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We Want More Diablo and We Want it NOW Damn It!

We Want More Diablo and We Want it NOW Damn It!

We just can’t satiate our hunger for all things retro, and game publishers are onto us. Every company with a legacy worth celebrating is doing so. Capcom announced that it’s dedicated to reviving its core IPs on mobile, Square Enix is refreshing Final Fantasies and Dragon Quests of old, Sega is releasing a 16-bit Sonic game next year, and Nintendo wants all of you to stuff your stockings this holiday with a mini NES. It’s not like we’ve been starved for new IPs and innovative games, so this is a movement I can get behind.

Blizzard, not to be last to the past, is rumored to be working on a StarCraft HD remake. We still don’t have an official announcement, but from what I hear our source out of Korea is a reliable one. It sounds like a faithful recreation; a face-lift of sorts. All of the gameplay is to remain untouched, while the graphics and UI get the 2017 treatment.

This is a brilliant move, because StarCraft HD is pretty much what every old-school Blizzard fan was looking forward to when StarCraft II was announced. I know it’s such an old fart’s way of looking at things, but if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, right? Who needs new features and multiple, lengthy campaigns? Don’t give me a single new unit. Just let me log into Battle.net and play some classic top vs. bottom. If I want something new I’ll play a player map. Something proven like “Evolve,” or “Aeon of Strife,” the original MOBA.

While I’m ready and excited for that day to come, I can’t help but feel a little disappointed. I know that between the new World of Warcraft expansion, Overwatch updates, and this StarCraft project, Blizzard likely has its hands full. That’s not even taking into account the seemingly constant updates for Hearthstone and Heroes of the Storm . These are all great games and deserve Blizzard’s resources, but I can’t help but feel the pang of regret knowing that it will be a long time before Blizzard has the time and manpower to recreate the game that truly deserves an HD remake: Diablo II .

I’m completely biased, of course, because I think that Diablo II is Blizzard’s best, most addictive game (vanilla WoW aside). It’s not like it doesn’t make perfect financial sense, though. Look at Diablo III, for crying out loud: it sold over 30 million copies. It’s one of the top ten best-selling games of all time. I’m not sure how the numbers look in Korea, but I know in the West that Diablo has a much broader appeal than StarCraft , if for no other reason than because a dungeon-crawler / RPG is more accessible than a real-time strategy game. I’m just a lowly consumer, and I don’t have access to the data that Blizzard analyzed to make its decision, but I can’t help but feel that if it were up for a vote, a Diablo II HD remake would have taken priority over a StarCraft remake.

We Want More Diablo and We Want it NOW Damn It!

It would have made for the perfect announcement. Imagine: Diablo II and expansion Lord of Destruction bundled together in a surprise HD remaster due out January 2017. The game would run for $30, and pre-orders would come with a download code for a remastered selection of fan-favorite tracks from Matt Uelmen’s timeless OST. With winks and grins, Blizzard would promise in the reveal promo that hardcore players would soon relive the glory days of racing to make the perfect ladder build; to create the perfect magic-find sorceress; to collect all of the rarest runes and SOJs and become a maverick of trade. In a perfect world, the infamous maphack would even be made available as a secret unlockable treasure that lay buried deep within the secret cow level.

It’s a pipe dream, but it’s my pipe dream. I feel like I’m fairly representative of the average Western Blizzard fan over the age of 25 so maybe one day my dream will come true. Tell me I’m not the only Diablo fan who wasn’t satisfied with Diablo III . Tell me the Diablo II fanbase is legion, and ravenous. Blizzard, if you’re listening, not everything you make going forward needs to be eligible for competitive eSports. Please don’t make us wait years longer for a proper Diablo .

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