Tangential, but this is such a great illustration of how Blizzard as a company has succeeded time and time again in taking nearly impenetrable games and genres and turning them into something that new players can enjoy, while still retaining enough depth to make the games interesting for advanced players.
From MtG and its everchanging sets, significant expense, multiple formats and awful online experience/UI came Hearthstone. A card game that tens of millions have gotten into. It looks fantastic, takes no initial investment, and costs a fraction of what a MtGO deck costs to go from nothing to a top tier competitive deck.
Other examples:
- Roguelikes -> Diablo
- RTS -> Warcraft & Starcraft
- MMO -> World of Warcraft
- DotA/2 -> Heroes of the Storm
- Team Fortress/2 -> Overwatch (not yet released)
It's an interesting case study on a company that's succeeded in taking genres usually reserved for a niche audience and bringing them to the masses. It's not a company without flaws and missteps, but it's an interesting lesson in bringing existing markets to a wider audience. I wonder if there's something more general that can be gleaned from their strategy to products outside of games.
Heroes of the Storm is nowhere near the popularity of Dota or Dota 2 yet, let alone the leading game in the genre (League of Legends). And it's still too early to say anything about Overwatch.
I wholeheartedly agree that Blizzard has not made one bad game yet. On the other hand, we don't need to hype up their success: several of their recent games have been kind of a ... flop, notably Diablo 3 and Starcraft 2. Both had really good sales on release (not necessary great on Blizzard scale), but the longevity is definitely nowhere near the long time plan they originally have. Starcraft 2 was supposed to become the king of Esport, yet LOL took the charge and firmly stay on top with a significant gap. Diablo 3 Real-money Auction house has to be shut down, and even the mighty WOW lost more than 3 millions subscribers in the last 2 quarters. Hearthstone, however is indeed an amazing success.
World of Warcraft is especially an interesting case, seeing that all the 2nd most popular MMO has never came anywhere near the popularity of WoW, it's questionable whether MMO is an actually viable genre in the long run. Note that most other MMO in 2nd place come and go in waves, never lasting more than a few months to a year. The one with the most consistent number of subscribers (and growing) is Eve online, which is firmly in a niche and does not even have 10% of wow players.
The jury is still out on Heroes of the Storm, but it has simplified the game to a point where new players to the genre are getting into it. It may be a case where League of Legends already hit close enough to that sweet spot and built enough of a fanbase that HotS doesn't stand a chance, even if it is better executed.
I would not call Diablo 3 a flop, by the way. The game has sold over 30 million copies, and the console releases and post-real-money-auction-house balance changes have supposedly made the game great (I'm not a fan of the genre so I don't know first-hand).
Anyway, no need to get into too many details on the particulars. They've had enough breakout successes and "unicorn" level games that there's something about the strategy and execution that sets Blizzard apart.
From what I can observe, it's some mix of the following:
- Simplifying down the core gameplay to something that players can grasp quickly, without compromising complexity (that can be safely ignored for the initial stages).
- Making the core gameplay loop fun and repeatable without being repetitive.
- Making players feel rewarded for playing and purchasing. (see Hearthstone's "won the game" screen and opening pack animations)
- Keeping the games deep enough so that even top, professional players never hit a skill cap.
I wouldn't be that quickly talking about Blizzard success. The only games with which they are taking a bit of risk are HS, HotS and Overwatch (and it seems that the only successful one is HS by now, the rest are popular just by the name of the company behind them and the effort advertising them). Diablo 3 and Starcraft 2 sold themselves just by their names.
[Diablo 3] game has sold over 30 million copies, and the console releases and post-real-money-auction-house balance changes have supposedly made the game great
Diablo 3 is an excellent game on both PC and Console. The balance changes that they made were a significant improvement, and I'd consider the current D3 one of Blizzard's great successes as gameplay goes. It greatly expanded on Diablo 2 with completely new and fresh mechanics that have been an absolute blast to explore as a gamer. It was a little too unforgiving before those balance changes, with bumpy progression and a difficult skill cliff, and overly reliant on the auction house (not intentionally in a gimmicky way; it's just how it turned out when AH prices dropped ridiculously low due to surplus supply). It's great now though. Diablo 3's artwork is beautiful, and to achieve it they developed an innovative new style which they presented at GDC 2012:
(This is what I mean by "fresh" by the way: something new and interesting that you haven't seen before, even in an industry that tries it all. The painterly style was definitely fresh, and even in the years since then I haven't seen an imitation. I suspect it's too technically challenging, requiring a custom engine and a different way of designing environments.)
