This isn’t necessarily going to speak to everyone, but it will probably shake up a bit anyone who has been following Diablo Immortal closely since its first alpha testing phase 2 years ago. Maxroll is unquestionably the reference site on the game in English, with detailed guides and builds available on each facet of the game for years. If ever there was a team that believed in the potential of Diablo Immortal, this is it. L’announcement of the closure of the Diablo Immortal branch of the site is therefore a landmark event in the industry. The guides will remain online for a few more days, even if no update will be made, but thereafter, all the part of the site dedicated to Diablo Immortal will disappear from Maxroll. Here’s a summary of their reasons, as well as some background on the case.
Years of work for nothing on Diablo Immortal
Despite the frigid initial reception from the Diablo community, the Maxroll team saw potential in the title, and the possibility of having a good game upon arrival if Blizzard gets it right. That’s why they invested heavily in the title (including financially), and made Diablo Immortal the second game they handled. They then participated in the technical alpha, then the closed alpha. They played intensively, and pushed the game as far as possible, while providing extensive feedback to Blizzard on balance issues and broken features.
An anecdote that is both amusing and tragic, is that part of the community suspects that these elements were used by Blizzard to determine the caps and invisible limits of the game.
Things started to get seriously out of hand with the closed beta, since their many returns made 7 months ago were not taken into account at all, and the many problems encountered before were still present. Worse still, monetization has made its entrance, with a limitless P2W approach, capable of gobbling up tens or even hundreds of thousands of euros, without ever seeing the end of it. At the same time, players who invest large sums become much more powerful than other players, with advantages that cannot be compensated. Ironically, paying these crazy sums does not prevent you from hitting a new artificial wall after a few hours.
The various caps and caps were also introduced at this time, in particular the server’s Paragon levels, their integration to prevent equipping high level equipment, and their requirement to improve items, which greatly slows down the speed progression in an artificial way. Once again, the Maxroll team played thousands of hours, and sent out dozens of pages of detailed feedback, alerting developers to design issues, bugs, and the inherent immorality of the model. monetization used.
The release of the game and the common disappointment
Diablo Immortal unfortunately released in a state very close to that of the closed beta, whether in terms of monetization, bugs, missing features, and balancing issues. Immortals who spend 4 hours a day staring at a door in an attempt to defend the Vault must laugh yellow right now (or quit play). After more than 2 years of testing and feedback from them, it’s obviously a big disappointment, and Blizzard’s silence doesn’t help matters. They view the game as disappointing, it doesn’t reward playing, and the abusive economic structure is not something they can endorse, even though only 1% of gamers fall into the impulse buying trap, they consider that is already too much in their eyes. The only thing that would push them to re-open the Diablo Immortal section would be a major limitation on the Pay to Win aspect, in order to give Free to Play players a real chance. But they clearly say thatthey don’t think Blizzard is implementing such changes in order to fix and improve the game.
These are obviously disappointments that we share, since we have also followed the game since its initial announcement, even if it was with a lower investment. You can discover our detailed analysis of the game’s flaws, as well as Blizzard’s errors concerning it.