Diablo III or how Blizzard Entertainment killed it

Diablo has always been a game with a cult following, and Diablo II continued the tradition. Actually those games proved RPG could exist outside D&D, and many developers released would-be "Diablo killers" to take the throne, and noone succeeded. And now Blizzard Entertainment, sadly, succeeded where others failed: they killed the Diablo franchise. It's not that Diablo III is a bad game; it's that it will never live up to predecessors and the future of the franchise is, at best, clouded.

What was awesome about Diablo was the amount of random-generated content that never got boring; even when former Diablo developers formed Flagship Studios tried to recreate it in Hellgate: London it only felt like going into awfully familiar instances and killing iterations of the same monsters. No "monster horde slaughter", no "deeper into the dungeon", nothing like that. Diablo II changed much in the terms of atmosphere, it was a bold move but backed with a certain level of familiarity in the first act, consistent story and an amount of added content - the fans were overjoyed.

What would we expect of Diablo III? Pushing the limits further, I guess. Even more content, even more story, even more plots. When I heard Leonard Boyarsky, one of the masterminds behind Fallout, Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines and Temple of Elemental Evil was in the team, my expectations went even higher.

Now let's go back to an earlier time. Blizzard was known as a company who put quality above deadlines and scrapped games when they did not meet their quality standards. Yet, after releasing WarCraft III - IMHO one of the best RTS games of all time - they killed it with a sequel. World of WarCraft. You may be a WOW fanboy all the same, but let's admit some things:

• making a MMORPG sequel to a game that is going to run for an infinite amount of time also delays further RTS sequels for an infinite amount of time;
• sacrificing lore to gameplay is selling out, and the idea of a Horde that includes Blood Elves and the Forsaken and wars against the Night Elf Sentinel is dumb as hell;
• pay equal - get equal philosophy leads to similar characters with similar top-tier gear.

 Well at least the world design and gameplay were brilliant, so I didn't condemn Blizzard much but swore a bloody oath I'd never play WOW.

If I only knew Blizzard was testing a new way of DRM on us gamers. When StarCraft II came out, it became more apparent: all the multiplayer aspect was handled by Battle.net, and this could be explained somehow too, but when Diablo III single-player content got handled by servers... that's when I said "Damn you Blizzard, I used to admire you but you'll never be the same". It's a DRM. Just a DRM. What's wrong with DRMs? It's that you're calling illegal copying thievery and calling your customers potential thieves.

Diablo and Diablo II are ageless games. I might take my disks out once in a while and revive my savegames from 98 and 2003. Diablo III... if something happens to Blizzard or Diablo server support stops, or you're somewhere there's no internet (grandma's house in the village), there's no Diablo either. It's like Blizzard cared more about getting as much money from you as they can instead of making another great game worthy of the Diablo line.

Skyrim got pirated the day it was released. Yet it sold at awesome rates. So Blizzard, this isn't about not losing money; this is about getting as much money as you can.

You never saw it coming

Well, not many would expect that the buggy TES: Arena of 94 could become the father of the flag-bearer franchise of Action RPG industry. But in 2002, when Morrowind was released, many saw there what they would expect of Diablo and more: freedom of action, a huge world and a story. And it appealed to many that the final boss wasn't something as cheesy as "The Lord of Terror and Father to all Evil in the World", but an old friend - betrayed, like you, but consumed with lust for power and revenge. Morrowind gave your hero a freedom of identity. And - a freedom to mod the game the way we liked it. And when Oblivion came out, Bethesda had messed the whole monster, NPC and gear levelling system (which forced me to finish the main quest on lower levels and get unique gear on higher ones). What did we do? We just modded the game, and forgave Bethesda - Oblivion became Game of the Year like Morrowind did. And still I feel apologetic tones when Todd Howard is speaking about Oblivion. Because the man respects gamers.

Now imagine if Bethesda decided to take out the modding capabilities from Skyrim. Instead, they made a better mod-making software and promised to make mods available on console.

Bethesda decides to make a TES MMORPG - they make a prequel set two eras before Skyrim. Just a chain of brilliant decisions, and that's why TES V: Skyrim is the next big thing and Diablo III is the Daikatana of RPG.