Diablo Junkie

Now, I admit the StarCraft 2 announcement was quite a blow to any hopes of seeing Diablo 3 any time soon.

Thinking about it more, however, the cold, hard facts remain the same.

Let me go through them for my (and your) well being:

1) Blizzard has been recruiting heavily lately: not only art directors but all kinds of artists. Judging by the StraCraft 2 trailer, their work at SC2 seems almost complete, so they are not hiring them for that.

2) Knaak commented about the Diablo storyline and basically confirmed Diablo’s world is not dead, it’s a world with dead.

3) Paul Sams interview where he says they have three product announcements. So far we’ve got a WoW expansion and StarCraft 2. I don’t know about you but I only count two so far…

4) Diablo 3 trademark and domain activity. Blizz have secured rights to all things Diablo 3 and since they aren’t making a movie, my guess is they plan a game.

5) Diablo 2 still has tens of THOUSANDS of active players. I bet more people play Diablo 2 than StarCraft (maybe not in Korea but worldwide).

Here’s another bet I’m willing to place right now: Most Diablo players are critical of WoW. I know I am. For example, I hate the fact I can’t access probably 50% of the end-game content.

Why? Because I don’t have the time to RAID. With Diablo, I can log in and solo Diablo or Baal whenever I feel like it. There’s no waiting for a healer or a tank. You go in, you kill. It’s that simple.

It’s the 19th already. In Korea it’s still the 18th though. There are less than 24 hours to Blizzard’s major product announcement.

The only information that has leaked so far is that they’re going to do a “Medusa demo”. Is this a new game engine? There’s a Medusa item in Diablo 2… but I’m not too optimistic about the new product being Diablo 3. Why?

For starters, Blizzard are making the announcement in Korea. Korea is the Starcraft heaven. If Blizzard announce anything but Starcraft, they might get shot at!

Second, Diablo (1996) has got its Diablo 2 sequel (2000) and the LoD expansion (2001). Starcraft has been sequel-less since 1998.

Last but not least, it seems that ALL of Blizzard’s executives have mentioned Starcraft 2 in one way or another.

So my bets are as follows:

A Starcraft game - 90%
A Diablo game - 9%
Anything else - 1%