I guess you can tell that I'm a fan. I think you hit on all the things that Blizzard does well: repeatable without repetitive, simple but deep with high skill cap, where you discover new things about the game mechanics yourself over time. Diablo 3 is especially fun because of its multiplayer coop. It's great to get the S.O. or friends in the same room and collaborate, especially on console.
Diablo 3 has continued to trickle out new content over time for free after its expansion, Reaper of Souls, which has further helped to improve balance and make it interesting. I wish they would release more content though, since the game by its nature is ultimately repetitive. (Hard to justify financially with no recurring subscription. I would be very happy to pay for one if it meant more content!) There are rumors that Blizzard will release another expansion, which I will be super excited to explore if they do. I personally feel it's one of the best games ever made, and definitely the best action RPG. I don't think this quality of design can be boiled down just to a list of things they do well. It's definitely something more than that. They have an internal compass of what it takes to make awesome games, and they're willing to wait and iterate on their development as long as it takes to get there.
Heroes of the Storm I'm skeptical of. It's much more directly a rip-off than any other Blizzard game, and I haven't seen much fresh or new come out of it yet.
Hacker News feels like a strange place to talk about video game appreciation, but here is goes.
I've played an insane amount of Diablo 1, an unreasonable amount of Diablo 2, but when it came to Diablo 3, I barely finished the game one time and I that was it. I had an okay time playing it. The overall experience was just "meh".
And it's not because I was sick of playing video games in general. I still played an unreasonable amount of Torchlight 1-2.
To me, Torchlight offered a better "Diablo" experience than Diablo 3.
I know that a lot of thought went into making Diablo 3 playable beyond the end of the game. Online auction and all that. But it's hard to want to play more of a game when the game is barely enjoyable in the first playthrough.
Maybe it's not for everyone. D3 has improved considerably since its initial release. What I enjoyed specifically about the game was the process of leveling a character (repeated across many different classes), to unlock the new spell casting and action mechanics. Yet at the same time, you're not "stuck" with a permanent investment in any one skill tree, like you were in D2. That provided a good sense of exploration. I think D3 defined a better equipment model where skill damage is based on weapon damage. I was skeptical about this at first - What? Wizards can use swords and do just as much damage as with wands? - but it works out well. It makes items more portable across classes, and generally makes gear finding more fun. You'll use whatever you find, including big ridiculous axes as a wizard.
By the way, they have substantially changed gear drop balance since launch. Back at launch, item stats were completely randomized, so it might take a lot of grinding before you'd find the +mainstat attribute that you want. One area where I think Blizzard excels by making hard choices in game design is recognizing when "the game essentially makes this option mandatory", and then taking it out to improve the fun. So for example, Blizzard has been removing or redesigning castable buffs from WOW due to the theory that having to cast these repeatedly is not helping anyone enjoy the game. So now those effects are just built into the classes instead. Similarly with Diablo 3, they embraced the idea that most players will see +mainstat is simply being necessary for any gear to be viable, and they altered the drop mechanic so that it's virtually guaranteed as a property on most gear. No longer do Barbarians and Demon Hunters see +int gear.
This was part of the path to eliminating the auction house. Previously, getting the right combination of every stat you needed at high level required a lot of RNG across a marketplace. Now, D3's item generation has been redone in some subtle and clever way. I think they are doing something akin to what Valve did with the AI director in Left 4 Dead. That is, D3 tracks how frequently good items are dropping, that seem like an upgrade for you, and makes sure they are in fact dropping regularly. It ensures you get a legendary item drop every few hours. (Yes, that frequent! The balance is different now so that that's not insane.) Thus players can expect to get frequent upgrades and regular new gear sets just by playing solo. This is a big improvement for casual players.
One where where I'd criticize D3 was elements of unintentional bathos. For example, the player character's interactions with Azmodan and Belial definitely veer into bathos territory. Azmodan is supposed to be one of the great evils of the world, what he says amounts to little more than, "I'll get you next time, wascally wabbit!" The dialog there is not great, but the story and graphics are fun overall.
I've recently started playing Torchlight 2 as well, but haven't gotten very far. How does it compare to D3? Or rather, what would you say it excels it where D3 stumbles?
