With the recent announcement that Diablo Immortal will be entering a limited audience Technical Alpha, speculation continues around the overall design of this upcoming mobile ARPG from Blizzard Entertainment. With Diablo 4 in development, many are eager to learn more about Diablo Immortal and it seems Blizzard is now starting to open up a little more.
Reading through the various articles linked in their Technical Alpha announcement, we learned quite a bit more about the game systems in Diablo Immortal, a little more on how itemization will work, details about character and skills progression, and more insight into their values on the free to play approach.
After letting the new information sink in, I shared some of my initial thoughts in a Twitter thread, including a comment about the lack of any mention of auto-play. Wyatt Cheng, the Lead Designer for Diablo Immortal, was nice enough to take the time to provide some official confirmation that there will be zero auto-play in Diablo Immortal.
This is some of the best news we could possibly learn about Diablo Immortal, as the current mobile scene is just flooded with games that play themselves (and put you at a disadvantage if you choose not to allow them to). This is a shame, because some of these games are actually gorgeous and play extremely well – which makes me even more optimistic about Diablo Immortal. That said, there are some core flaws surrounding the free-to-play model, flirting with some pay-to-win aspects, which I mentioned in my thread.
I encourage you to participate in any Alphas or Betas you have the ability to, and if you have any feedback, don’t hesitate to provide it in a clear, healthy, constructive way to the development team. The potential of Diablo Immortal is quite high, so let’s use the information provided to help guide the team to craft the mobile Diablo game we truly want.