because they get better later on and then blizzard finally changed it because no they wouldn't listen they didn't [ __ ] listen like I'm so sick of like giving feedback for a game and then the game dies and they say wait a minute maybe we should actually listen now so annoying because the truth is Diablo 4 had no innovation and nothing truly creative toward the arpg genre and blizzard simply took no risks tree of whispers are the same thing as bounties from Diablo 3. they kept the same generic gambling systems Paragon boards are just they're fine and also the pair I think Paragon boards are too complicated and I think that skill trees are too simple I think they should have not let you rotate them and they should have just made the complication more in the skill trees stolen content from Path of Exile and Vulcan nightmare dungeons are just riffs from Diablo 3 the new free choice leveling is the same thing as Diablo 3's Adventure Mode Nothing here was brand new or Innovative it was the same reused and recycled content and fans were simply bored of it within a few weeks time the most common mistake we see from games with lack of in-game presence is they make the grind to max level longer so it gives them time to come up with something new and what did blizzard do people [ __ ] on me remember whenever I said new world was bad in the in the the preview event and the uh the beta remember whenever I said that I said it was [ __ ] at endgame and I had a bunch of [ __ ] greybeard Boomers sitting here tell me telling me I'm a stupid [ __ ] nerd because they're level 24 and they're having a blast fishing and I said [ __ ] just wait and they waited and I was right exactly just that one by one they were going across the board and nerfing dungeon Farms to permit anyone from leveling too quickly from specific dungeons so and when that wasn't enough they completely nerfed Elite mob density across the board that was the worst one and I think also really the worst one wasn't any of this it was nerfing cooldown recovery because cooldown recovery made it more fun to play your class and after the Nerf it wasn't as fun one of the most fun aspects of the game instead of buffing the lackluster dungeons that were boring and slow that was dude this was so fun this was so [ __ ] badass they nerfed the fun ones let's go continue to do this all nearly everything in the game moving forward build diversity was the same result across all classes you could see a clear-cut pattern in people using the same exact builds yep launching strike challenging shout rallying cry war cry Wrath of the Berserker yeah of course it's because they don't know what the [ __ ] they're doing like it it was obvious over and over again instead of buffing weak abilities to bring them in line with the strong ones they simply nerfed the abilities that were performing too well making everything feel boring and with them I think that by the way that wasn't a bad decision I don't think they should have gone with the Diablo 3 strategy of buff everything and never Nerf anything I think that's how you got into quadrillions of damage and it wasn't sustainable they should have nerfed the over performing abilities but they went about it in the wrong way and do you want to know why they did that it's because they don't have any genuine insight into their own game because you watch the developers play they have no [ __ ] idea what they're doing they don't know how to play their own game straight up it's actually I I really think it's that simple it's that [ __ ] simple guys sorry price of recost and the non-existence of skill loadouts or a dual specialization system in play it was too risky to constantly be testing out in theory crafting new builds it was too tedious to respect hundreds of Paragon points manually one by one and flat out too expensive yeah like here's a good example why is there not a way to farm like why can't you just click on a paragon board and unlink everything inside of the Paragon board why can't you do that having to grind out countless legendary aspects uniques and perfect affix roles and temerity was garbage on release too keep in mind like they gave temerity bad stats on purpose and they had to actually buff it because nobody was using the legendary and then they would also give you 60 life but it wasn't your maximum life it was another maximum it was your maximum life without the effects of your other maximum life uh like uh percentages added into it so it's like even their own items were wrong again like well what yeah I know it's just again they didn't know what they were doing base Max life without multipliers was that it yeah I forgot what it was exactly rolls on every piece of gear was something that took too much time by this time players were reaching level 65 plus and the level pacing drastically slowed down and so did the excitement of good loot rewards as well so the problem with Diablo 4 is that after you spend about 80 hours into the game all of the gear upgrades that you can get are so minimal there's nothing else to do so the time it took to level fastly and the rewards and purpose for levels are smaller it's very obvious to everybody now that Diablo 4 has no end game and it was heavily front loaded the minor end game testing mixed with the constant changing of development teams and major lack of inexperience in workplace professionalism was finally starting to take its toll during this time the in-game cash shop is being flooded with skins and cosmetic options