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

Fun fact: Right now there's more people watching videos about Diablo IV dying than people actually playing Diablo IV.

During my childhood Blizzard couldn’t get it wrong. As an adult, they can’t get it right.

The advertising was insane, i live in a village with 2 bus stops and they both had diablo 4 adverts on them

A great example of how companies don’t listen to the feedback from their player base and implement what they think we want.

I do not know how anyone can be surprised by this after watching Blizzard for the past 10 years.

Diablo3 item description: "Increase your damage by 5% for each ally within 30 yards." Diablo4 item description: "Increase your non-physical damage by 0.3% every time you spend 5 energy on a core skill while standing in a pool of blood when surrounded by at least 5 undead within 15 yards when your health is below 50% and "Reign of the Pointless Skill" has less than 4 seconds left on cooldown. This skill stacks up to 12 times but all stacks will drop if you fall asleep while playing and your wife hits you with the "Baseball Bat of the Gullible Idiot" for wasting your money on this tripe.

It’s free for a week on Steam right now. I’ve played a few hours and I’m wondering when it will start to get fun. It’s a shame nobody told them how important it was to hire an amazing foley artist. One of the best parts of Diablo, that helped to keep me playing, was the incredibly detailed and disturbing sound effects. Who else remembers the first time they heard the sound of their axe splitting open the skull of a Fallen? Like a watermelon splitting open and splattering its contents onto the pavement.

The main campaign was good and fun with nice graphics and the cinematics and characters were great also. The late game was boring and a chore to try to follow the limited events happening randomly, only to get useless loot. The dungeons were all built on the same mode - find the keys to open the door - to kill 2 elites - to kill a boss. Then seasons happen and there was no way on earth I will lvl up a new character for a few gameplay changes that will only last a couple of months. To me it was the same feeling I've had in D3, nice to try it for a while but I don't get why people tryhard to find some interest in it after that...I won't get back to that game since they won't change all those points and honestly I feel I'm tired of Blizzard games in general, there are way better games to play with...

Blizzard is the best example that greed consumes the brain. A company that was known for innovative and exciting games and fan service now feels like it’s made up of people who have no interest in fans but only see dollars in their eyes. It’s a pity, but the downfall was initiated at the latest with the acquisition by Activision. R.I.P Blizzard.

That phrase, "Do you guys not have phones?!" Will forever go down in infamy.

It’s the result when sales people and accountants make the call, when the goal is to maximize profit rather than to optimize player experience, when the dedicated and passionate employees being replaced with people who just want a job, and when players keep supporting such greed.

Conclusion: I’m glad I didn’t purchase Diablo IV

This absolutely warms my heart to see Blizzard struggle, especially financially. They 100% brought this on themselves so I have less than zero sympathy for them.

The main problem with this game was that end game really made you feel like you were wasting your life playing it. Most games are pretty good at masking this, Diablo 4 featured it.

Outstanding job on this video. It’s sad to see the direction of triple A gaming companies.

I feel like a lot of the issues I had with it were flow issues. Like if you get a legendary instead of getting an item that gets used up on the next use it should be like an unlock you can use as much as you want plus it would cut down on item storage issues. The gameplay of it was very lackluster and they didn't keep the focus the story needed.

Blizzard, EA, Ubisoft, Disney. Companies we all know, and used to love. They are all being destroyed by corporate greed, and they will all suffer the same fate.

"No game in history has gone from 7 million down to less than 40k in a few months." Blizzard sets yet another record!

Grew up with D2 first, then D1. One of the advantages of being poor is you get a better sense of what you want more. When D3 came out, I was jobless, and my computer was not powerful enough to play it. And I didn't have the money to play online. A few close peeps got it first and told me it sucked. 11 years later, not jobless now, but still don't have the hardware powerful enough to run D4. Been doing better things with my time anyway.

Ive never fought a world boss alone, theres always a huge crowd and i still play every day

No other game has ever made me feel more like a number, just a statistic. It felt like every design choice was made not with the intention of making the experience more enjoyable for the player, but to instead increase some metric like time played.

Ever since Diablo Immortal we all knew where this franchise was headed.

