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Annual Diablo III Expansions?
Annual Diablo III Expansions?
Last updated on November 26, 2008 - 14:28.
Another really interesting piece of news concerning Blizzard. Blizzard's CEO Mike Morhaime was recently interviewed by MTV Multiplayer. He alluded the possibility of annual addons to the upcoming Diablo 3 game. It should be noted, that this is a mere thought and no fact. This thought came up, as Morhaime was asked about Activision´s prosperous system of releasing new games of the same franchise every year (e.g. Call of Duty).
I don’t think Blizzard will ever be able to do sequels of products like a “Diablo III” or “Diablo IV” on an annual basis, but we might be able to do expansions to those games close to annually.
It seems possible that the Diablo team wants to jump on the bandwagon, which is lead by annual World of Warcraft expansions.
Let us know what you think about this possible business model in the comments, and also if you think it fits to Blizzard.
The whole interview can be found here!
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Last updated on November 26, 2008 - 14:28
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verbesserte deutsche Version?
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verbesserte deutsche Version?
Please note: After the launch of our improved German website GamersGlobal.de, and for the time being, GamersGlobal.com is no longer actively supported.
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I am not sure if I like this idea. MMO companies tend to mock the "old gaming industry" where a game sells for full-prize for about half a year, then drops in price, then gets an addon, then drops in price again and is "out of the loop". Well, maybe that has something to do with the appeal of the game to players? Maybe this is just how games work? Also, I think it is very hard to do more than one addon and do it well. There are examples (I think the Zehir addon for NWN2 could be one), but they are few and far between. Even from the first addon, I expect much -- and not only some extra levels and opponents.
Your last sentence could not possibly allude to many EA franchises, like almost every sport game? Every year you get a new game, marginal changes and usually not even better graphics (just think of how long PC gamers had to wait for a graphical update).
But as Jörg mentioned, it always depends on the game. The addons of the first Neverwinter Nights were fun, too. But this system can also prove developers very wrong. Take for instance Valve. They created episodes to continue their Half-Life franchise. Their aim was to deliver new game content much quicker. But so far, this did not work out so well. Episode One was, in my opinion and compared to the "main-game", a disaster. Episode 2 on the other hand was really nice. And Episode 3, well, what about it? Players have to keep waiting until Valve decides to actually finish the game. I doubt it would take too long to create new content, as the whole engine is already given. But no, they had to concentrate on Left 4 Dead. I mean, nothing against L4D, the demo was tremendous fun, but it´s like "forget the half-life franchise, we first do this." There are so many people who can´t wait to find out more about Gordon, the G-Man and everything, but no news about the game - at all!
Well, I´m rambling, someone has to stop me :)
If it's a real addon and not something-we-should-have-included-in-the-game-in-the-first-place then I'm ok with that, and everything is better than downloadable content, or could you image to get new weapons, a new spell or a few new recipes for your Horadrim-cube with micro-payments? *shudders*
Yeah, I´m with you there. I´m so far not sure what we have to expect from Blizzard since World of Warcraft and the Activision-Blizzard amalgamation. Of course, those guys earned their praise in advance, at least so far. But I´m a little unsure about their future products, with Starcraft coming in three separate games (yeah yeah, I know, very long and elaborate campaigns). But I am rather certain that Blizzard is not going to copy E(conomic)A(bsurdity)´s pattern and release hundreds of mini-expansions with new weapons or similar.
What? Did anyone say Sims?