available for I don't think any of this really matters of the skins or any of the the stuff I think another big issue is that all the bosses in the game are badly designed mind I don't think like nobody ever talks about this but like you look at the bosses and Path of Exile too and you compare them to the bosses in Diablo 4. and it's a joke they have no mechanics the mechanics they do have aren't telegraphed well the mechanics that exist are also annoying like for example the tomblord is the worst one who just becomes immune and moves away from you slowly back it's back pedaling away from you attacking you like it's just such a bad boss it's not interesting or fun there's no like oh wow you have a guy that goes and then he goes and then he goes huh and then he flies up and then two ads spawn really like the boss that you fight at literal level two is an end game Boss with no extra mechanics added in it's pathetic I I don't even know what to say like it's just it's so [ __ ] bad it's amazing and like the bosses that do exist again they're badly coded like I think Uber Lewis is is horribly coded like I'm sorry guys but you shouldn't get hit by something that you're not in if you're not into spikes you shouldn't get hit by the [ __ ] spikes so [ __ ] pathetic for purchase even some cases where the Cosmetic armor bought with real money would be bugged and not even appear on your character the hardcore player-based drama is at an all-time high with players dying constantly to serve her instability should have never played hardcore hardcore bro that mode is a joke people only play that for content on stream like there's such a waste of time disconnects and things being completely out of their control through bugs and poor optimization of the game even worse to confirm your place as a winner in the race you had to tweet the Diablo Twitter account a Diablo 4 hashtag your full battle net and battle tag and lastly a picture proving you reached level 100 the amateur Middle School System of confirming a challenge so important that hundreds of thousands of people are participating in ends up being a massive mistake and they make errors announcing the wrong winners they do make errors they do announce the wrong winners I'm gonna say however they did fix this this was fixed and it was improved it was fixed this showed a major lack of effort and care and a multi-billion dollar company and once again amateur are brand new developers making huge mistakes skating by and doing things how do you not have like a database for this by the way but you told me they don't have a database of all the players that are level 100 you can't just do a query of like when there's a hundred Point like what it's just good enough once again there were even several websites out there that track the progress of the hardcore characters with having zero budget so surely blizzard could have done it themselves it became too difficult to manage storage inside of a full loot arpg game between gems legendaries and aspects rare items uniques inventory was quickly flooded within minutes of grinding out a single dungeon and players demanded more room for their other characters when blizzard final responded over a month later they stated they couldn't add more because it creates a lot of memory overhead when you see another player in game you load them and their entire stash filled with all of their items um I was so glad that he actually explained the problem because I think it shut up so many of the people that were saying that like coding is really hard you don't understand the people that work there are so much smarter than you are you have no idea what you're talking about whenever you say just fix it and then you get a peek behind the curtain and you realize that it's a clown show you know it caught so much [ __ ] for this you know what it also could have been it could have been that Joseph knew that it was [ __ ] up and they didn't want to fix it and so he knew that if he made it public about how [ __ ] up it was they would have to fix it because the entire public would see how [ __ ] stupid they were so it could also be the other one I'm not going to blame him for that things like a gem tab leaderboard stash tabs loot filters ability loadouts all announced to be added in future expansions sometimes yeah bug fixes or content far as six months to a year from now yeah one month after the game launches they hosted a developer live stream bringing us all some crucial updates to try and calm the community down to kick off the show they gave us a 30-minute segment on their new Diablo Immortal class the blood Knight which is really cool like but I don't know why do we get to why does Diablo Immortal get to have hot goth girls and all we have is Lewis like I'm gonna be this girl is really hot like why isn't she in Diablo 4. what the [ __ ] the whole lore behind the mobile game right now they also finally showed off the battle pass monetization and the seasonal blessings that are implemented to help us quickly by the way I don't think the Diablo Immortal thing was like really a bad thing like if I were them I would have done it too like yeah sure it'll piss people off but it's better to promote your product like for sure it was the right decision even though it's not ideal we gain crafting materials gold and they they said it they they literally said that they were gonna do it like they posted in the announcement that they were gonna do that they were going to do it in that time frame