People would have to buy and refund this one to bomb it, versus overwatch which was f2p. It'll probably settle at "mixed" or "mostly positive" until blizzard does something to try to squeeze more purchases out of the playerbase again.
Diablo 3 still works, I don't see a reason for this one to get bombed like Overwatch 2 did. If you bought it, its your own fault. I'm not actually keeping up with D4, did they screw up something since its launch?
D4 is an exercise in how a lot of effort and a lot of thought can go into something and result in a game that's inferior in the important ways (is the game actually fun to play, is progression fun and rewarding) while also being technically superior to its predecessors -- the game looks amazing, the engine is fantastic.
I'm playing it with my wife and it's just not very fun yet. It reminds me of grinding levels in classic WoW, but without the benefit of getting new skills and feeling more powerful with the levels. I'm hoping that after some patches, seasons, and expansion packs that it gets to be a little more fun, but right now they've made leveling so slow and so inconsequential that the game is just a repetitive slog. You're not getting any new skills past level 50 but it takes absolutely eons longer to go from level 50 to 100 than it did to go from 1-50, all areas in the entire game except for nightmare dungeons are level scaled so you aren't actually getting any more powerful with each level, you're just watching numbers go up while killing exactly the same things in exactly the same way you have been for the last 50 levels.
Appreciably, Diablo 3 was kind of crap at launch as well and it wasn't until they removed the RMAH, added a new class, added adventure mode and bounties, and added a lot of seasonal content that it fleshed out to being as fun as it is now. I'm hopeful that D4 eventually gets there but man it's just not the fun I was hoping for presently.
For me, I love the franchise and have really fond memories, but this one feels like a free to play game, but then they also want $70 for it. A game with a premium price point can be okay and a game with microtransactions can also be okay, but trying to be both is going to result in those of us who've been around awhile just taking a pass.
Personally I deleted blizzard games after the sexual harassment lawsuit/investigation by the California AG, but many hate Diablo specifically for the immortal mobile game. Diablo 4 also increased the grind after launch to pad content further, it's a $70 game with cosmetic macrotransactions, and it has season passes and other garbage.
Blizzard is a shit company that exploits their customers, their employees and had a huge sexual harassment issue recently. Overall just a complete shit company making overpriced mediocre games. They used to be great, which is why they draw so much hate for now being awful.
I bought Diablo 3 in a physical DVD in a local computer store. This is Brazil, so the mere idea of managing to line up and buy a game at the same day as everyone else in the world was huge at the time.
I get the game, I install it, and despite not having the best PC it did run well - I also don't remember suffering with the server issues most people did at launch. However, I need to take a break to study for some tests, and after that, I moved cities so this meant I took a break from the game for a few months.
When I come back, my account is locked. Why? Well, I was playing everyday, but then I was not, and they interpreted this a "suspicious sudden change of playing habits". They wanted a picture of my ID to unlock my account. Guess what though, their support wasn't equipped to deal with a Brazilian ID. Of course, being brazilian, my only ID is this one.
So that was how Blizzard locked me out of a game I owned, a game I could physically hold in my hands.
And that's the story of why I'm never buying a Blizzard product, regardless of medium or store, regardless of quality or hype, regardless of promises or support pages. The game could literally make my computer start ejecting gold nuggets out of the USB 2.0 port, and I would not play a Blizzard game.
They wanted a picture of my ID to unlock my account.
This is inappropriately invasive, and doesn't even accomplish the stated goal, since an ID can't prove account ownership when the account wasn't created with an ID in the first place.
This practice has become alarmingly common for online services. We really do need strong privacy laws.
Activision didn't have 2fa, my account got hacked and stolen, and sold on the black market (I assume because I had a Damascus skin on cod mw) after months of talking to support with proof of purchase (I think 4 months) they still hadn't helped, and I realised my steam account was still linked and I regained access.
I changed the password instantly, and I had my account back.
Almost immediately I received an email saying "fuck you, you sold me an account and changed the password!" This is how I learned it's fate, after an argument dissolving into a conversation with them, it turns out he just bought my account from the hacker.
I relay ALL this information to chat support (who take an hour to contact and are only open at 3am) who can see my purchase history and extensive chat logs about the issues I've had. They congratulate me on managing to recover my account and help me remove the hackers linked accounts.
And then they ban me within that same week.
They won't unban me, it's permanent, they won't review it or look at the chat logs, they don't care. They didn't ban it when it got hacked or when it got sold for four months, but they did once I recovered it.
I sold a wow account 15 years ago that was decked out for the time (guild broke up) for $1,000. Kept getting emails for years. Eventually I got sick of it and responded to one saying the account had changed hands and they banned it immediately. They only care about people selling/trading things outside of their system. They get a wiff of an account being sold and they'll nuke it.
Whoa whoa whoa... if it starts printing good I'd even pay for a WinRAR license.
Joking aside, diablo 3 was the last game I ever pre-ordered. They basically made a wow clone in the Diablo universe, but without a compelling story. They must be desperate for sales if they are diversifying where they sell it.
The visceral reaction I had to your username cannot be understated…
With that out of the way, I’m disappointed with Diablo IV being always on. I loved every one up to 3 and never craved online interaction. I get it’s where the money is at but for that reason, as the Sharks would say, I’m out.
Just don't give this any time of day. Even if this was a good game, Blizzard, let alone Microsoft, are shit companies you shouldn't support. It doesn't help that it's also just a bad aRPG
This was somewhat done for Destiny 2, when they moved from Battle.net to Steam (so like the Bethesda situation mentioned in another reply). I'm sure it was a bit easier for them since the base game went F2P which obviously hasn't happened here for Diablo 4, but all of my purchases/DLCs for the game were transferred over to the Steam equivalents.
I'd assume if they really wanted to, they could find a way to just give everyone who has it on BNet a key to the Steam version, but there's no real incentive for them to do that.
I'm a long term Guild Wars 2 player and when they joined Steam the client auto logs you in using your Steam account. However there is a switch you can add so that it logs in using a non-steam account.