Diablo 4 Will Be a Full Price Release with Premium Cosmetic Items and Expansions

Might Check This Out Down The Line.

My most anticipated game. I would have bought an Xbox just to play it, had it been console exclusive. I want it that badly. Glad to know I can just buy it. Lol

I love how aggressive that sounds. "It will be a FULL PRICED release with PREMIUM cosmetics and ALL the expansions."

Looking forward to the day when all of the "gamers" who used to complain about free-to-start games being bad b/c of micro transactions start saying $60-to-start games are bad b/c of micro transactions.🤑

I'll play it w/ my kids when the complete edition is done in a few years.

I have my doubts this will release before June 2023. But definitely excited cause this looked great.

I’m mostly okay with this, assuming the expansions are akin to MMO expansions (substantial addition of story content and NOT TAKING EXISTING STORY CONTENT AWAY). I’d prefer if the cosmetics were just in-game unlocks, but I’m okay with them being sold as MTX. If I don’t feel like I need them I won’t buy them, simply as that.

Boy I sure do love spending money on cosmetics I'll only ever see from an isometric perspective.

@Enuo Most games I play are first person, so I only see cosmetics in menu screens, so this will be slightly better...

So you are paying for a full price game with premium cosmetic items as well as full story driven expansions you'll obviously have to pay for. So what justifies the premium cosmetics in a full priced game? Apart from greed!

I prefer premium expansions. They're usually higher quality and have more content (aka Monster Hunter or Witcher).

Cosmetics... well. Not paying for those. Either I get them via playing or don't.

@banacheck Blizzard's argument will no doubt be that the money it makes from microtransactions helps fund free content and updates — that's how it goes with the new Assassin's Creed games, for example (which, to be fair, have had really good post-launch support).

But of course we never get to see the financials for these things, so we don't know if the truth is being twisted.

If its just cosmetics and expansions i can live with that. Honestly i don't care that much for cosmetics in Diablo anyway.

@ShogunRok Valhalla has been pretty wild with free content, they literally gave you a mini expansion for nothing with the Isle of Skye/Kassandra stuff.

Last time I bought a Diablo was on PC in probably 2001.

@Enuo Yeah the other day I refused to buy a £2 shirt IRL, instead I spent that on a Ryuji outfit in P5. Money well spent. 😉

I do not buy games to play Digital Barbie so never buy cosmetics anyway.

Big on Story expansions for games I like. So if the game is fun I am actually glad I am guaranteed more story driven content.

@ShogunRok They didnt make enough cash on it before? Blizzard Activision has no class anyway anymore but that is gone for years already.

I still remember the outrage on PS3 or PS4 when we got MT and now we are surprised when its not in there. Now we have expansions, microtransactions, cosmetics will we have some special currency just to screw us over more.

Diablo 3 had a brilliant support but we didnt have a Kotick or some tonedeaf developer screaming dont you have phones and the biggest problem investors that want all the money.

They stated that d4 has as much resources as immortal so i guess its gonna be bad?

@Toypop Isn't that how Diablo online has always worked?

@frankmcma I think the overcorrection to brown and srs is due to the vitriol from the Blizzard North Diablo III getting canned and replaced by World of Diablocraft coloring book colors for III. Remmeber the fan art desaturating all the scenes from III and declaring that looks more like proper diablo?

I think they tried to do that but went too far the other way, going too graphic and gritty and srs, and forgetting the balance Blizzard North had in 1 and 2 with bright colors that were still dull and dreary compared to the cheerful rainbow colored paradise of III.

Yeah, Blizzard, it’s the absolutely right decision. People, who’ve already paid for the game, need to have as many microtransactions as possible.

Give us plenty of commercial stuff like armour, swords etc. oh, to be frank, it looks like damn ***** to pay extra money for nothing.

Scientists, please, create a time machine to go back in time, to an era when games were just games, but not services.

That Activision want to still charge full price & yet have their mtx cake too is no surprise...though in light of how they killed off story/single player content in Diablo 3 after Reaper of Souls, it remains to be seen just how much story content is even present in D IV much less story expansions.
With Phil Spencer/XB becoming their overlords soon enough we've seen examples like Sea of Thieves where they love live service mtx,but jettison story content & say "make your own stories up!",to make up for their creative laziness!

