Since the departure of Mike Morhaime, the joining with Activision and the arrival J.Allen Brack at the top position, we’ve seen a slow change at Blizzard. There’s been a lot of discussion about the dip in Blizzard game quality and concern Blizzard has starting to move away from their core PC gamer audience.
There has been some indication of major changes, what with the announcement of Overwatch 2 so soon after the original’s release. This is not typical of Blizzard as you know. Then there’s the Diablo on mobiles announcement which disappointed so many fans in 2018. The poor quality of the just-released Warcraft III reforged also has to be mentioned.
Most fans will be hoping these changes in personnel in key positions are necessary to put Blizzard on track.
In a new article on Polygon, they take a look at what’s been happening at Blizzard recently and also address the appointment of Rod Ferguson to the Diablo team. They point out that Ferguson is also commonly known as “The Fixer” and helped turn around Bioshock Infinite. Despite its development woes, Bioshock Infinite ended up as another great Bioshock game.
With regards to Diablo 4, the Polygon piece also reminds us of the Kotaku article last year which claimed that Diablo IV could be with us sooner than we might think. This is despite Blizzard playing down a quick release at BlizzCon last year. With development having allegedly started in 2016, a four-year development cycle is a little optimistic.
It took four years of development to get Diablo III completed after it was announced in Paris and it had already been in development for some time. We do know that Diablo III was reworked and Diablo IV also started out as something not typically Diablo. A 2020 release would be fantastic but it’s not likely.