World of Warcraft is especially an interesting case, seeing that all the 2nd most popular MMO has never came anywhere near the popularity of WoW
That doesn't seem to be the case. Wow has 5.6 million players, but it's followed by a few games with 4-5 million players, and a number with >1 million. I'm not sure if that's just current players, or a running total.
Those numbers in that chart are misleading. At its peak, WoW had up to 12 millions subscribers monthly,the current 5.6 millions are still monthly subscribers, which is much different than the other millions figures on the chart (total registered account or total sales -- not all of them are on a subscription model, and some like MapleStory are free to play).
To put it in perspective, WoW had 5 expansions, selling at $40-60 each at average of 10millions sales each (and you have to buy some of the previous one too), on top of the subscriptions and it's probably pulling in the minimum of $1-2 billions yearly revenue. It's not even a close call to the 2nd place ...
I play MtG a few of my MtG friends have recently started playing Hearthstone. From what I've gathered talking to them key differences are:
No trading - cards are bound to the account if I have card A and my friend has card B we can't swap cards with each other.
RNG - apparently Hearthstone is more RNG influenced then MtG the argument being this makes Hearthstone less skill and more luck based then MtG.
The thing I find most objectionable about Magic Online is having to duplicate your paper collection - which essentially means paying for the same cards twice, which is not something I'm all that keen to do. Not an issue for sealed tournaments like drafting but I'm not keen to invest in an electronic constructed format.
It isn't just that hearthstone is more RNG influenced per se, it's that it is an incredibly shallow game tactically. Part of that is the discreet turns (which also makes the online game considerably more playable than mtg ever managed with endless "breakpoints" in play to confirm no response), but also the actual complexity and interactivity is flat out lower.
The thing I find most objectionable about Magic Online is having to duplicate your paper collection - which essentially means paying for the same cards twice, which is not something I'm all that keen to do.
Exactly. Not being able to redeem your digital collection out to paper cards means you are completely at the mercy of WotC for the value of your cards.
Um, no. Yes, my physical MtG cards vary in price, but unless WotC actually reprints or bans a card, they tend to stay in a fairly predictable range.
I really like what Pokemon TCG has done. Every pack has a code you can use online for the same pack (different cards though). You can also get more online packs by playing games online (especially helpful for kids with non-existent incomes). There is just so much less value in electronic cards than in physical ones (namely there is no internet requirement and I can easily lend a friend a physical deck to play with for a day).
Heroes of the Storm is probably over 100 times less popular than League of Legends, not much more accessible for new players, and is a much more shallow experience. Dota, LoL, then Dota 2 have been extremely popular and wildly successful far before Heroes of the Storm even entered the scene.
What I really dislike about Blizzard is how they have created this childish look in almost every game. It wasn't bad in Warcraft, I could accept it in WoW but Hearthstone and HotS was too much for me.
To me blizzard has always been a gaming-mirror of Apple in many ways, and I think it's a shame this topic hasn't been explored more. Though they have both faltered a bit in this regard in recent years, a hallmark of both companies is that they never release anything until it's _ready_. You also see this focus reflected in their willingness to "stoop" to simplicity, regardless of the hate they both receive.
I could come up with many more examples but the true proof to me is that of the loyal consumer. I know of no one who has only played one blizzard game. If you play WC3, you instantly get a visceral feeling that you can trust their other games to be equally good. Even decades later, as Hearthstone reflects, Blizzards DNA is still shining through. So it is with Apple and their products[0]. Though no one and nothing is perfect, you can sense the maniacal focus behind the scenes.
[0] If you consider the years where they've had proper leadership. (i.e. disregard the pepsi years)
Diablo 3 was mediocre because the entire genre has been trumped by MMOs.
Diablo, x-craft, WoW and HS were all landmarks in their time and good examples of what grandparent is talking about. HotS was beaten to the punch by LOL and Overwatch who knows.
Diablo 3 was one of the most successful game launches ever and well reviewed across the board. The RMAH was a fixable issue, Diablo 3's primary problem -- which is something every Diablo clone has also had to deal with -- is that the Diabloesque hack genre that was one of the dominant genres 15 years ago simply doesn't hold players the way other top games do. People come back to WoW becuase of the social stickyness and the frequent content updates. People come back to LoL because of the head to head gameplay. Diablo's offer of running the same content until your brain explodes to get that an item with slightly better random stats just isn't compelling in 2015.