Day one for me. I loved D3

I'll never understand why someone would pay actual money for in-game cosmetics. Where is the thrill of the hunt? The satisfaction of earning a hard-to-find and amazing looking armor?

Gamer 1: "Cool armor, bro - where'd you find it?"

Gamer 2: "In the MTX shop for $10"

Gamer 1: "Sweet...?"

@Toypop They mentioned couch-coop specifically so I'm assuming it does have a fully offline mode. That said, I've always felt that Diablo was intended as an online service game even before online service games were a thing. Most people playing II were playing it online with said player running around, and it always was annoying that your solo characters and online characters were separate, so most people played solo online just so their character building time was useful online.

What I always did was create a private lobby and password it to play solo in piece, lol. I assume you'll still be able to do that in 4. Immortal is a messy true MMO-thing....trainwreck...whatever. Hopefully this one will follow the normal setup and not truly be a Destiny-style always shared world with everyone on the public server. But you're right, with cosmetics, I do wonder.... I'm not a big fan if Diablo goes Destiny format. You have a good point. I'm counting on "couch-coop" being highlighted to mean everything will be fine. I hope.

😂🤣😂🤣 you know we have games you play to unlock new skins etc. lot of monetary nonsense in n this game apparently since you got fones dont you jibe.
this game and company has been a meme to me 😂

@rjejr I meeeean, people already complain about that. And to be fair, depending on the game it's a fair criticism. It's like if you bought a blu-ray DVD, the movie felt unfinished and then they suddenly said, "But wait, if you want to watch the 30-minute twist ending we decided to add to it, you have to pay an additional $20!"

I still play Diablo 3 Seasons for the rewards in game. I hope they will continue in Diablo 4. I will pre-order soon as I see it up for sale retail!! Hope they offer a good collectors edition.

@NEStalgia I'm old enough to remember everyone hating on brightly colored Diablo 3. Was giving me Windwaker flashbacks. I think WW kind of deserved it after the E3 reveal but I liked the D3 look. 🤷‍♂️

@KidBoruto That reminds me, was going to hit up the library w/ my kid later, see what we can pick up now that schools out. 👍

@Brydontk "But wait, if you want to watch the 30-minute twist ending we decided to add to it, you have to pay an additional $20!"

I've read that about Spiderman No Way Home recently. They sold the blu-ray back in April, then announced a new theatrical release w/ extra content for September. So people who just bought the blu-ray may as well chuck it in the garbage and buy the new 1 which I'm sure will release in time for the holidays. 🤑
https://screenrant.com/spiderman-no-way-home-bluray-deleted-scenes-missing/

https://thedirect.com/article/spider-man-no-way-home-extended-cut-release-theaters

@rjejr Well there's a reason why I said, "Felt unfinished"; it was a very particular word choice on my part. I'm talking about an intentional practice of selling something unfinished with the intention of selling it back to consumers to make some more change. It's also why I said, "Depending on the game it's fair criticism". I don't have a bone to pick with games that are high quality and complete that decide to sell extra content to the fans. That's just adding icing to the cake imo (again, depending on how they do it. Looking at lootboxes here). My problem is when games are incomplete and/or rushed and the developers opt to sell the parts of the game that make it complete. That's scummy practice.

The better Spider-man equivalent would be if in Amazing Spider-man 2, when Gwen Stacy was falling to her death, the movie just cuts right before Peter shoots his web out to catch her and advertisers say, "If you want to know what happens, be sure to come back in theaters in 2 months for the half hour conclusion!"

@rjejr Remembering D3 counts for old now? I still think of D2 as new and D1 as the new hawtness.... I remember D2:LoD adding 800x600 resolution and it was a transcendental experience from the 640x480 original! HD, baby!

I'm conflicted about the art styles. D1 was very, very dark in such a quintessential gothic way. Tristram is just perfect. A small 640x480 spritemap that still feels more like a real, memorable place than most modern game towns. But was also colorful in that trademark Blizzard way while being thoroughly dark and oppressive. The mix of cartoon/serious was uniquely Blizzard and just worked. D2 took all of that and ramped it up to 11. The monestary was kind of bland, but everything else in the game was that same blend of cartoon/colorful/almost cute and deep grimdark in a blend that works timelessly and for everyone.

