Diablo: The Red Headed Step Child

Diablo: The Red Headed Step Child

At one time the Diablo franchise was one of the biggest and well loved games that Blizzard Entertainment had ever produced. For those unfamiliar with the franchise, Diablo focuses on being an average run of the mill adventurer in a grim world filled of demons, undead, and so much more. The enemies are numerous and the challenges are daunting yet you, the player, charge forward using everything you have to defeat foes sometimes enchanted by magic to collect gear that helps you defeat the lords of hell. In 1996 and 2000 Diablo 1 and 2 released and were adored by all.

The game was praised for it’s dark storyline, world building, memorable characters, and it’s wonderful gameplay. Although you might play the game to completion the challenges you face and area you are in rarely remain the same as it incorporates a random dungeon and enemy generator. With every new challenge you face comes more powerful gear that allows you to face even more difficult challenges. The game was revolutionary, fun, and allowed for friends to join in via Blizzard’s free battle.net program.

Twelve years passed since Diablo 2 and came Diablo 3. Blizzard fans rejoiced as they grew tired of World of Warcraft’s lackluster expansion: Cataclysm, Starcraft 2 was entertaining but was out for two years at that point. Many old and die hard fans waited with bated breath for it’s release, hoping to fill the void in their lives the 12 years without content left them with while new players heard that Diablo was an incrediblengame and wanted in on this magical experience.

The game dropped. Servers crashed. Players tried for days  trying to get in and play but everything broke. Finally after weeks, players did get in to play for an incredible few hours, defeat the game and were left with nothing but harder difficulties. I played and played and played on my barbarian grinding for hours on end to attempt to reach the hardest difficulty and made it only to feel so burnt out and unfulfilled. Yes I made it to the hardest level yet it was the same content I saw various times. It grew old after a short month and a half.

When I spoke to my friends about their experience they replied in a similar fashion. Some admitted that they stayed on to grind out gear to sell on their real money auction house which was quickly abandoned. Then many of us simply reverted back to World of Warcraft or League of Legends and deemed Diablo 3 a failure.

Months passed and news reached our ears that major changes had been done to Diablo but I, along with my friends, ignored the information as we knew it would be nothing more than a grind fest. Reaper of souls, the Expansion dropped and Blizzard announced they had fixed their mistakes made in vanilla and urged the community to return. Again, I like many others refused due it being so let down with the original version.

It was only recently that a good friend of mine and fellow Geek Lyfe writer, Hesch, informed me of how incredible Diablo 3 had become. I rolled my eyes and told him I would never go back and then he bought the game for me. Obligated to play, I downloaded it and went along with him. We burned through the expansion in no time due to his super high level Witch Doctor. In between stages I was introduced to all the changes made to the game from being able to identify items in bulk to transmogification and so much more.

I had to admit that with every super powered boss that appeared, my appreciation for the game grew. But the moment we finished the expansion it faded. That was until he introduced me to rifts. His guild brought us both onto Torment 10, the hardest difficulty, rifts where if a single rat looked at me the wrong way, my head exploded. Although that might seem like an exaggeration, it was mostly true. I struggled to even survive their runs but was rewarded with intense paragon level ups and gear upgrades.

Even the times in between runs where one member had to do something in real life was spent in appropriate difficultly settings that I used my new gear and tips to defeat the nastiest of bosses with both skill and gear. Even some more challenging bosses I was able to take down with a few good strategies and combinations. It reminded me of Dark Souls where every death was harsh but fair and every victory was fulfilling because I earned the right to the loot that dropped. I asked how far the guilds has gotten in the game and they admitted to have maxed out a few characters to the highest difficulty. For the first time I was excited to play with them and gear up my character to help them take on the harder challenges.

However at the same time I realized that I haven’t heard much at all about changes to Diablo 3 in quite a while. Yes I know they come in and fix a few balancing issues but never any hype from the game and during this year and last’s blizzcon I skipped the Diablo 3 information. Now I crave more! I want new content for the game that is far more skill based than World of warcraft and so much more personal than Starcraft while being more serious than Heroes of the storm and less broken than Hearthstone.

If I fell back in love with Diablo 3 then surely many others would as well. So then why is there no effort to bring folks back to Diablo? World of Warcraft is dying before our eyes, Heroes of the Storm and Hearthstone are fun for a awhile but then we realize that you need to pay money to get the best cards and Heroes is pretty great but match after match can get boring. Yet Diablo requires some skill, it’s a one time payment, is always new and different.

I feel as though Blizzard is missing out on a huge opportunity with this, I would pay quite a bit of money for new classes, areas, hell even silly microtransactions like transmog sets or voice packs. Meanwhile they continue to dump funds into World of Warcraft which fails to compare to it’s glory days, Star Craft 2 requires too much skill to have fun in multiplayer, Heroes gets repetitive and Hearthstone is a loss if you don’t have some of the latest cards to counter broken decks. Not to mention that the cost of creating content for Diablo has to be waaaaay cheaper than any of their other games. I won’t say cheap, but at least more cost effective to add in a few new enemies, areas, and so on.

In my personal opinion I feel as though Blizzard should focus on creating more quality content for Diablo as it is a wonderful game that the surviving team that works on it continue to make better while receiving no real huge funding. In my wildest fantasies I hope that Blizzard scales back WoW to focus on Diablo on either their current game or making a Diablo MMO where friends can gather to destroy minions of hell.

That is just a simple opinion from a simple gamer however, what do you all think?