Gaming's Biggest Tragedy: The Rise And Fall Of Diablo 4

on June 6th of 2023 Diablo 4 officially launched and it was an instant home run success twitch was booming the concurrent player base peaked at almost 7 million players long queue times and celebrities partook in the ride everybody thought this was the game they were going to call home 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 percent 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 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 of course I want to give a big thank you to the YouTube subscription members who keep this dream Alive by directly supporting the channel we truly couldn't 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 the warcraft Trilogy Starcraft Diablo Hearthstone OverWatch and their most popular the World of Warcraft the Diablo franchise in particular was a real heavy hitter it embodied the True Heart and Soul of what the company stood for at the time an incredible RPG gaming experience that is a mix of fantasy and dark Gothic horror that many people across the world just couldn't put down Diablo 2 released in 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 game play mechanics expansion packs and DLCs that influence countless titles that followed it this iconic 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 with the game finally launching on May 15 2012 the infamous error 37 plagued the internet leaving countless players in limbo on launch day this is your message to the people who work for blizzard can't even play the [ __ ] gang this is [ __ ] this is [ __ ] I paid money cash money dollar fine Cash Money 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 and this benefited blizzard greatly because they took a one dollar cut on every successful auction 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 today DLCs Seasons being implemented greater riffs and non-stop updates for nearly 10 years a game with a disastrous launch and some fundamental problems with its 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. 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. with a Android and iOS we don't have any plans at the moment to do a PC [Applause] did you guys not have phones yeah you guys trying to build excitement for yet another 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 once were they're hoping their heavy hitter franchise like Diablo can once again spark life into the cold bitter shell blizzard is today it all started with a grand announcement at BlizzCon building hype and excitement amongst the fans [Music] 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 and coder had known about things and he also had threatened to have an assistant killed at one point the company began to truly unravel Midway through the development in 2021 with a major lawsuit against Activision Blizzard being filed for a near two-year running investigation into the company 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 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 a 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 classic World of Warcraft which led to what is now the re-release of the wrath of Lich King Warcraft reforge which is a convoluted disaster and finally Diablo 2 resurrected they 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 pack passes character boost and now a new WoW token across expansions where you can literally buy gold with real life money OverWatch 2 being a copy of OverWatch 1 with egregious monetization and broken promises of new content and story that never came to light Warcraft reforged 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 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 between us and what used to be a magical company so stop holding out hope that blizzard is going to come back everyone who founded blizzard all the principles that blizzard was founded on are dead they've been desecrated let blizzard go that's my main message is let blizzard go appreciate what was created back when it was done stop holding out hope that it's gonna come back hope is All That Remains in August of 2022 blizzard announced their Diablo 4 Alpha play test running for friends and family of Blizzard employees 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 Trier 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 aside from larger story expansions months later the Diablo 4 end 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 endgame modes and instances this included The Whispers of the Dead system the progressively challenging nightmare dungeons region-wide 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 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 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 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 Blizzard CEO Bobby kodek attributed the company's stock price drop to the game delay of Diablo 4 and OverWatch 2 rather than the ongoing sexual harassment lawsuit filed against the company in July of 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 and Diablo 4. his comments frustrated some of the company's developers who felt he was blaming them unfairly stating 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 incentivized leadership to cut Corners compromise and ship products that are not ready to be released instead of doing what is the best thing for the long-term value creation employees State they just went to work every every day and got angry either because the tools were slow or they simply did not like the game that much they also stated that it wasn't just employees that left it was many with institutional knowledge and Decades of experience leaving brand new employees and developers brought in from elsewhere to fill in Diablo 4's unannounced internal release date went from 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 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 Rod would hold weekly Zoom meetings known as broadcasts which during them he would talk about celebrities he's met in movies he enjoys and employees felt 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 going to come in and fix the game and when 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 with 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 with greed 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 4 artistically 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 The Accelerated seasonal battle pass unlock mounts Cosmetics emotes and even rewards for their other blizzard games such as World of Warcraft 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 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 launch 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 Force prologue in one zone and that is fractured Peaks once 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 finally get logged into the game to only then get disconnected and be put back in an even longer queue after about five to ten minutes of playing 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 eyebrows in the community overall though from a gameplay perspective people were relatively happy with Diablo 4 as a game so far 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 the UI across the board needed work being forced to play online and having no offline mode worried player bases about server stability and it 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. immediately player 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 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 what a players feel as though 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 game of combat animations and stories 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 allow you 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 and in Diablo 4 and any one of them can become a nightmare dungeon we later found out that this was 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 dungeon design UI changes and more this leaves people very excited that the developers are listening to player feedback and are excited for the future through the last few 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 darker and grittier and Diablo 2 is kind of the inspiration we wanted to bring Diablo for 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 and 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 KFC collaboration the non-stop Megan Fox promotions relaunch dinner parties with big names in the gaming industry the Diablo 4 Cathedral painting in France the Halsey Diablo 4 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 is or even how well received it is shareholders Executives and accountants want to know how well a game is selling 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 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 it became officially Blizzard's fastest selling game of all time 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. the early game being relatively good from a gameplay perspective quickly dissipated as people headed into the end game 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 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 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 and when that wasn't enough they completely nerfed Elite mob density across the board one of the most fun aspects of the game instead of buffing the lackluster dungeons that were boring and slow they nerfed the fun ones they continued to do this with 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 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 the 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 having to grind out countless legendary aspects uniques and perfect affix roles 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 vastly increased and the rewards and purpose for leveling became so much 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 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 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 this showed a major lack of effort in care and a multi-billion dollar company and once again amateur are brand new developers making huge mistakes skating by and doing things 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 things like a gem tab leaderboards stash tabs Loop filters ability loadouts all announced to be added in future expansions sometimes as far as six months to a year from now 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 and 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 gain crap crafting materials gold and 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 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 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 1 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 monetize 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 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 by this point players were at their limit Metacritic scores plummeted and the population slowly dwindled down to nothing with any week of season 1 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 had a 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 developers disliking the game they're creating and the increased malice between leaders and Company team members was that the constant delays the microtransactions being forced onto players or is it just the simple 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 concur active players at one time and within a couple months get reduced down to less than 40 000 active players throughout the entire day a 99.4 percent loss in player base count this is why Diablo 4 is the biggest disappointment in recent gaming history hopefully heading into 2024 they can bring loads of improvements into the game and maybe flip the script on this whole situation 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 this one 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 [Music] thank you

Channel: The Comeback Kids

Views: 2,820,503

Keywords: diablo 4, diablo iv, diablo 4 the comeback kids, the comeback kids, diablo 4 documentary, diablo 4 short movie, diablo 4 flop, diablo 4 is bad, diablo 4 angry, diablo 4 monetization, activision blizzard, activision boycott, blizzard drama, asmongold, diablo 4 news, diablo 4 updates, diablo 4 drama, diablo 4 hardcore, diablo 4 season 2, diablo 4 season of blood, d4 season 2, d4 season 1, The Tragic Rise And Fall Of Diablo 4, Rise and fall of diablo 4, why diablo 4 failed

Id: 2uEKI_u4eMQ

Length: 30min 12sec (1812 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 21 2023