We'll never really know what that cancelled Blizzard North MMO really was going to be like. And the WoW team making D3 THAT colorful/cartoon, and Warcraft-ish right down to massive shoulder pads Merry Go Round would be proud of, was a blow to the entire direction of the series.

But. Fans overreacted. We had these massively desaturated images to "fix" the game that looked some kind of deviantart page for goths, completely missing the balance of cartoon and grimdark the series always had that made it super unique.

And now it looks like Blizzard got the message from that and overcorrected for to extreme grimdark, gory apocalypse. I mean, going back to 1, and The Butcher, gory was always a part of the formula. The D2 Monestary had the impaled bodies everywhere and blood smears, so that part isn't new. But there's just something soulelessly generic-ultra-srs about the art style that lacks that "comic book grimdark" the older titles had. It's lost the trademark Blizzard look. Though since it looks like they're going for a persistent MMO GaaS always-online shared world Destiny approach....I guess that's fitting....

@Brydontk To be fair, Diablo II is arguably the very game that introduced the whole industry concept of removing part of a game and selling it to you later as an expansion pack. D2 was kind of unfinished, beloved as it was, and the 4th act was a total cop out. It was known before LoD released that a 5th act was made and removed from the game to be re-sold later as an expansion. That was the first instance I can remember of a game having major content removed post-production to be sold separately at a later date. And that was before Activision's scummy involvement.

@Toypop Yeah, I watched the presentation again and am definitely getting the "MMO/Destiny" vibe from it now. Yuck. I'm still counting on couch coop to mean it's not mandated to be a persistent world, but with the mention of big battles that take "many people" to take down, it sounds very Destiny/MMO. Grrr.

@KidBoruto Actually waiting for my kid to text now to pick them up after their exam and then go to the library. I may have mixed up my calendar last reply, sorry, I'm a mess.

I'll get back to ya when we get back, surely there's something. I wonder if we borrow Splatoon 2 if it's worth it to sign up for the NOS Expansion Pass? Our Family's runs out in 2 weeks so we need to renew anyway for online Smash. Ouch, Family Plus is $80, that's $45 more than the $35 Family. I could buy both MK8D DLC and Splatoon 2 DLC for that, to keep, not rent. The game list is really week as well, think we own them all. Oh well, we dont' own MK8D either, just MK8 on Wii U.

@NEStalgia "Though since it looks like they're going for a persistent MMO GaaS always-online shared world Destiny approach....I guess that's fitting...."

Aren't they all? 😝

I'm just giving up and only playing Fornite the rest of my life, at least it isn't a FPS, it's 3rd person, so I win.

Oh, my kid has been playing a lot of Destiny 2 on PC lately, their friend bought it for them, and it's actually very colorful, I have to keep asking them what they're playing. I think it's going for the OVerwatch crowd who got fed up waiting for Overwatch 2. Or WoW. But it looks surprisingly good. 🤷‍♂️

@rjejr Depressing but true. Somehow gaming went from a medium one enjoys to a "social" experience. I play games because it is one of the few things that aren't supposed to be "social". And now they make that "social" too. That's why I have an Xbox, Bethesda games are like social GaaS's except without any other people and only 2 voice actors and the robots are your friends. The way it's meant to be. Except 76, but 76 was a mistake.

I do play Elder Scroll's online. But I play it alone, and at the showcase they even highlighted you can play it alone. You can do coop though which I do sometimes do. I just ignore the other people running around. I assume in Diablo you can do it too, but it still taints the experience.

You know, I tried Destiny 2, and kind of liked it at first. It's literally just MMO Halo with a new skin. The shooting is good. The story seemed good in the tutorial until you get introduced to other players. It's actually a game that could be really cool, but the MMO aspect breaks it for me. Once I got to my first planet with "X event starting in 6:32:34, then I completed it, then saw everything respawn to start the event again for the next wave of people..... there's nothing immersive there, it's just not fun. Once events "respawn" and you have to "wait in line" to play them on the next round..... the concept of playing in the world just vanishes.

It's like puppet theater rather than an immersive experience.