people that cry about that I think are being unreasonable experience points more efficiently this is in regard to having us create whole new characters inside of seasonal Realms and believe it or not those completely backfired as well yeah when you spent smoldering Ash to increase the amount of gold or materials that you would gain there was a bug that would increase the amount of cost oh yeah dude remember this here I'm gonna I'm gonna go back just to hear this again it was completely backfired as well listen when you spent smoldering Ash to increase the amount of gold or materials that you would gain there was a bug that would increase the amount of costs of everything as well by the same exact percentages the more things change the more they stay the same so it became nothing but an illusion of choice and to even acquire all of your smoldering Ash you actually had to obtain max level to acquire them all leaving you a system that is nothing but broken and contradictory only half of your Renown carried over and half of the brand new content and class changes in season one was locked to the seasonal Realms and was forbidden on the Eternal Realms meaning that if you wanted all of these brand new changes and updates you had to start all over and create a whole new character you were then forced to go on to seasonal Realms and players were quickly flooded with additional monetization well the other problem was that Diablo 4 was made for really casual players and really casual players and three-month Seasons don't mix people don't want to have to re-level every three months if they're casual players they want to just make a character better over time so I think they had they had a huge problem with this they even coincidentally made the paid accelerated battle pass button the largest icon and glow red on the home page they also coincidentally didn't add a confirmation button so that if you accidentally clicked it you spent your money without any warning bugs even went rampant through season the problem was that on Console your uh your selector on Console whenever you went to the uh the store I think maybe if you were just using a controller it would automatically select the purchase button it started there and it's where I learned the term dark pattern because this is apparently a common practice and like a lot of mobile games and I believe that fortnite actually just recently lost a lawsuit over it and that's why people are able to get refunds on purchases and skins that they made during a time frame of like 2018 to 2021 and so they got a like a 200 000 fine or sorry 200 million dollar fine for this should be [ __ ] illegal well it clearly is that's why they got the fine one with people having the ability to trade hundreds of millions of gold legendaries and even unique items between the Eternal and seasonal Realms completely destroying hard-earned player progression trading items to the seasonal realm I think was really bad did it ruin the game no I don't really think it ruined the game like I really don't think so I think it was beating a dead horse it didn't matter most people play Diablo for a completely solo yeah I I really just don't think it it did anything by this point players were at their limit I did Metacritic scores plummeted and the population slowly dwindled down to nothing with any week of season one being launched and with the final nail in the coffin larion Studios released Baldur's Gate 3 on August 3rd of 2023. easily being the front runner for the game of the year it knocked Diablo 4 out the game had longer replayability no egregious monetization good developers better RPG aspects Innovative design with stable servers and a real character creator and gameplay sections with freedom of choice throughout your entire playthrough most of these things blizzard used to take pride in but those days are now over a game that just a few months ago this is also a problem with live service games is that live service games are often designed in a way to waste your time I really enjoy live service games and I have a lot of fun playing them but it is a huge issue with them is that like time is the economy in that game whereas with Baldur's Gate 3 you buy the game got your money [ __ ] that's it you might as well let them play the game so I think about here's a great example right is look at how easy it is to farm items in Eldon ring compared to Lost Ark how easy is it to get a plus 10 weapon in Elden ring pretty [ __ ] easy compare that to getting a plus 25 weapon Lost Ark there you go is it single player games that are like not uh like online only don't have the same incentive to create these massive time waster grinds population of almost 7 million concurrent active players at once has now lost more than 99 of its total population and is shrinking more and more by the day so what was the exact cause of Diablo for his failure was it the constant change in development teams before launch day the loss of key figures within the company due to the allegations and walkouts I think the reason why Diablo force was a failure and I don't really know about being a failure but like the reason why it wasn't received very well is because number one the gameplay was stale and boring I think the developers have no genuine insight into how to make a good game I actually don't think they don't they know what they're doing I I really don't and I there's there's that and then also um they didn't react to feedback players gave feedback of what they wanted