Diabloii.net Guest Articles

Quit this game. Delete your characters, uninstall, microwave your disks, and rip off your CD key sticker. Any time spent playing this game is a waste, not only of your precious leisure time, but also of Blizzard’s precious World of Warcraft server space.

I’ve been a lifelong fan of Blizzard, specifically the Diablo series, for at least five years. I’m no newbie; I’ve made the three-minute trek to Adria a few hundred times, and I’ve made The Butcher my prey. I stopped counting the number of D2 and LoD characters I made at seventy. I know I’ve gone past one hundred now, and loved every minute of it.

A couple days ago I took a break from farming Meph and Pindle to read some of Flux’s web log, blackchampagne.com. Many of you know him from his (in?)famous Decahedrons of this site’s fame. He attended Blizzcon, and was going to do a write up about it, but blogged a paragraph about it first. To quote (scroll to the end of the update):

“As for Blizzcon writing… yeah. Nothing yet, though I did flip through the 100+ photos I took there. I have nothing to say about any of the games on display, since I didn’t play them or pay them much attention. The crowd was somewhat interesting, though there was far less cosplay than I had hoped for. There were also virtually zero displays of Diablo anywhere there. I mean none, no monitors showing D2, no play stations for it, no artwork or action figure displays, no Diablo merchandise in the gift shop (one cinematic poster of Baal and a silicone bracelet aside), etc. I saw one kid in a home-made Necromancer outfit, and a couple of people in cow suits. And I had on my Bliz North D2 t-shirt, and a D2 hat. That was about it, in a sea of WoW and SC Ghost displays, and thousands of almost entirely white, male, 18-24 y/o fans who were wearing jeans and t-shirts that had nothing to do with Blizzard at all, unless they’d already waited in the long line for their gimme bag and put on the black BlizCon t-shirt found within.”

[Editor’s note: Flux eventually posted his Blizzcon photos and write up on his site, and also turned it into a Decahedron article as well, both of which discuss Blizzcon and Diablo’s presence at it in much more detail.]

Excuse me, Blizzard? Is this your idea of paying homage to the “Warcraft, Starcraft, and Diablo franchises?” Not one area devoted to the game that’s been hailed as the best hack n’ slash RPG in existence, and continues to be recognized as one of the top PC titles of all time? The games that sold millions and helped you build your empire after Warcraft 2? The game that so many students sacrificed hours of study time for, playing until sunrise just to gain one more level or see that Windforce drop?

I’ve devoted hundreds of hours of my life, maybe even days, to building up Diablo and D2 characters, and so have millions of others. And then at Blizzcon, you fail to acknowledge we exist. I would have loved to pay 120 dollars for a Blizzcon ticket—I’d have shown up cosplaying as a werebear druid, a six-shael phase blade in one hand, Stormshield in another, and a necklace of charms dangling around me, pumping my fire claw damage into the high thousands. Boy, would I have been disappointed. I guess since I wasn’t a World of Warcraft character, no one would have noticed. And I guess that since I’m not shelling out fifteen dollars a month, no one would have cared what I play either.

The last few times I logged into battle.net, there were between 30,000 and 50,000 LoD players. Is a fan base the population of a medium sized city too few for you to waste your time on, Blizzard? Those four million WoW players with paying subscriptions means you’re raking in sixty million per month—two million dollars per day—yet you can’t even donate a tiny fraction of that to fixing D2’s bugs, or re-balancing the weak skills. I’m not asking for new content—indeed, 1.11 was a “blessing”—but you, Blizzard, refuse to continue basic game upkeep. How about stopping some of the D2 item pay sites, like you do with WoW? How about fixing the ridiculous instability and lag of the realms? Oh, wait, I know why. You don’t care about us, because we’re not paying money per month to play LoD.

What of 1.11? Milking the cash cow, and nothing more. The added quests were cool, until we realized that’s all that was added. Some would say the community is fortunate to get a patch for a free online game. Personally, I would have sacrificed every chance to find a Hellfire Torch for a patch that fixes the numerous bugs and imbalances D2 has. I’m sure your “patch team” (i.e., two guys working on the game during their coffee breaks) had a burning desire for newer, better Diablo ideas. Maybe no one funded production, which would explain not only why 1.11 took a year to make, but also how it added nothing but flashy features which wore off quickly when we realized none of the game’s “meat” was added to.

Sure, there’s the ladder seasons—oh wait! Someone reached level 99 this season weeks ago and I have yet to hear an acknowledgement of this achievement. You could have at least let him into your convention for free, even though he’d have been sadly disappointed at his or her lack of recognition and support. Maybe they should have given the ladder winners a free copy of World of Warcraft; just what Blizzard wants. One less person on D2 and one more on a paying game. The D2 ladder was just another milking of the cash cow, to try and get those last copies out of Blizzard’s stockrooms.

And what of Brood War, the other game? Of course they’ll continue to support Brood War and fix the bugs (remember Brood War 1.10 before LoD?); they’ve got fans in Korea willing to pay money to watch others play. Tell me, Blizzard, if Brood War is so popular, where’s Starcraft 2? Did you suddenly forget your American fans altogether? Were you so busy delaying Ghost for two and a half years that you forgot to reset and fix Brood War’s ladder hacking? Or did you fix it for the Korean servers, and not us?

My outlook on Blizzard, because of this inexcusable incident, has done a complete flip. I used to treasure hope in my heart that D3 would come, and it would be awesome, and Blizzard would be my best friend again, and all would be forgiven. Not anymore. If Blizzard refuses to acknowledge my (and thousands of others) enjoyment in this game, then what’s the point? Why should I play a game made by a company who doesn’t care about me? They just wanted my money and not my time; well, they’re not getting either from me anymore. A game company that refuses to show their thanks for playing is a disgrace to the industry, because without fans, Blizzard would make no money. Considering that players like me were the ones who would have bought Diablo 3 on launch day—and considering the disrespect for the fan base—things aren’t looking up.

As for me, well, you can find me playing games by producers that give a damn about their fans—specifically, Blizzard’s competitors.

Article by Deathy McDeaderson, level 12 Necromancer/Monk, Guild Wars.

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This entry was posted on Friday, February 3rd, 2006 at 6:32 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.