Did you forget to mention the nerf to fun in other ways other than how fast you could level up? What about some of the later struggling classes before the season even got released, like Sorcerers getting blown up instantly, and the fix that came out was a nerf to all defence and cooldown reduction.

My first contact with Diablo was through D2, when I first saw a class mate playing it in school. After that we started playing it quite a lot till we hit high school, they we migrated to CS 1.6. I played D1, D2 and D2 remastered, a bit of D3 and I was very exited for D4. However I had some problems with it and this made me quite the game quite early after 3 binge days: -> I was very existed due to the graphics and the story; this is the only + in the list -> f***ing rubber band effect of the mobs, wtf is that, every place I went the monsters were my level or bigger. Even at the start of the game; -> after level 50 you can't roll better items, this is due to the game mechanics; -> no sens of grinding for better gear, due to the fact that the monsters will always be a step before you; So for me the rubber band effect and also the method of rolling for items after level 50, made the game unplayable and I lost interest in it. This was my experience. To bad, I loved D1, D2 and D2R, however D3 and D4 are big disappointments.

Blizzard didn't shoot themselves in the foot, they shot themselves in the face... and somehow reloaded the metaphorical double barrel and shot themselves again. It's wild how far they fell

Rest in peace Blizzard. May this be a clear and pristine example that when you put money, profit and greed on priority over customer experience and games, you get this. Thank you for all the good memories.

I dont know, I tend to avoid full price games that contain words like "seasons" or "market"

Game companies should remain small. When they get too big, greed takes over and the magic that made them special is gone. I remember the Diablo4 mobile announcement, there is no single moment in history more apparent that a gane dev got disconnected from their gamers.....fail!

In the early 2000s, when diablo 3 was in early development and under heavy executive meddling, many that were essentially the founders of the company tried to get control back by threatening to resign all at once if they don't get control back. The executives called their bluff and accepted those resignations. This incident was a sign that things weren't right at home even all those years ago.

A big issue is that the devs think fixing bugs and adding content/mechanics that were present in D3 is “seasonal content”.

I think a major problem with games nowadays is it needs to be able to keep people engaged for multiple hours a day 7 days a week. The main way to achieve this is by stretching out the leveling process and making sure everything happens tediously slow, without it feeling that way. The main reason i stopped playing diablo 4 is not because i though D4 was bad but mostly because i didn't feel like i had the time required to start playing the game the way i wanted to. Not to mention making alts and trying out other stuff. I know i am now considered a casual player, but in reality most people are. If it takes you multiple hundreds of hours to reach a point where you can kindoff put a build together and you can play somewhere between 15-20 hours a week it will give you the feeling you aren't making any progress. If however they'd make the game like d2 or d3 was where you could max level a character in a matter of hours depending on what gear you had available this wouldn't make for a lot of content or replayability especially if you need to keep people engaged for 10-12 hours a day multiple days a week. And this is where most of the hype will come from. If you make a game and it's not well received by the bigger streamers and their audience this can in most cases kill it outright. And will a 100$ game be received well if it provided 5-10 days of playtime?

The amount of hours I put in to D2 back in the day is staggering. D3 was meh, but when D4 came around, I was really pumped for the first several hours thinking, “man, they really nailed it”. Then when “end game” came around, I could barely stomach going back to it and I haven’t picked it up since.

Crazy how D4 came only a couple months ago, but to me it feels like I stopped playing it over a year ago🤦‍♂️

"Do you guys not have phones??" should be written in stone, remembered forever as blizzards legacy. Words to heed by.

I remember all my friends that spent the money on this game, fighting tooth and nail about how it "Wasnt already dying already" or "wasnt going to die at all".. dont think ive heard a word from them about this game since probably 2 weeks after the launch😭🤣

I realize it was over way back. When I made a silly joke in D2R about queue. It was lighthearted and silly. "Sorry can't purchase immortal because you're queue number 250." And then a moderator banned me from forum. In this industry when a employee decided to be yes man to leadership prioritizing profit over quality, and treating customers like garbage (just imagine how they treat their employees) it doesn't matter how good the product are, because your days are already numbered.

RIP Blizzard. I'm happy I got to experience the good times.

