It turns out a Diablo 4 reveal wasn’t dropped from the BlizzCon opening ceremony at the last moment, according to Blizzard. Hours after Kotaku reported that a Diablo 4 video announcement had been removed from the presentation, Blizzard told Kotaku that the reveal wasn’t actually in the cards for BlizzCon.
“First off we want to mention that we definitely hear our community. We generally don’t comment on rumors or speculation, but we can say that we didn’t pull any announcements from BlizzCon this year or have plans for other announcements. We do continue to have different teams working on multiple unannounced Diablo projects, and we look forward to announcing when the time is right,” Blizzard said in a statement.
It seems like Blizzard doesn’t know when it will officially announce Diablo 4, though we already know that it’s in development. According to Kotaku, Blizzard did in fact create a video message featuring studio co-founder Allen Adham, as originally reported. In the address, Adham would relay to fans that Diablo 4 wasn’t available to show off, but that it was currently in development. If and when we’ll ever see that message remains to be seen.
The team working on Diablo 4 doesn’t seem quite ready to show it off. In the four years since the sequel was conceived, the project has had “at least two different iterations under “different directors.” It sounds like Blizzard is still figuring out what it wants Diablo 4 to be.
While it shouldn’t be surprising that Blizzard didn’t reveal Diablo 4 during BlizzCon, a teaser video probably could have mitigated much of the maelstrom surrounding Diablo Immortal. The video message from Adham would have been comparable to when Nintendo teased a core Pokémon game for Switch, the Metroid Prime 4 logo reveal, and Bethesda’s The Elder Scrolls VI tease at E3.
Diablo Immortal anchored the BlizzCon opening ceremony over the weekend. Once it was shown, the presentation ended and the mixed reactions started pouring in immediately. If you’ve been following this saga, you already know that Diablo Immortal received a ton of backlash, including mass down votes on YouTube and even an audience question about whether the mobile game was an April Fool’s joke.
For what it’s worth, we enjoyed our hands-on time with Diablo Immortal at BlizzCon. While you continue to wait for the inevitable reveal of Diablo 4, make sure to check out our interview with Adham. He assured us that Blizzard hasn’t forgotten about core Diablo fans.
Updated on November 6, 2018: Revised to reflect Blizzard’s denial that a video reveal of Diablo 4 was planned for BlizzCon.
