Activision forced Diablo 4 into development as D3 was deemed “a failure”

Blizzard’s Diablo 4 has just release its Vessel of Hatred expansion, adding a new class and a host of new content to the game. However, Blizzard’s original version of the series’ fourth game diverged heavily from the isometric action-RPG we know and love, and it’s all because its Diablo 3 was deemed a huge failure.

Blizzard was forced to make Diablo 4

Revealed in Jason Schreier’s new book, Play Nice: The Rise, Fall, and Future of Blizzard Entertainment, via WIRED, further expansions for Diablo 3 were cancelled as soon as Reaper of Souls was finished.

During an all-hands meeting just before the release of D3’s big expansion, Activision revealed that the game would not be getting a second expansion. While the game sold well, the company believed D3 “wasn’t equipped to deliver long-term revenue” because gamers “only bought the game once”.

This led chief executive officer Mike Morhaime to immediately start work on Diablo 4 which was designed to be more of a live-service game. However, the game was also no longer an isometric action RPG. Instead, Blizzard developed an over-the-shoulder permadeath action game took heavily from Batman: Arkham City.

“The game would have permadeath—every time your character died, they’d disappear for good, giving you perks for the next run,” the book reveals. “It was a drastic departure from what people were expecting from Diablo IV, but Mosqueira had earned the executive team’s trust to experiment.”

The game didn’t work

In the book, it’s revealed that problems with the original version of Diablo 4 “began to pop up right away”. With its basis as a co-op game, just like every game in the series, the third-person, Arkham-style combat just didn’t work.

“In the Arkham games, groups of thugs would circle around the Dark Knight, comic-book style, waiting to be punched in the face,” the book explains. “It was impossible to envision how that could work with two or more players, especially because so much of Arkham’s combat relied upon time dilation—if your buddy was beating up monsters and time slowed down, what would you see? Designers on the team began to wonder: Was this really Diablo anymore?”

After game director Josh Mosqueira left Blizzard, there was no reason for the original version of Diablo 4 to exist. Without Mosqueira, Blizzard scrapped the game, development started from scratch and the D4 we know today was formed.

Nowadays, Vessel of Hatred is finally here, bringing fans the new Spiritborn class, a party finder system and a new multiplayer-focused endgame. With fans of the series still making new content for Diablo 2 after twenty years, D4 will hopefully be another game that lasts forever.