I was wondering why I haven’t heard much about Diablo IV since it released. I’ve played the Diablo series since I was a kid…hearing all this breaks my heart. 💔

Bit of a brain dump on this whole ordeal: For context, I've been playing Diablo with my dad for years now. I used to watch him play D2 when I was little, and that eventually led up to playing D3 when I was old enough to be introduced to that sort of thing. Neither of us are particularly interested in really truly no-life grinding out characters or seasons like madmen on D3, but it was always fun to sit down and just genuinely enjoy the game together. We liked the loud, overwhelming screens when you'd get to higher levels and into paragon and all that, and seeing just how much crazier everything got when we'd inevitably crank up the difficulty again every time was enjoyable, seeing how quickly we could disintegrate a boss' health bar. I've probably replayed D3's story mode more times than I can count, and actually speed-ran it for my friends a few times for fun. Personally I've never kept up with Blizzard as a company, nor the Diablo community online since I usually only ever played it with my dad since I was mostly interested in it solely for the Game itself, rather than where it came from or the people around it. I've pretty much experienced D3 in a vacuum chamber, and still consider it likely my favourite game, so when I stumbled on the D4 trailer (late might I add lol) I showed my dad and we agreed to pre-order it and eventually play it when it came out. It was hard to lock down time to play it, so We've only played it all of three times over the past 2 months as of May 2024, but we definitely got to the party WAY late, and I had no idea the game was such an enormous dumpster-fire until now. We did download immortal on the phone when it came out and were both pretty much baffled by how egregious all of the micro-transactions were, and lost interest pretty quickly. It just felt like such a far cry from what D2 and D3 were to us that it just wasn't worth it in the slightest, but we never looked into it any further than that. But setting up D4 we were also punched in the face by more micro-transactions the first damn screen we loaded up, so I just remember both of us being super baffled by it. Just- putting such a blatant cash grab as the first thing your players see when booting up a game didn't sit well. Especially so given we're supposed to be here for a story and a game to be experienced, not to just further paid for. But again, neither of us know much about Blizzard's history with this theme in recent years, so we just brushed it off. We aren't very far into the game yet, hardly level 27, but we're enjoying ourselves. It's pretty, and the updated animations and textures are cool, and the atmosphere is well built and executed... but that's sort of just it. it looks good I suppose, but if that's all that's to it then I'd rather go back to D3 once I'm done with the campaign mode. We're like, the filthiest of casual players mind you so if none of this holds ground I wouldn't be surprised, but it feels like there's very little direction given to the player on where to go or what to do. Not a bad thing mind you! But certainly frustrating for us when we're trying to figure out navigation through a bunch of menus that are lacking in explanation at best, completely baffling without an online query at worst. a lot of the menu navigation feels clunky in a way that D3's system certainly didn't, and I find a lot of little things that added a little charm to the older games is completely lacking here. I vividly remember reading through the descriptions for skills like with the Barbarian and seeing a hulk joke in the lore bit, or finding a headcrab helmet you could transmog, or finding silly enemies with sillier names, hell- even annoying my dad by rapidly running my joystick through my player menu was fun. Maybe I haven't played enough to make this call yet, but It just doesn't feel like I'm going to be finding those sorts of things in D4. It's really quite disheartening to learn that Blizzard has made such a mess of such a loving, hopeful community of people who just want to see their well-loved game be done right by. It's so strange to suddenly learn that a franchise I'd held in such high regard was reduced to a cash grab and immediate failure, especially having no prior context to any of it. If you've taken the time to read this, thank you. I know I don't offer insight or valuable knowledge to this discussion I'm several months late to, so I hope at the least I've numbed your brain a bit so it doesn't hurt too bad from the headache that was learning Blizzard's actions as a company. I appreciate your time here with me, stranger. Me and my dad are going to see D4 through to the end together regardless of what ends up happening; We're both just hoping there's a cow level :) 🐄

On a free steam weekend, there are 14k people playing, right now. 138k playing BG3.

the biggest problem with blizzard is that they hate or almost hate their player base and ignore 99% of feedback, it's in every their game

