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Diablo IV will have a season pass and cosmetic-only microtransactions

In the third Diablo IV quarterly update of 2022, Blizzard detailed how post-launch support and monetization will work in the fantasy RPG. The biggest takeaways are that all microtransactions will be cosmetic only and that the game will build upon the seasonal post-launch formula established in Diablo III.

Diablo III’s auction house became quite infamous, so Blizzard is clarifying that microtransactions in Diablo IV are cosmetic only before release. Diablo IV will have The Shop, where players can spend premium currency to buy class-specific cosmetic items and bundles that interest them. These cosmetics don’t have any gameplay benefits on their own, so players must transmog from other weapons and armor in Diablo IV. Players will also earn cosmetics through the Season Pass, which will include free and premium tiers each season. 

Outside of cosmetics, the Season Pass will also reward players with Premium Currency to spend in The Shop and Season Boosts that can increase the rate players get XP during a season. That said, Season Boosts will always be on the free tier and not unlocked so players can’t pay to win. Clearly, players will have a lot to work toward each season, and seasons will all feel very independent from each other. At the end of a season, characters are moved to the Eternal Realm, so players will have to start over with a new character to experience the next season’s questline, new gameplay features, Live Events, and Season Journey objectives that can grant Season Pass progression. 

Diablo IV isn’t the only Blizzard game that needed to grapple with its live service structure, as Overwatch 2′s team recently made the decision to go free-to-play as it needed to get out the door soon and continue to stay relevant in the very competitive multiplayer landscape. There are actually some intriguing similarities between the two games’ seasonal structures, making it very clear that Blizzard wants these games to be living titles going forward.

Diablo IV will release for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X in 2023.

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Tomas Franzese
Gaming Staff Writer
Tomas Franzese is a Staff Writer at Digital Trends, where he reports on and reviews the latest releases and exciting…
2022’s biggest video game reveals have been a bummer so far
Player with handgun in Call of Duty: Warzone.

The announcement of 2022's Call of Duty was always going to feel weird. Over the last year, Activision Blizzard has been scrutinized over horrific sexual harassment allegations, turned Call of Duty: Warzone into a glitchy and bloated mess, and was acquired by Microsoft. But I wasn't expecting its reveal to be this sloppy.
Activision Blizzard previously mentioned that Infinity Ward was making a new Call of Duty. Then, at 1 p.m. ET on February 11, enthusiast Call of Duty websites and content creators posted that Activision told them that Modern Warfare 2 and a reworked Warzone with a sandbox mode are on the way. There was no official word on these claims for about 15 minutes, but Activision eventually confirmed them... in the footnotes of a blog post. Its reveal lacked excitement, was confusing, and dodged the biggest questions surrounding Activision Blizzard.
Six weeks into 2022, this is just the latest example of a AAA publisher announcing a huge game with little fanfare. But why have AAA publishers dropped the pomp and circumstance of their game reveals? 
Activision wants you to know that 2022's Call of Duty is a sequel to 2019's Modern Warfare and on a new engine.
For the fans
Previously, a trailer, press release, and detailed info about what players could expect accompanied Call of Duty game announcements. In recent years, it even happened inside Call of Duty: Warzone! We weren't so lucky this time and had to deal with a flurry of enthusiasts and leakers claiming to have new information about the game with no good way to verify its truthfulness.
Earlier this week, there was reportedly a call where Activision and Infinity Ward revealed the new information on this game, but it seems to have been attended almost solely by enthusiast sites and content creators. Even the most prominent gaming sites like IGN and GameSpot didn't seem privy to the news beforehand.
This announcement was made by the fans before Activision even confirmed it. Based on the coverage from those in attendance, it doesn't seem like content creators asked the tough questions about the status of Activision Blizzard's workplace, how the acquisition affects these games, and the reasoning behind Activision Blizzard's decision making (perhaps they did and Activision refused to comment, but we'll likely never know).
By announcing it this way, Activision Blizzard circumvents having to answer hard questions about the company's current state, gets free press from its fans, and gets ahead of the leaks, reports, and rumors that have occurred since the Microsoft acquisition. Activision built a mostly positive -- if oddly rolled out -- reveal narrative for the new Call of Duty that doesn't have much substance.
While other announcements this year haven't felt as malicious, they still lacked a certain flair that we've come to expect.
Rockstar announced Grand Theft Auto 6 in the footnotes of a GTA series blog post. Respawn Entertainment announced three new Star Wars games, including a sequel to Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, through a tweet and press release light on additional details. Even Blizzard did it just a few weeks ago with a survival game blog post reveal that called the game "unannounced" in its announcement. None of them had trailers (Crytek got this right with Crysis 4). AAA games are being announced very early with minimal assets and information, making these unveils much less impactful.
This is the only asset EA released alongside its Respawn Entertainment Star Wars announcement.
For the company 
As I previously discussed when Rockstar announced GTA 6, these reveals aren't really about the fans -- they are about the investors and potential hires. Activision first discussed 2022's Call of Duty in a financial results report. GTA 6, the Respawn Star Wars deal, and the Blizzard survival game were announced ahead of earnings reports from their respective companies. The latter two were tied to recruitment calls for their respective developers.
The gaming industry is in the middle of an acquisition craze, and studios are reportedly struggling to recruit great talent. Announcing video games in a nonchalant way helps address both of those issues. Games that are almost guaranteed to be hits please current investors and entice potential buyers. Meanwhile, some developers might be more willing to jump ship from their current employer and work for someone else if they know exactly what they're working on. If some fans get hyped and don't ask tough questions, that's just a positive side effect.
These publishers are putting the bare minimum into reveals and yielding the greatest results. And if this strategy generates enough buzz and keeps working, this might become the norm outside of events like E3, or individual showcases like Nintendo Directs, where fans expect game developers to go all out.
I'm not frustrated because I'm not getting flashy reveals. It's that these announcements all seem more focused on drip-feeding the minimal amount of info so that studios can drive up profits, circumvent criticism, and please investors without sharing anything of substance. As a fan of games, that makes it challenging to care about big projects that should have me excited.

