…so while it’s not as much of a coffee break as usual in the middle of the day, it still is a decent one.
Every other day, both our boys are sleeping in the middle of the day for an hour or so, which means I get time to do a bit of catching up with a few games. Since it’s not the case today, I figured that I might do a bit of work on this instead. Dont worry, the pot is brewing, so I’ll have a nice cup of hot coffee in a moment.
Something that has been annoying me a bit for a couple of days (well, annoying might be a too strong word, but certainly sad), is that one game I pre-ordered a good while back that was supposed to be released earlier this spring, had its launched pushed up to late August. A beta would go live in a week or so, then just three days before my birthday the game would launch for real. Then I got a news email updating people about a new launch day. “Sometimes spring 2021” – although, the beta that was scheduled in a week or so will be the thing “launching” later in August instead, so there *will* be a possibility to play the game when I had thought to, but it’ll be a beta instead of launch.. which means that we’ll be able to play for as long as the beta is live, then the thing will get wiped. That sucks.
I mean, it’s pretty understandable despite the dissapointment. I kinda expected it, to be really honest. There’s Covid and adjustments to working-from-home, and to *actually expect* them to be able to maintain the same rate of progress as if they were in-office is pretty ridiculous. In the office, if anything goes wrong or someone gets stumped, a co-worker – and therefore help – is just around the corner or even the same booth, but working-from-home adds on the time to “try to solve it yourself” and then the time to *actually get a hold of anyone*, because they might not be at the computer at this particular moment, or they’re so focused on their own thing that they dont notice you’re trying to get in touch with them, etc. Then there’s the issue of communicating what the problem is, in an entirely different way – instead of showing and pointing and talking, there’s the whole deal of *only describing* or sending the information over the internet, or you have to “stream”, etc.
But as understanding as it is, it still sucks, because I had been looking forward so to it. I mean, LOOK AT IT! No, I mean, LOOK! This guy has an entire segment of his channel dedicated to the games alpha to showcase stuff! It’s just bloody awesome!
Another game that seems equally bloody awesome (but this time in a more literal sense) is the Diablo 4 that Blizzard is announcing. Guesstimates I’ve seen, is that this game wont see the light of day until 2022/2023. If that’s the case, then I just feel even more sad.
Diablo 4 Concept Art, Cathedral
Diablo 4 Concept Art, Mounts – that alone is awesome!
Diablo 4 Concept Art, Sorcerer
It’s pretty sad that the Diablo franchise is being so slowly progressed forward. I mean, Diablo 3 launched May 2012, and in *eight years*, they’ve developed basically nothing. They’ve expanded on the game twice, once with a new act and class in 2014, and once with a new class in 2016 – both which were great, not gonna lie, but not really “two years waiting each”-great. Since then, they’ve done nothing of importance, imo. They revealed that they were working on a mobile game called Diablo Immortal, which were revealed in a disastrous manner.
Rumors say that the only reason Blizzard brought Diablo-franchise to mobile like this, is because there’s LOADS of money in the Chinese Mobile Gaming Market. The amount of money the Chinese spend on Mobile Gaming is insane (~20 billion dollars, with ~600 million mobile gamers – 95% of Chinese gamers play on mobile), and definitely comparable to “regular” gaming market value (PC gaming brought in ~150 billion dollars world wide). I can imagine it’ll be easier to make mobile games as well, as mobiles arent as powerful as PC’s and thus demands less and are probably cheaper to develop (disclaimer, I’m not a programmer, so I cant say that for certain). Anyway, the rumor is that Blizzard made Diablo Immortal to break into the Chinese Mobile Market and cash in a bit, but also to expand the Mobile Gaming Market to the rest of the world, albeit in small steps.
Then the backlash happened, and I think that Blizzard had a change of pants and hearts, in fear of their wallets not filling fast enough. They realized *after* having pumped in resources into the mobile game, that their regular customers weren’t having it. So, they entered a panic mode and went “oh, but we have a game you’ll like in development! D4!”, only they didnt actually start developing it until they finally realized that their regular customers *weren’t going to buy the mobile version* and that they *had to* develop a real Diablo 4 on PC/Console. It was a panic reaction, and that means that development only started 2019, *after* Diablo Immortal fiasco was complete. Which means, considering Diablo 3 was announced 2008 and released 4 years later with perhaps up to a year or so in development before that (I’m guessing that they had a framework of ideas and concepts before they announced it anyway), so if D4 is being freshly announced and started to be worked on in 2019, we can probably expect it to be finished 2023 earliest – 2024 if we’re unlucky with Covid and work-from-home situations.
Maybe even not released until 2025….
Atleast I have another game I’m looking forward to releasing sometime in September November. (Just remembered it’s been delayed, though not by much. Sad times.)
And while the game has been delayed a couple of time due to work-at-home things, it’s still within 2020 release. And it looks really awesome, from the material that has been released. According to CDPR, the developers, the game is actually already finished, except for polish (pun actually NOT intended) – the extra time before launch is to tweak the game where needed, splat some bugs, etc.
Another great feature, is that my favorite streamer is playing an NPC in the game! From the little I understood, he’s playing a crazy dude that gives you small sidequests, which sounds hilarious! I’m not entirely sure if I’m going to play this part myself, or watch Cohh do it..
But now both my boys are up, and the Lady of the House has begun to stir as well, so my coffee break for this time is over. Next time, I might even be able to fully focus on my stuff, and I think I’m going to finish my Kindle Leather Case at that point.
Also, the brewing pot has turned itself off, so it turned out that I forgot it, and there was no actual coffee this coffee break.. I have nothing really to blame either.