I just love the fact that Activision(blizzard) has an actual goblin as a CEO. Like, they didn't need to animate Gollum for LOTR, the they could have just used that guy.

i miss the magic find and rune system from D2 it made me fill like i was treasure hunting or something and the treasure was the item i would build

I'm actually just getting back into gaming for the first time in over a decade to assist in anxiety and other mental health issues. I've been enjoying Diablo Immortal on iOS for over a year and it's one of the reasons I heavily considered buy a new Xbox so I could play Diablo IV as I grew up in the 90's and Diablo 1 and 2 were just magic to me. I've definitely read the horror stories from others about what's going on and this video does a great job of telling the whole story. But I'm still looking forward to at the very least... the solo journey.

Guy’s right. “Appreciate what was and stop holding out hope it will ever come back.” These people have nothing but greed in their hearts. Don’t count on them to keep you entertained.

The amount of great things they have created and the amount of great things they are destroying is simply mesmerizing.

As a former gaming industry employee, and having worked for two major companies (one rhymes with Egocentric Farts and the other with Boobies Are Soft), I can tell you what the major reasons for game failures are: incompetent producers (nepo babies or not), incompetent execs and more recently, this whole DEI crap. I mean, all it takes is to have a look at all the development teams, project managers and producers of the most recently failed AAA games.

Just discovered Diablo 4. Leveled to 51 last night with a summoner Necromancer and it’s a blast! They made it SO playable and entertaining I’m playing more this morning!

Funny, I didn't even think about it but when you brought up Baldur's Gate 3 I realized that me and everyone know that was into Diablo IV has switched to BG3. One of the biggest attraction wasn't just what they had but what they didn't have: No micro-transactions or battle passes or game play time sinks like endless grinding. You just get the game and play. This is rare in games today, especially any kind of RPG. Larian now reminds me of what I used to love about Blizzard.

In the 90s a gaming company is created by GAMERS that have passion to create something they want to play and enjoy. However, the marketing team is who gets credit for big sale numbers and who are promoted internally. Soon those making the decisions are based off of "how do we make more money" rather than "how do we create a kick ass game."

IN GAMING HISTORY is the sentence that instantly tells you someone only played the game in question and a mix of WoW, Minecraft, Angry Birds, Flappybird and MOBAs / Battle Royal /CoD games. And thus knows very little what they are speaking of.

I bought it a few days after it came out and became increasingly frustrated each time it crashed and then made me wait to get back in, only to have lost a lot of progress. This happened a lot and I finally realized I’d rather have the money back then keep this game so I returned it. I was thinking maybe I’d get it again in a few years when it’s cheaper. Recently I went to buy a Xbox series x and saw one that came with D4 and it wasn’t that much more than the one without, so I figured what the hell 🤷🏼‍♀️ I bought it and haven’t played it since 💀 (the game not the Xbox, I play that all the time!)

‘You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain…’ Blizzard in a nutshell.

the biggest problem was that after a certain point, the leveling took so long that it was no longer fun. at some point, all the quests were done, and you just felt like you were in a cage, grinding the dungeon with the most XP over and over again.

I played every release of Diablo 4...and I never got to level 30. I was bored before even finishing the game once. Something I've never done before.

The biggest mistake was the early nerfs 1 week after launch. Easiest way to kill hype. I was actually very hyped about the game, but was out of town at the time, so chose to hold off on buying it until I got back. The nerfs happened while I was out of town, and it made the decision to buy the game crystal clear. There was no way i was going to pay 70+ for a game that is getting massively changed at the moment people were hyped. Showed just poor leadership and direction.

Once you focus on the money and not the customer experience, you lose it all. RIP Blizzard and thank you for everything you did.

Being almost 40 I grew up with the golden age of Blizzard games, these were the games that no other developer could even come close to. Watching this video has reminded me of those times and now Blizzard is just a tiny speck of what it used to be. It's sad to see what it has become.

I loved the Diablo franchise. D1 was so different for its time. D2 made it so much better and the TCP/IP connection was great for multiplayer! D3 was rough at first but i stuck through it and it turned out to be pretty fun... When D4 came out my wife asked me why I wasn't getting it. "I dunno. I'm just not that interested in it." And I'm glad I dodged that bullet. Good video! (And yes, I left out Immortal on purpose. Played Beta and that was enough.)