in the game and it wasn't added into the game it's that simple they said hey we want this in the game we don't want Renown and then they put Renown in the game that's the problem like that that's the reason why the game failed is it they force players into playing systems that weren't fun developers disliking the game they're creating and the increased malice between leaders and Company team members was that the constant delays the microtransactions to players or is it just the simple micro transactions were not being forced on the players in Diablo for it's completely unreasonable I think that I think Diablo 4 you can play the game complete without microtransactions [ __ ] the thing was seventy dollars it was a 70 game like I don't think it was being forced to buy microtransaction but like that being said if you buy a 70 game the fact that there weren't a lot of really cool skins for killing the bosses you hear Let me let me give you an example the horse that you get from killing Uber Lilith it's not really that much visually different than a horse that you just get from like a random drop so you didn't have a lot of like really cool skins that you could show off in town and this was a huge problem and a lot of games had this issue right but and I think they could have done a better job I'll at least say that they could have done a much better job unique skins yeah yeah exactly like it was a huge issue fact that blizzard has completely lost its touch and the era of this once King of Kings is now over no one really knows exactly but one thing is for sure no game in history has had almost 7 million concurrent active players at one time and within an unestablished undocumented unexplained that that number is complete [ __ ] Theory crafting it is not an official number a couple months get reduced down to less than 40 000 active players throughout the entire day yeah a 99.4 loss in player base count this is why Diablo 4 is the biggest disappointment in recent gaming history Jesus hopefully heading into 2024 they can bring loads of improvements into the game and maybe flip the script on this whole situation what do you mean dude like look at this right here these are the mobs that are just the ghouls in act one they're literally just the ghouls in act one like for example I used this example before whenever Harvest came out keep in mind Poe's free um whenever Harvest came out they use the um uh Servants of kitaba you know those [ __ ] asses that are the really big [ __ ] asses that like have the wings and they'll jump on you and they'll shoot like the red things at you they reuse those in Harvest but they also have a new ability in Harvest they have like that explosion thing so even whenever Poe reuse the mobs it's still better and also like for example uh Harvest added the [ __ ] Crush claws you know they added I think um a handful of other mobs too I'm trying to remember like yeah they had the devourers that we already had in the game there was like I think five or six new Mobs added with Harvest maybe just maybe we can have a solid arpg to play but just remember the New Path of Exile is on its way and it could very well be too late have you played Diablo 4 what are your thoughts and feelings what do you think is the biggest mistake they made let me know in the comments section below I want to give another massive thank you to our YouTube channel members who support the channel directly and keep this dream alive you all allow me to create longer more fulfilling content for you like I really love making content like this and if you guys enjoyed it please be sure to like leave a comment or even share the video as I would love to bring you all more content like this in the future until the very end my name is Skye from the combat kids and I will see you all in the next one peace yeah that was a great video that really actually was a great video I um I think that there were like a few minor points that I kind of disagreed with right about like being forced to buy microtransactions I don't really think that's really the case case I I I think that like like Diablo so like you ever have like a bad relationship and you start getting mad at the person that you're in a relationship with for things that are like really small like leaving a drink on a piece of like a wooden table without a coaster or something like that and it's like you get really mad at this person for that but like you're really not mad about the drink being on the wooden table you're mad about the fact that like your relationship with them in general is like shitty or this person's an [ __ ] or whatever it's like it's nitpicky right but like the nitpicks are really like they're a [ __ ] like they're a symbol of a larger problem and I think that's what some of the issues are right like the micro transactions the always online mode like none of these things are actually Make It or Break It for the game I think I just believe that it's like and they've got this and it's this other [ __ ] [ __ ] right it's always more and more stuff you know fun fact right now there's more people watching videos of Diablo 4 dying than people actually applying Diablo for Jesus Christ

Channel: Asmongold TV

Views: 1,406,357

Keywords: asmongold, asmongold reacts, asmongold wow, asmongold highlights, asmongold youtube, world of warcraft, asmongold funny, asmongold tv, asmongold channel, zackrawrr

Id: 3H4x7V0HlgQ

Length: 67min 32sec (4052 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 24 2023