@NEStalgia I gleefully have no idea what any of that Destiny 2 stuff meant, just that it did remind me of Salmon Run in Splatoon 2 which I never played.

I remembered today why I stopped playing Fornite last time, I think they actually must have a good matchmaking system b/c I can finish 1st in every battle until I reach level 20 and then I finish in the 30s. So I'm assuming there matching making is 1-19 then 20 and up. 😝 I'll probably keep playing it though, it's free. And I need the most mindless of distractions to keep my internal primal scream from blowing my eyeballs out of their sockets. 😱

@NEStalgia Just reread your email and I think you're a bit wrong on this:

"Somehow gaming went from a medium one enjoys to a "social" experience. I play games because it is one of the few things that aren't supposed to be "social". And now they make that "social" too."

First popular home video game "console" has to be Pong. You even play Pong single player? You ever play Pong single player for more than 1 minute? And videogames start as machines in places where teenagers hangout to be social. Sure, some are single player, like Dragon's Lair, but are you really even playing Dragon's Lair or Space Ace if there isn't a crowd of people around you cheering you on? And even most single player games in arcades that made it home had take turn multiplayer in mind, like Space Invaders and Pac-Man.

So I think video games are inherently social, that like intelligent life on earth the internet killed couch co-op and moved everything on line, which while it may pass for social these days, you can't play online w/ your date then make out after a bit.

Videogames are meant to replace board games. How many board games do you play single player? They aren't jigsaw puzzles.

So while I agree w/ you online multiplayer killed the industries desire to make couch multiplayer - can't charge people for online if the games are offline - games are made to be social. My wife and my entire relationship is based on her watching me play video games the past 25 years. I hardly play anything unless she's watching.

But the money is made in online play, so there we are forced. 🤑

@rjejr lol it's because you're up against the new 5 year olds at first that is so easy

Nah nothing exotic about destiny. It's literally just mmo Halo. But I hate that whole mmo MMO system where missions respawn on timers because it's always like a chuck e cheese animatronic show restarting every 10 minutes for the new arrivals. Guaranteed Diablo 4 does it like that too. Yuck.

Also I never pegged you for someone interested in Diablo though

Splatoon is the only online game I really get into. But Diablo and quake back in the day were huge for me.

I think by declaring your wife likes watching you play (I'll skip the obvious joke ) you're seeing intrusive expectations for the ps crowd . . IDK I loved the arcade but other than the street fighter cabinets nobody at my arcade exchanged 2 words lol. It was like an opium den. Dark, smoky, silent. Everyone walks in, takes a seat, and quietly plays. Or maybe it was the casino and I was at the slots. Hard to tell. The machines with 2 guns on the panel only ever had one in use. (Casinos have guns right?) Maybe I'm not antisocial maybe I'm just from an antisocial world . Pinball was the real action anyway. Quietly

I think blizzard/activision will be told by microsoft this is going day 1 on game pass. Without a doubt.

@NEStalgia "I think by declaring your wife likes watching you play"

We were Twitch 15 years before Twitch was even a thing. Kids are just catching up to us old folks now. My kids spend more time watching "let's plays" than actually playing. 😝

In the future people won't even game any more, "gamers" will just be people who watch AI play games, they'll call it "moving games".

@rjejr From now on when I complain about "kids today" I know to blame you for all of it.

I seriously don't get the "let's play" phenomenon. If you like video games, wouldn't you rather PLAY a video game than watch somebody else play a video game? In the 80's and 90's, watching someone else play a video game was called "being player 2", and nobody liked it, and it started arguments, broke families, ended friendships, and I'm convinced Woz giving Gorbichev a Game Boy is what led to the fall of the USSR. Now an entire generation volunteers to be player 2 as their most fun activity. Remember when that was called "waiting"?

Do these kids spend $100 to go to an amusement park and after the 3 hour line for the roller coaster just opt out of the ride and go back to the start of the line because that was the fun part?

Imagine the kid sitting back watching other kids play with a toy instead of playing with it themselves? That would be the kid parents would tell their kids to stay away from.... And that kid would definitely have a future in government intelligence....

@NEStalgia "I know to blame you for all of it"

Don't you already blame me for all of it anyway? 😉

Four 😝 in 1 reply can not be good for anyone. 😂