I spend over 10k hours in Warcraft 3 and was top 50 solo, won a couple of tournaments, finals in many tournaments. Have yet to buy Warcraft 3 Reforged. Spent many hours playing Diablo 1, Diablo 2 and Diablo 3 on console because its actually fun playing on console with a controller. No plans to buy Diablo 4.

Lack of end game content killed it for me. I leveled my eternal character to 79 then started the season character. I distinctively remember thinking, “you know what, I just don’t enjoy playing this game anymore.” I have not played D4 since, and that was within couple weeks of season 1 launch.

What surprises me is that more people haven’t talked about the scaling that this game applies. Why would I be motivated to level up and find better items, if the monsters will just get stronger too? I loved the idea of being rushed to hell in Diablo 2, only to walk around fearing being one-shotted by a demon that was way too strong for me. It motivated me to want to play the game and improve my character. That’s completely gone…

I just started playing again and can’t say I have any issues with it. Having a find a party feature in game would be nice.

DiabloIV Season 2 was actually fun. Biggest complaint I have is that the “microupdates” sometimes interrupt gameplay and remove waypoints on the map, as well as disallow dungeon key activation.

I feel like there is more heart put into this video then what was put in the game

I especially loved the announcement that blizzard recognized that resistances didn't work at launch however they weren't going to fix them until season 2 and yet season 1 launch with some of its unique mechanic affecting resistances that still didn't work and weren't going to work for the entire season. Really summarized for me how out of touch development was with the community

Turned it on, was told to make some stupid account to play it, turned it off.

"Malaise" is not pronounced the same way as "malice." Other than that, a good video.

I remember in 2009 thinking that I couldn't wait for d3 to come out. Little did I know at the time that the best had already came and went Edit: thank you for my most liked comment, I didn't think it'd get more than 10 likes

Anybody who thought Activision/Blizzard wasn't going to be a disappointment hasn't been paying attention.

I literally haven't gone back once since Baldur's Gate 3 came out lol

Yeah I think the biggest mistake they made was make it where you can't play offline

I hope this video gets more likes than D4 gets in it's daily player count.

Its truly awe inspiring how Blizzard managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory with Diablo 4's updates.

Regarding the Blizzard lawsuit, if you Google it and just checked even the first result, which I looked at from Los Angeles Times, it states in the settlement that “no court or any independent investigation has substantiated any allegations that: there has been systemic or widespread sexual harassment at Activision Blizzard,” or that “Activision Blizzard senior executives ignored, condoned, or tolerated a culture of systemic, harassment, retaliation, or discrimination.”, which both parties signed. So take it for what you will.

Diablo 2 original was the defining blizzard game for me back in the day. I will NEVER forget the random mouldy tome found in the wild. It had the best environment of any diablo game and just gave a feeling none of the others have since. Searching for the tomb of tal rasha.AAAHH good old days ☺️

Its sad that a lot of gaming companies now have shifted from "Making games for everyone to enjoy" to "making games everyone can spend money on". Greed is the puppeteer behind the strings every time a game feels soulless and microtransaction ridden.

There is nothing blizzard can do for me to come back and play any of their games.

Felt like I was playing a mobile game.

I never even made lvl 100 by the time I was bored and season 1 came out. I rolled a season character, but didn't even feel like trying to level a new character when my non-seasonal character wasn't even 100 yet. Just didn't make sense, and it got boring super fast. In the end, it was a waste of money. I won't be so quick to buy a new blizzard game anytime soon.

This is why small game developers are doing so much better. Big names like EA, blizzard etc , are profit share based, not on quality of product.

I had a blast playing diablo 4 until about level 70 and then it just felt pointless. Its a shame the game had such promise.

Played the free trial of the game on steam, it was so much fun. Its saddening to hear this.

It is worth getting as someone who is new to this franchise and all I've seen is negative stuff about this game but for some reason it seems like it'll be fun to try it out

This was brilliant on Blizzards part. They made mad cash selling the game, then disappointed people so severely they don't need to spend any money on upkeep.

