Diablo III

[old.Tohtori]

Blood, that's a faulty comparison though. Compare it to starcraft 2, which cost them 100mil to make and is toe to toe with production on d3. Diablo probably cost around 150mil(due to new engine etc), including extra costs maybe up to 200mil. They haven't worked on diablo 3 for 12 years, don't be ridicilous, it's just been 12 years since d2.

Aada, i'm not some idiot sat behind a computer, i've worked in the industry for 10+ years and i know how these work. I know the running costs, i know the extra expenses. Not to a dollar by dollar level of the cost of blizzard, but enough figures are out there that you can calculate if it was succesful.

It may nto make them billionaires, but it's most definetaly not a flop as Blood claimed.

But we can just wait for Q2 results from acti/bliz and end this discussion until then.

 

[BloodOmen]

Blood, that's a faulty comparison though. Compare it to starcraft 2, which cost them 100mil to make and is toe to toe with production on d3. Diablo probably cost around 150mil(due to new engine etc), including extra costs maybe up to 200mil. They haven't worked on diablo 3 for 12 years, don't be ridicilous, it's just been 12 years since d2.

Aada, i'm not some idiot sat behind a computer, i've worked in the industry for 10+ years and i know how these work. I know the running costs, i know the extra expenses. Not to a dollar by dollar level of the cost of blizzard, but enough figures are out there that you can calculate if it was succesful.

It may nto make them billionaires, but it's most definetaly not a flop as Blood claimed.

It has been 12 years? Blizz North had started work on it during late 2000 which if i'm not mistaken was 12 years ago? it wasn't until 2005 when Blizz North folded for this exact reason "On August 1, 2005, Blizzard Entertainment announced the closure of Blizzard North. A key reason for the closure was Blizzard North's poor development of what was to be Diablo III which did not meet the expectations of Vivendi. Former Blizzard North staffers including Joseph Lawrence, Wyatt Cheng and Matt Uelmen subsequently appeared in the credits of Blizzard's next retail release, World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade. The work of former Blizzard North artist Phroilan Gardner was also featured in editions of World of Warcraft: The Trading Card Game around the same time."

Ironic really isn't it? they basically closed Blizzard North because they were doing a "Shit" job with Diablo III and look what Jay Wilson ended up doing to it... makes you laugh really.

 

[old.Tohtori]

No, it really hasn't been 12 years. Sequel to d2(then D3) started in 2001-2002'ish(lord of destruction was 2001), then was canned(announced, which always come later) at 2005. That is likely a production time of 1.5 years, effective production that is, taking out pre-production and planning, which evidently didn't go too well as there was no real progress and it was sh*tcanned.

D3, this D3, has been in production since 2008 so taking into consideration the brand new engine work and QA cycle(which is roughly 6 months for this size productions), it was made in about 2-3 years.

The D3 that was supposed to follow, never lived and is not connected to this.

Not to mention that them working on D3 back then was most likely still in pre-production which takes a minor crew to make and the rest payrolls went to other projects.

 

[BloodOmen]

Ah fuck it, its like talking to a fucking brick wall talking to you toht.

 

[old.Tohtori]

I'm talking facts, you're talking out of your arse so no wonder

Raeding helps, not just skimming.

 

[BloodOmen]

Facts you've yet to produce you mean.

 

[Aada]

Lets just say financially it was successful, i don't believe it wasn't with the amount they were charging for the game, because if you didn't preorder you were forced to pay £40-50 from the expensive websites/stores or in my wifes case the Blizzard store. 7million is a lot it's not a figure any PC game or even console games can hope to achieve.

Blizzard can sell games no doubt about it, their next WoW expansion will sell a ton and Titan will just decimate anything it comes up against the year it's released i believe i actually can't begin to imagine the amount of preorders it will get once info/preorders can start being taken.

 

[Nate]

They made 300-340 million roughly from sales, thats selling a copy of Diablo 3 at an average of £50 a pop, now take out of that 340million

- running costs
- 12 years worth of salaries and advertising <--- that will be the biggest sink because you don't know in those 12 years how many people they've had working on the game. - each one of the jobs that worked on this made per year $50,000-80,000 now lets say for the sake of the argument they only had 10 people working on Diablo III (obv they had more) so 10x50k = 500,000x12 years = 6,000,000 and thats only 10 staff at 50k... the salaries over 12 years has cost them a fuck ton.
- other behind the scenes costs

It really doesn't leave them with an amazing profit, certainly not for something with Diablo's caliber, sure they will have made a profit but such a low profit doesn't make it a success Tohtori, not even the RMAH can bridge the gap they've lost due to fucking around for so long and piss poor design choices.

The merchants selling their game would take a pretty big chunk I'm sure?

 

[Keitanz]

Lets just say financially it was successful, i don't believe it wasn't with the amount they were charging for the game, because if you didn't preorder you were forced to pay £40-50 from the expensive websites/stores or in my wifes case the Blizzard store. 7million is a lot it's not a figure any PC game or even console games can hope to achieve.

Blizzard can sell games no doubt about it, their next WoW expansion will sell a ton and Titan will just decimate anything it comes up against the year it's released i believe i actually can't begin to imagine the amount of preorders it will get once info/preorders can start being taken.

It looks like Elder Scrolls Online and Titan could come out in the same year.. that would be insane.

 

[old.Tohtori]

The merchants selling their game would take a pretty big chunk I'm sure?

Not considering digital sales(which is straight profit), this article; http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-01-10-where-does-my-money-go-article says it rather nicely. Doesn't really work with blizzard though as they ARE the publisher and developer and they don't have to deal with microsoft and especially sony(don't get me started).

