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It's a mystery how Blizzard then went on to release the failure Diablo 3 is.
And just to double down on my unpopular opinion, Diablo 1 was the best game in the franchise.
> Per the terms of the sale, Ken Williams was given a verbal promise by CUC management that Serra[sic] and the other studios wrapped up in the purchase would retain their independence. That does not make sense to me, though I may be missing something. It's either a "verbal [only] promise" or in the "terms", no?
It's a mystery how Blizzard then went on to release the failure Diablo 3 is.
Diablo 3 was far from a failure as it broke a number of financial records; the main problem was the game-design pitfall of basing a loot-based game around the Real Money Auction House. (which they fixed in the expansion) In a way the Diablo 3 RMAH helped validate the modern freemium/gacha business model for mobile platforms.
D3 was given away for free with a year subscription to WoW at the time which skewed the numbers a bit too.
It's a mystery how Blizzard then went on to release the failure Diablo 3 is.
[0]: https://www.harpercollins.com/9780062651235/blood-sweat-and-...
Can anyone recommend a book on gamedev industry written by actual industry insider, and not a professional writer/journalist like this one?
I was working at Cyberlore as a playtester when Blizzard pulled the plug on the Warcraft 2 expansion. It was baffling to us all. They never explained why, to us anyway. All these years later, to read that they felt the work was subpar is a surprise. We tried to get more info, but all we got was "Decision is made. Hand over all assets." We just thought it was some kind of internal political struggle.
These days everyone does agile, so these kind of big expectation mismatches don't happen so often anymore. In theory, anyway.
It's a mystery how Blizzard then went on to release the failure Diablo 3 is.
"During a milestone check-in with Cyberlore, however, Blizzard’s managers had deemed the work subpar. They cancelled the contract, finished the add-on pack, Beyond the Dark Portal, themselves, and resolved that only an in-house team could nurture a Blizzard property to an acceptable level of quality." I was working at Cyberlore as a playtester when Blizzard pulled the plug on the Warcraft 2 expansion. It was baffling…
It's a mystery how Blizzard then went on to release the failure Diablo 3 is.
Diablo 3 sold 3.5 million units the first day and 30 million units total as of 2015, so I'm not sure by what metric it would be considered a failure... aside from "I personally didn't like it"?