Let me just say : Thank you Larian. If someone put the final nail in the cofinof a once beloved franchise and gaming company then let it be a worthy nail. And what a beautiful and wonderful nail you gave us with Baldur's Gate 3.

10:33 - it doesn’t take a financial wizard to determine which had a larger impact. Unless they were announced on the same day.

Amazing game, with even more amazing cutscenes. I have now played it for over 160 hours and other than a few nitpickings here and there, i really dont have anything bad to say about it. The game never feels old, after you complete the main story. I really dont understand the hate it gets. It honestly goes to my top 5 video games of all time.

I had no interest in D4, but a friend convinced me to play with him. We played the story, did the seasonal content, but grinding nightmare dungeons wasn't enjoyable, so we set the game aside until further notice.

I haven’t played in 2 months and he’s right. I literally saw only 1 person online. It’s crazy how dead it is

D2 was similar to D4 in a few ways, once you char was about level 90 the amount of time it took to increase stats increased exponentially. I can remember playing legit for over a year to got from level 97-98, all while never finding a better piece of gear.

This game is good don’t let this new generation of youngsters tell you it’s bad there’s so much to do in it just started my third hardcore character

Two weeks and I was done. Tried to play a second character after I beat the game, but going from Necro to Barb felt like going from running to crawling my way through the game.

I have been playing blizzard games since the 90s and I'm saddened by their fall from grace. But I'm a middle aged man now, raising a family of my own. My youth is over and I have to accept that. RIP Blizzard, I will miss the good times we had. And thank you to the Devs who made Blizzard great in the first place.

they made diablo 2 and i admired this game. then they made a diablo 3 game which i was thinking about like "well its not as good as diablo 2 but well its okay-ish?". and then they made diablo 4 promising to focus more on diablo 2 and i'm like "f*ck this sh*t i'm out, i'm into diablo 3 more than into this sh*t"

I was lucky enough to play in the close beta and after a week I knew that I wouldn't buy the game at launch... unfortunately a friend didn't listen to me and gave it to me as a gift. All I hope now is when the expansion is released it will be 100% ready for the price they will ask for it

This kind of thing happens when you no longer have the original developers who knew what the fans wanted and replaced them with people (Activision) who had no love for the series. It's become nothing more than a damn money grab with lack of fun content. I was looking forward to this game even put in $800 to upgrade my PC to run it smoothly only to be meet with sheer disappointment and constant crashes. Blizzard needs to get their shit together.

I had my doubts when I noticed that d4 was intentionally designed to waste as much time as possible in play time. Shops would be extremely far from each other on the completely opposite side of town, for example, so you would be constantly running back and forth in town when doing vendor stuff. They also forced you to slowly run from nightmare dungeon to nightmare dungeon until they finally caved and allow people to teleport to said dungeons. They even had an absolute ton of useless and weak stats to make good drops practically non existent. Post launch, they even made it take an additional two seconds to use your town portal under the guise that it would make playing hard-core more challenging, but the community knew this was a lie, as if that was the truth, it would only happen to hard-core characters. Nope, they just were absolutely obsessed with making everything take as long and tedious as possible. I was done after that teleport change.

The main issue with D4 for me was the fact that they kept the same old system from the previous game with seasons and having to reroll every few months. Not only that, but the new content was only available in seasons so you had to remake in order to continue playing. I never ended up going back to my beloved barbarian from the initial game. They would of needed an end game with raids that only lvl 100 could participate. They would of needed something interesting to do at 100 to compel players to grind there. Like an extended story: lilith is back and you need to get to 100 to defeat her in a raid like dungeon setup. She would than drop the best 100 gear out there. They could of made a pvp queue for lvl100 and tack on rewards. Instead they make you abandon you beloved well crafted character just to force you to start playing all over again. Plus alot of the achievement did not carry over to the next character. To fix D4 is simple: Add end game content, make new mid game content available to all characters not just seasonal. Focus 50% on seasons and the rest on the inital game for those of us who don't wish to be the new kid at school every 2 months

I felt like I was grinding endlessly. My brain turned to rott.