Blizzard developers are running out of games that can be remastered. So there will be many new things to come.
The big new highlight of BlizzCon 2021 hasn’t arrived. It’s surprising that the main attraction is the remastering of a game that’s been around for 20 years: Diablo II: Resurrected. But after the remastering, Blizzard is pretty much done with its modernization. Now new things have to come.
Everything remastered that was possible: If you look back over the past few years at Blizzard, the developer studio has actually reissued all the greatest hits and put them through a remastering.
- StarCraft 1 was modernized in conjunction with the Broodwar expansion. Graphics have been fixed and resolution has been significantly improved.
- Warcraft III, the heart of the Warcraft cosmos, also got a remastering with “Reforged.” That failed brutally and it wasn’t what fans were promised, but it still counts in the remastered series. Meanwhile, they just keep quiet about it.
- Diablo II: Resurrected revives Diablo 2 along with the “Lord of Destruction” expansion. For many gamers, Diablo 2 is the ancestor of the “Hack ‘n Slay” genre and pioneered all upcoming games of this type.
- With the Arcade Collection, Blizzard has once again unearthed its very, very old players. The Lost Vikings, Rock ‘n Roll Racing, and Blackthorne sometimes come from a time when Blizzard wasn’t even called Blizzard.
A Diablo 2 remaster: Blizzard’s last big remaster?
Other games are not an option for a remaster. For Warcraft I and Warcraft II that had already been rejected. The gameplay has just gotten too old, you’d have to change too much to bring the game up to a modern standard. With Diablo I, there are likely similar reasons.
So what is Blizzard doing now that the remasters are wrapping up? The answer is very simple: new games.
There are “more games than ever”
In an interview with Cnet, Blizzard Chief J. Allen Brack and Deputy Chief Allen Adham discussed previous remasters, the future of Blizzard, and with it, new games. The way games are developed and maintained has changed dramatically. Adham stated:
We used to publish a game and maybe patch it once or twice and then work on the next game. We are now in this new “always online” world with live games… that means that development cycles are getting longer and the need is greater to continue to support our ongoing and successful games; it takes longer, “the following” to publish.
Finally, Adham added:
But to be clear, our development channel is richer than ever. And we have new teams working on new games and new types of games.
You can find more news about Blizzard here:
- The highlight of BlizzCon 2021 was this cosplay
- Diablo 2: Resurrected – Here’s how it works with alpha testing
- Blizzard has BlizzCon trauma, therefore not showing most popular game
More will come, only when? Even if BlizzConline 2021 had little news, most should know that background developers are currently working on many games. It was only in the last earnings call that it was confirmed that “various mobile titles” of Warcraft are currently in an advanced stage of development. So at least you can expect an announcement within the next year.
It is still uncertain when we will finally see the first fruits of this work. But while Blizzard has been talking about its many games in development, it really can’t take that long …
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