Regular dev companies ofcourse have already been paid for the game and rarely see any sale cashies.

Known solid facts about diablo 3 are though;

It broke all previous records.
It broke any other bliz products sales.
It has a directly comparable production cost to starcraft 2(which isn't infact 100mil, but it's not far either side of it knowing blizzard use of moneys).
It hasn't been in production for 12 years, so it doesn't have 12 years of pays on its back(2001 by all sources, then canned at 2004-2005, then reannounced at 2008).

In all likelyhood, it's akin to starcraft 2 costs as they are neck and neck in time and as such, most likely made more moneys.

So all i've been saying here is that it's not a flop, so can we agree that it's not if we look at it from a developer point of view and forget past 3 pages

 

[Raven]

If it took 12 years to make, I would love to know what they were doing for 11 years and 6 months of that.

 

[Scouse]

- Diablo can't flop, it's not sub based, it's sold millioons already, broke records and so forth. It's a success in every meaning of the word.

Fucking lolrofflefanboi

 

[old.Tohtori]

Fucking lolrofflefanboi

Well first off, no, if i was it would be a lot easier to post like...umm...."ohmagad you guys jus dun understand that blizzard are like totally pro and i like wish they'd poo on me some more". Not hating does not fanboy make. Learn it, not black and white, helpful in the outside world.

Second, that comment is accurate.

 

[BloodOmen]

 

[Aada]

ROFL

 

[Cyradix]

It's not that simple to calculate. They didn't work non stop for 12 years on this. Only the last couple of years did they have the final dedicated team. A lot of the developers will have worked on other projects during those 12 years. The income of those projects paid for salaries too you know

 

[old.Tohtori]

Blood you know i'm going to use that at work now

You brits and your ability to hang on words and not context

 

[old.Tohtori]

Well just read about this; http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/118037-Diablo-III-Patch-Restricts-Access-for-New-Players

Room on the anti-wagon for a moment? That's just moronic and i was already a bit on the dark side when they forced authenticators.

I've never been a fan of anti-cheat/DRM/etc methods that hinder players, yes it includes that always online, but that was understandable.

I'm not putting that on jay, or blizzard as a dev team, but towards the marketing(etc) teams. Someone let them run rampant it seems.

 

[Ctuchik]

That's not new, WoW has had that for a while now...

 

[old.Tohtori]

Really? For a bought game that seems really bad. Guess i never noticed after i bought it ages ago

 

[Aada]

I guess it's something to do with botters/farmers there isn't really any other reason.

 

[Ctuchik]

More to do with spammers and toons used to finalize gold sales i think. As far as i heard, they "buy" a new game and open a new account and use that for spamming and trade gold with, and when they get banned they disputed the transaction of the game client or something. So that's why Blizzard started flagging recently bought accounts as demos or something... Demo accounts can't whisper, trade, AH or use anything but local chat iirc, neither can they use in-game mails... So they try to make it as cumbersome as possible...

I can see the thought behind it but i doubt it actually works...

 

[BloodOmen]

good watch and agree 100% with both.

 

[Raven]

I hope he didn't force any disconnects in his video. That would be awkward.

 

[old.Tohtori]

Gamers generally make as good designers as regular drivers do as F1 mechanics.

Principle is the same, but there's a sh*tload of other stuff to consider.

 

[BloodOmen]

The Aution House idea Athene mentioned sounds pretty sound - only selling gold on the RMAH, that way people who can afford it can buy the extra gold boost and people who can't afford it can still buy end game gear for gold rather than worrying about it costing real life money.

One does wonder why Blizzard didn't do this in the first place, surely its a better method than the current one? as it keeps all parties happy/equal.

Naturally it would mean third party sites selling items more frequently but thats happening already via eBay, so whats the problem?

 

[old.Tohtori]

Well for one that would require a whole different AH system for real money and regular.

Second problem would be; what would you tell the people that already spent money on items when you suddenly say "Now it's just gold, anyone can get same gear with gold."

Top of head that is.

Two ideas come to mind, me being without my coder/producer/graphics guys to talk it over;

- Seperate skills for PVP and PVE. Can be same abilities, just different trees so they ca be balance just so for both.

- Endgame would work if you get rewarded for replaying. This means that if you beat diablo on inferno on a wizard, you unlock new stuff, or general muguffin happens to your new toons. For example; kill diablo on inferno with a barbarian, get a new ability/leveling item that will make that new character even more powerful when it reaches diablo on inferno. You wouldn't need to nerf anything, change any major aspect, just add a buffitem to a new character and as such you'd enter a new level of play. You could even add a system where that particular item on the new character buffs enemies, so you'll have even harder game.

Both these ideas, as i mentioned before, would take a sh*t-ton of work(more or less depending) and there's a lot in this games coding and other stuff that i'm clueless about even as a dev.

 

[Raven]

Actually, I think any non MMO with a RMAH will fail because there is no point to the end game. At the end of the day Diablo 2 was still get better gear so that you can farm better gear. The idea of end game in a non MMO is a complete fallacy.

But, as everyone knows, it's just a tester for Titan's RMAH anyway...

 

[old.Tohtori]

Endgame is a flawed sentiment anyway. Extra levels would mean that it would take longer to reach the same point. The only working endgame is where you have no endgame, where there is no real end. EVE as a primary example.

 

[BloodOmen]

Lol, Titan doesn't exist Raven its just a myth made up to frighten us... seriously tho I don't think we'll ever hear shit about Titan at this rate, you would have thought they'd atleast have some sort of teaser trailer/gameplay footage by now.