“Given it’s our 30-year anniversary, there’s a certain amount of nostalgic reflection and that immediately turns to thinking about what the next 30 years might hold,” he said. No entirely new games were shown, but that doesn’t mean that none are in development, said Adham. This is an opportunity for them,” said Adham, noting that this will be the first time the game will be available anywhere other than on PC, potentially bringing it to a wider and younger audience.Īlong with the Diablo II Resurrected announcement there were updates on the progress of forthcoming mobile MMO Diablo Immortal, and another trailer for Diablo 4, which Blizzard has confirmed won’t be releasing this year.
(The company was originally discussing a remaster for the game’s 20th anniversary, but decided it wouldn’t be ready in time.) “There’s going to be a whole generation of people who have never played it. Though it might be targeted at those who are already fans, it’s 21 years since the game’s first release. Photograph: Phillip Faraone/Getty Images for Blizzard Entertainment But then you go back and you play something as simple as Diablo II and you realise how satisfying that is.”Ī scene from Blizzcon 2019, the last in-person fan convention that the developer was able to hold. “Diablo is characterised by beautiful, simple, visceral moment-to-moment combat, and in today’s big, bombastic games with beautiful art and audio and tech, sometimes that can be lost to time. Senior vice president and product development lead Allen Adham said Resurrected will be an opportunity for players to get back to the basics and see how they hold up more than 20 years later. “ is primarily for people who have played Diablo II and have deep love for it.” “There’s a lot of love in our heart for Diablo II,” Blizzard president J Allen Brack told the Guardian. But it also found a community who gave the game incredible longevity, enabled by years of continued patches and support from Blizzard. The hack-and-slash role-playing game was a major hit on release in 2000.
DIABLO 2 REMASTERED 2019 PC
And 2000’s beloved dungeon crawler Diablo II will be getting an HD remaster, releasing this year on to consoles, PC and Nintendo Switch as Diablo II Resurrected. World of Warcraft Classic, which takes players back to the venerable MMO’s earliest days, will get a recreation of its first expansion, Burning Crusade. Three of Blizzard’s older titles (Lost Vikings, Rock & Roll Racing and Blackthorne) have been bundled together in the Blizzard Arcade Collection. Given this significant anniversary, it makes sense that many of the announcements were targeted at nostalgic fans. But, thanks to Covid, the video game developer was forced to postpone 2020’s convention and instead celebrate its 30th year with a virtual convention last weekend. I n a normal year, Blizzard’s annual fan convention would have involved tens of thousands of cosplayers, esports pros, players and developers meeting and mingling in Anaheim, California.