Snow storm this week released Diablo IV: Vessel of HateAn expansion to the popular fantasy action role-playing game that tasks players with slaughtering masses of screeching demons and collecting the random gear they leave behind.
Since it came out last year, Diablo IV has been a huge success for Blizzard, earning over $666 million (yes, really) in its first week. But before that release came years of ups and downs, including a predecessor that was perceived within Blizzard as an embarrassment and an iteration that was so drastically different, that people began to wonder if it really still existed. devils not anymore.
Today, devils It is one of Blizzard’s most important franchises. But for at least one Blizzard executive who was present at its inception, it wasn’t even a “real game.”
My new book, Play Well: The Rise, Fall, and Future of Blizzard Entertainmentchronicles the entire 33-year saga of the video game company, from the early days of success of Warcraft and starship from its merger with Activision to last year’s $69 billion acquisition by Microsoft. This exclusive WIRED excerpt tells the story of a canceled Diablo III expansion and the Diablo IV that never happened.
at first of 2014, while finishing Diablo IIIThe first expansion, soul reaperThe Blizzard team started talking about what would come next. They had been operating under the belief that Diablo III would follow Starcraft II model (a base game followed by two solid expansions) and had even started thinking about what the next expansion would be like. “We were tossing around really big ideas, but nothing final yet,” said writer Brian Kindregan.
Then, during a general meeting shortly before soul reaper came out, they received news that took the energy out of the team: Diablo III I wouldn’t get a second extension. No matter what happened to soul reaperThey were finished. “Having your next project canceled is scary,” said designer John Yang. There was no clear explanation as to why this was happening – Blizzard executives praised his work on soul reaper and said that the decision was not made due to any type of failure on his part. “None of the answers passed the sniff test,” said producer Jeremy Masker.
What they did not know was that a series of factors were working against the devils equipment. CEO Mike Morhaime and the rest of Blizzard’s senior management saw Diablo III as a failure, a game that had damaged the brand, and several of the executives did not think soul reaper It would be enough to turn it around. Morhaime was also feeling pressure from Bobby Kotick and his lieutenants at Activision, who worried that the Irvine developers were trying to work on too many projects at once. And then there was the demonic elephant in the room: despite its great sales figures, Diablo III was not equipped to generate long-term income. People only bought the game once, which made it difficult for Blizzard to justify keeping a team of 100 people together to work on ongoing support.
However, it also seemed absurd to consider the game a misstep. Diablo III It was one of the most popular games ever created, to the point that other companies complained that the number of users of their own games decreased significantly every time a new game appeared. devils the patch came out. “Did world of warcraft money? No,” said director Jay Wilson. “But it made more money than most of the things Blizzard makes.” Production manager John Hight begged Morhaime and the other executives to wait to send them. soul reaper ask for a second extension, but it was useless. “The team was devastated,” one executive said. “Not only the devils team, but really the entire development.”