Expansion patchas ut – slutet för D3?

Sajten forbes.com kan enligt ”säkra källor” bekräfta att arbetet med en andra expansion till Diablo 3 har varit under utveckling men slutligen lagts ner. Expansionens innehåll, bland annat de nya områden Greyhollow Island och Ruins of Sescheron, har istället portionerats ut via patchar.

The original plan was to reveal a second Diablo 3 expansion late into 2015 during BlizzCon, and its codename was “The King in the North.”

Eventually, that plan was scrapped, and the expansion was broken down into patch content, giving the game new areas of the map and story elements for free, like what we saw with The Ruins of Sescheron (in August 2015) and Greyhollow Island (in January 2016)

One reason Blizzard is hesitant to devote resources to another Diablo 3expansion is because since the Auction House was shut down, the game has not been a very good revenue stream in the west, where players buy the expansion and effectively nothing else after that. This is opposed to WoW, Hearthstone, Heroes of the Storm and Overwatch, all of which produce consistent income post-purchase. Diablo 3 is much more profitable in Asiawhere players pay to play in PC cafes, and microtransactions exist for boosts and cosmetics, but western audiences would likely reject such a model.