Comments
Tangential, but this is such a great illustration of how Blizzard as a company has succeeded time and time again in taking nearly impenetrable games and genres and turning them into something that new players can enjoy, while still retaining enough depth to make the games interesting for advanced players.
From MtG and its everchanging sets, significant expense, multiple formats and awful online experience/UI came Hearthstone. A card game that tens of millions have gotten into. It looks fantastic, takes no initial investment, and costs a fraction of what a MtGO deck costs to go from nothing to a top tier competitive deck.
Other examples:
- Roguelikes -> Diablo
- RTS -> Warcraft & Starcraft
- MMO -> World of Warcraft
- DotA/2 -> Heroes of the Storm
- Team Fortress/2 -> Overwatch (not yet released)
It's an interesting case study on a company that's succeeded in taking genres usually reserved for a niche audience and bringing them to the masses. It's not a company without flaws and missteps, but it's an interesting lesson in bringing existing markets to a wider audience. I wonder if there's something more general that can be gleaned from their strategy to products outside of games.
Heroes of the Storm is nowhere near the popularity of Dota or Dota 2 yet, let alone the leading game in the genre (League of Legends). And it's still too early to say anything about Overwatch.
I wholeheartedly agree that Blizzard has not made one bad game yet. On the other hand, we don't need to hype up their success: several of their recent games have been kind of a ... flop, notably Diablo 3 and Starcraft 2. Both had really good sales on release (not necessary great on Blizzard scale), but the longevity is definitely nowhere near the long time plan they originally have. Starcraft 2 was supposed to become the king of Esport, yet LOL took the charge and firmly stay on top with a significant gap. Diablo 3 Real-money Auction house has to be shut down, and even the mighty WOW lost more than 3 millions subscribers in the last 2 quarters. Hearthstone, however is indeed an amazing success.
World of Warcraft is especially an interesting case, seeing that all the 2nd most popular MMO has never came anywhere near the popularity of WoW, it's questionable whether MMO is an actually viable genre in the long run. Note that most other MMO in 2nd place come and go in waves, never lasting more than a few months to a year. The one with the most consistent number of subscribers (and growing) is Eve online, which is firmly in a niche and does not even have 10% of wow players.
The jury is still out on Heroes of the Storm, but it has simplified the game to a point where new players to the genre are getting into it. It may be a case where League of Legends already hit close enough to that sweet spot and built enough of a fanbase that HotS doesn't stand a chance, even if it is better executed.
I would not call Diablo 3 a flop, by the way. The game has sold over 30 million copies, and the console releases and post-real-money-auction-house balance changes have supposedly made the game great (I'm not a fan of the genre so I don't know first-hand).
Anyway, no need to get into too many details on the particulars. They've had enough breakout successes and "unicorn" level games that there's something about the strategy and execution that sets Blizzard apart.
From what I can observe, it's some mix of the following:
- Simplifying down the core gameplay to something that players can grasp quickly, without compromising complexity (that can be safely ignored for the initial stages).
- Making the core gameplay loop fun and repeatable without being repetitive.
- Making players feel rewarded for playing and purchasing. (see Hearthstone's "won the game" screen and opening pack animations)
- Keeping the games deep enough so that even top, professional players never hit a skill cap.
I wouldn't be that quickly talking about Blizzard success. The only games with which they are taking a bit of risk are HS, HotS and Overwatch (and it seems that the only successful one is HS by now, the rest are popular just by the name of the company behind them and the effort advertising them). Diablo 3 and Starcraft 2 sold themselves just by their names.
Diablo 3 is an excellent game on both PC and Console. The balance changes that they made were a significant improvement, and I'd consider the current D3 one of Blizzard's great successes as gameplay goes. It greatly expanded on Diablo 2 with completely new and fresh mechanics that have been an absolute blast to explore as a gamer. It was a little too unforgiving before those balance changes, with bumpy progression and a difficult skill cliff, and overly reliant on the auction house (not intentionally in a gimmicky way; it's just how it turned out when AH prices dropped ridiculously low due to surplus supply). It's great now though. Diablo 3's artwork is beautiful, and to achieve it they developed an innovative new style which they presented at GDC 2012:
http://gdcvault.com/play/1015306/The-Art-of-Diablo
(This is what I mean by "fresh" by the way: something new and interesting that you haven't seen before, even in an industry that tries it all. The painterly style was definitely fresh, and even in the years since then I haven't seen an imitation. I suspect it's too technically challenging, requiring a custom engine and a different way of designing environments.)
