Saturday 23 July 2016

Major Diablo III Announcement to be Made at Gamescom?



The question on every player's mind who has for some reason still stuck it out with Diablo III these days is: will Gamescom revive Blizzard's dungeon-crawler? Why would Gamescom do that? Because it looks like Blizzard have a major Diablo announcement up their sleeves and they're looking to deliver it in style at Gamescom. To that end, they have apparently secured the presence of streamer Quin, whom they officially invited at first, and then, after he said he wouldn't go, offered him a deal he couldn't refuse. So it looks like Quin will be at Gamescom after all, all expenses paid and probably with an appearance fee in his pocket, helping pull the veil back on something big.

Indeed, Gamescom has traditionally been the scene of some major Blizzard announcements: last year, they announced WOW's Legion expansion there and that's where Reaper of Souls was first unveiled too. While lately there has been little going on around the title, certain facts are indeed lining up to potentially lead to a major announcement regarding either the beginning of work on Diablo 4, or a new expansion for Diablo III. Besides the above detailed invitation to streamer Quin, Diablo III's Josh Mosquierra recently left the company and a job announcement was placed for the position of Director of an unannounced project.

While Diablo III has indeed received what many would argue was its fair share of updates and expansions, things have been growing increasingly stale around the title lately. The recent patches brought little content-wise and seasons game-play has grown increasingly dull. Players just don't really have reasons to stick around these days, and with Blizzard focusing on its more revenue-earning titles, things seem settled in a rut. This is what might change come Gamescom in August and the shakeup may indeed be one of massive proportions...

Philip Thalberg has been involved with the eSports news section of GosuGamers since 2004.