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Activision Blizzard plans mobile Warcraft, next Call of Duty
Warcraft 3 Reforged main character holds a hammer and stares at the camera.

Activision Blizzard plans to release a new Call of Duty game and mobile Warcraft game in 2022, according to a February 2022 financial results report.
As part of that report, the company went over what investors could expect from Activision, Blizzard, and King in 2022. Notably, a Warcraft game for mobile phones is officially teased for the first time: "Blizzard is planning substantial new content for the Warcraft franchise in 2022, including new experiences in World of Warcraft and Hearthstone, and getting all-new mobile Warcraft content into players’ hands for the first time."
We've yet to learn the title of this game or see it in action. It'll be the first Warcraft game released since the disappointing Warcraft 3: Reforged in 2020, and the second to hit iOS and Android, following Hearthstone. 
In the same report, Activision discussed Call of Duty in great detail. While the teased Call of Duty game is still untitled, this financial results report and a tweet from Infinity Ward heavily suggest that it's Modern Warfare 2. "Development on this year’s premium and Warzone experiences is being led by Activision’s renowned Infinity Ward studio," the results state. "The team is working on the most ambitious plan in franchise history, with industry-leading innovation and a broadly appealing franchise setting." Shortly afterward, Infinity Ward tweeted, "A new generation of Call of Duty is coming soon. Stay frosty."
https://twitter.com/InfinityWard/status/1489346822208249861
"Stay frosty" is an iconic line of John "Soap" MacTavish, a classic Modern Warfare character that was only teased in the 2019 reboot. Considering that 2019's Call of Duty: Modern Warfare is widely regarded as the series' best game in recent memory, it's not a surprise that the Modern Warfare 2 rumors are true. A report from Bloomberg claims that this game will still release on PlayStation consoles, which makes sense as the Microsoft acquisition isn't expected to be complete until June 30, 2022.
Despite the acquisition being in progress, developers fighting to unionize, and the delay of Overwatch 2 and Diablo IV, this financial results report confirms that we can still expect new games from Activision Blizzard in 2022.

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Diablo II: Resurrected’s best feature should be in every remake
A chaotic battlefield in Diablo 2: Resurrected.

Thanks to the selling power of nostalgia and the popularity of retro titles, remastered and remade games have been big business for the last decade. Many of us, myself included, grew up experiencing games before the days of 4K, high frame rates, and ray tracing, so it's always fun to see what our favorite classics look like with a modern coat of paint.

Some of them, like the recent Diablo II: Resurrected, are quite good and take the opportunity to bring a few of their gameplay systems into the current day. Others, like Pokémon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl, are mediocre or polarizing, bringing their old issues with them in the name of preserving an authentic experience. We try not to talk about remasters like the Grand Theft Auto Trilogy.

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