I guess you can tell that I'm a fan. I think you hit on all the things that Blizzard does well: repeatable without repetitive, simple but deep with high skill cap, where you discover new things about the game mechanics yourself over time. Diablo 3 is especially fun because of its multiplayer coop. It's great to get the S.O. or friends in the same room and collaborate, especially on console.
Diablo 3 has continued to trickle out new content over time for free after its expansion, Reaper of Souls, which has further helped to improve balance and make it interesting. I wish they would release more content though, since the game by its nature is ultimately repetitive. (Hard to justify financially with no recurring subscription. I would be very happy to pay for one if it meant more content!) There are rumors that Blizzard will release another expansion, which I will be super excited to explore if they do. I personally feel it's one of the best games ever made, and definitely the best action RPG. I don't think this quality of design can be boiled down just to a list of things they do well. It's definitely something more than that. They have an internal compass of what it takes to make awesome games, and they're willing to wait and iterate on their development as long as it takes to get there.
Heroes of the Storm I'm skeptical of. It's much more directly a rip-off than any other Blizzard game, and I haven't seen much fresh or new come out of it yet.
Hacker News feels like a strange place to talk about video game appreciation, but here is goes.
I've played an insane amount of Diablo 1, an unreasonable amount of Diablo 2, but when it came to Diablo 3, I barely finished the game one time and I that was it. I had an okay time playing it. The overall experience was just "meh".
And it's not because I was sick of playing video games in general. I still played an unreasonable amount of Torchlight 1-2.
To me, Torchlight offered a better "Diablo" experience than Diablo 3.
I know that a lot of thought went into making Diablo 3 playable beyond the end of the game. Online auction and all that. But it's hard to want to play more of a game when the game is barely enjoyable in the first playthrough.
Maybe it's not for everyone. D3 has improved considerably since its initial release. What I enjoyed specifically about the game was the process of leveling a character (repeated across many different classes), to unlock the new spell casting and action mechanics. Yet at the same time, you're not "stuck" with a permanent investment in any one skill tree, like you were in D2. That provided a good sense of exploration. I think D3 defined a better equipment model where skill damage is based on weapon damage. I was skeptical about this at first - What? Wizards can use swords and do just as much damage as with wands? - but it works out well. It makes items more portable across classes, and generally makes gear finding more fun. You'll use whatever you find, including big ridiculous axes as a wizard.
By the way, they have substantially changed gear drop balance since launch. Back at launch, item stats were completely randomized, so it might take a lot of grinding before you'd find the +mainstat attribute that you want. One area where I think Blizzard excels by making hard choices in game design is recognizing when "the game essentially makes this option mandatory", and then taking it out to improve the fun. So for example, Blizzard has been removing or redesigning castable buffs from WOW due to the theory that having to cast these repeatedly is not helping anyone enjoy the game. So now those effects are just built into the classes instead. Similarly with Diablo 3, they embraced the idea that most players will see +mainstat is simply being necessary for any gear to be viable, and they altered the drop mechanic so that it's virtually guaranteed as a property on most gear. No longer do Barbarians and Demon Hunters see +int gear.
This was part of the path to eliminating the auction house. Previously, getting the right combination of every stat you needed at high level required a lot of RNG across a marketplace. Now, D3's item generation has been redone in some subtle and clever way. I think they are doing something akin to what Valve did with the AI director in Left 4 Dead. That is, D3 tracks how frequently good items are dropping, that seem like an upgrade for you, and makes sure they are in fact dropping regularly. It ensures you get a legendary item drop every few hours. (Yes, that frequent! The balance is different now so that that's not insane.) Thus players can expect to get frequent upgrades and regular new gear sets just by playing solo. This is a big improvement for casual players.
One where where I'd criticize D3 was elements of unintentional bathos. For example, the player character's interactions with Azmodan and Belial definitely veer into bathos territory. Azmodan is supposed to be one of the great evils of the world, what he says amounts to little more than, "I'll get you next time, wascally wabbit!" The dialog there is not great, but the story and graphics are fun overall.
I've recently started playing Torchlight 2 as well, but haven't gotten very far. How does it compare to D3? Or rather, what would you say it excels it where D3 stumbles?
