D4 had over 1 million closed beta access players, with multi-millions expected this weekend. Wow.

As one fellow Exile put it, PoE was always a detour.

At its very best, it evoked/evokes Diablo, be it 1 or 2: high stakes, claustrophobic, flexible, compulsive.

Diablo IV at its very best, for me, evokes an RPG dedicated to using its tools to paint a world that only fully reveals itself to the thorough explorer. The A in Diablo IV's ARPG could almost be "adventure" as much as "action".

So one will always be an incredible successor. The other is doing something genuinely new to the genre. They aren't fully at odds but there is some shade of incompatibility between D1/2's limited-by-design scope and an open world full of dungeons and side quests.

So one interesting thought I had was that DIV proves without a doubt how doomed Umbra/Wolcen was from the start, with its initial premise of open world ARPG. It requires a Blizzard-level army of workers to make a proper open world ARPG that doesn't feel hollow or incomplete. In a way, DIV is the Wolcen I always wanted, minus the superior skills and combat that remain the only reason to play that game. In short, only Blizzard could have realised an open world ARPG worthy of its ambitions, and that only because they had literally thousands of people working on every inch of it.

I mean I say all this while still being stuck on Elden Ring not because DIV let me down but because a person should only do one brilliant open world ARPG at a time.

Hoho

funny that, of the 50+ people i know, only 10 still play, those randy andys on their couches? the already quit, becasuse the game is that boring ;)
and those harcore dudes? the ignore that boring open world, because we can finally teleport to the only worthwhile endgame content. yay.

This is funny, as in odd, because all the folks I know, and apparently most on Twitch too, are still playing D4.

Must be OK to some at least. Sorry it's over for you, maybe check back in July w/ Season 1

Streamers love to produce new content so yeah I imagine ther would be alot on twitch.

Hoho so what? People are either playing or they are not. It's at least a data point to consider that games have platforms for.

Meh, whatever, I know its the PoE boards, but saying 80% (40 out of 50 he knows) quit D4 and its boring, is objectively dumb.

Edit: nice ninja edit, I agree it was probably best to reel that back a bit lol

Damnit you always reply faster then my edits.

Yeh it came off hostile had to dial it down a bit.

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DarthSki44 wrote:

Hoho so what? People are either playing or they are not. It's at least a data point to consider that games have platforms for.

Meh, whatever, I know its the PoE boards, but saying 80% (40 out of 50 he knows) quit D4 and its boring, is objectively dumb.

Edit: nice ninja edit, I agree it was probably best to reel that back a bit lol

no, it a simple datapoint, same with the twitch content for D4, last 14 days at 60% - minus on streamed content. And well good luck waiting for blizzard to publish retention rate. These are just facts. Calling someone dumb because you hold another opinion and calling it objectively... sure mate, whatever floats your hypeboat.

maybe blizz will make another patch in a week, whatever they need to keep players running their dungeon.

Kinda weird to see someone's genuine enjoyment a "hypeboat" when the game is out, he is playing it and clearly enjoying it. Hype is usually the lead up to this state. But yknow, you do...someone else I guess.

Also no one is calling anyone dumb; that is against the CoC. Calling something someone else said dumb is not. Perhaps this is a language barrier issue but that has always been the case on this forum.

Very smart people can say very dumb things sometimes. Only human and all that.

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Honestly, who cares who is still playing it or not? It's not a f2p GAAS and unlike other attempts at premium GAAS (avengers for example) it is a complete game that almost certainly made a serious profit.

I genuinely despise this relatively new notion that a game needs to have lots of active players to be worthy or considered a success. It is such a shallow, meaningless factor and it leads to a quantity over quality approach to game design. Diablo IV ill needs that and it will be a shame if incoming content is pumped out below the standard set so far. Otoh it has been a high standard so there is probably some wiggle room.

Either way, zoomers have their ARPG in PoE, and we babies of boomers have ours in Diablo IV. And if you enjoy both, well shit, a winner is you.