That doesn't seem to be the case. Wow has 5.6 million players, but it's followed by a few games with 4-5 million players, and a number with >1 million. I'm not sure if that's just current players, or a running total.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_massively_multip...
Those numbers in that chart are misleading. At its peak, WoW had up to 12 millions subscribers monthly,the current 5.6 millions are still monthly subscribers, which is much different than the other millions figures on the chart (total registered account or total sales -- not all of them are on a subscription model, and some like MapleStory are free to play).
To put it in perspective, WoW had 5 expansions, selling at $40-60 each at average of 10millions sales each (and you have to buy some of the previous one too), on top of the subscriptions and it's probably pulling in the minimum of $1-2 billions yearly revenue. It's not even a close call to the 2nd place ...
I play MtG a few of my MtG friends have recently started playing Hearthstone. From what I've gathered talking to them key differences are:
No trading - cards are bound to the account if I have card A and my friend has card B we can't swap cards with each other.
RNG - apparently Hearthstone is more RNG influenced then MtG the argument being this makes Hearthstone less skill and more luck based then MtG.
The thing I find most objectionable about Magic Online is having to duplicate your paper collection - which essentially means paying for the same cards twice, which is not something I'm all that keen to do. Not an issue for sealed tournaments like drafting but I'm not keen to invest in an electronic constructed format.
It isn't just that hearthstone is more RNG influenced per se, it's that it is an incredibly shallow game tactically. Part of that is the discreet turns (which also makes the online game considerably more playable than mtg ever managed with endless "breakpoints" in play to confirm no response), but also the actual complexity and interactivity is flat out lower.
Exactly. Not being able to redeem your digital collection out to paper cards means you are completely at the mercy of WotC for the value of your cards.
Um, no. Yes, my physical MtG cards vary in price, but unless WotC actually reprints or bans a card, they tend to stay in a fairly predictable range.
I really like what Pokemon TCG has done. Every pack has a code you can use online for the same pack (different cards though). You can also get more online packs by playing games online (especially helpful for kids with non-existent incomes). There is just so much less value in electronic cards than in physical ones (namely there is no internet requirement and I can easily lend a friend a physical deck to play with for a day).
Heroes of the Storm is probably over 100 times less popular than League of Legends, not much more accessible for new players, and is a much more shallow experience. Dota, LoL, then Dota 2 have been extremely popular and wildly successful far before Heroes of the Storm even entered the scene.
What I really dislike about Blizzard is how they have created this childish look in almost every game. It wasn't bad in Warcraft, I could accept it in WoW but Hearthstone and HotS was too much for me.
To me blizzard has always been a gaming-mirror of Apple in many ways, and I think it's a shame this topic hasn't been explored more. Though they have both faltered a bit in this regard in recent years, a hallmark of both companies is that they never release anything until it's _ready_. You also see this focus reflected in their willingness to "stoop" to simplicity, regardless of the hate they both receive.
I could come up with many more examples but the true proof to me is that of the loyal consumer. I know of no one who has only played one blizzard game. If you play WC3, you instantly get a visceral feeling that you can trust their other games to be equally good. Even decades later, as Hearthstone reflects, Blizzards DNA is still shining through. So it is with Apple and their products[0]. Though no one and nothing is perfect, you can sense the maniacal focus behind the scenes.
[0] If you consider the years where they've had proper leadership. (i.e. disregard the pepsi years)
[deleted]
Diablo 3 was mediocre because the entire genre has been trumped by MMOs.
Diablo, x-craft, WoW and HS were all landmarks in their time and good examples of what grandparent is talking about. HotS was beaten to the punch by LOL and Overwatch who knows.
The real reason Diablo 3 was mediocre was because of the balancing around the Real Money Auction House and the perverse incentives that resulted.
Since it was removed, and now that they've been adding good content for free, the game has improved significantly.
Diablo 3 was one of the most successful game launches ever and well reviewed across the board. The RMAH was a fixable issue, Diablo 3's primary problem -- which is something every Diablo clone has also had to deal with -- is that the Diabloesque hack genre that was one of the dominant genres 15 years ago simply doesn't hold players the way other top games do. People come back to WoW becuase of the social stickyness and the frequent content updates. People come back to LoL because of the head to head gameplay. Diablo's offer of running the same content until your brain explodes to get that an item with slightly better random stats just isn't compelling in 2015.