Last year there were rumors that Blizzard could be working on a new Diablo 3 expansion following the Reaper of Souls expansion. It was also rumored to debut at BlizzCon 2015 but obviously that did not happen. In fact we weren’t even treated to anything Diablo 3 related at the event, and now maybe we might know why.
According to a report from BlizzPro, it seems that Diablo 3’s rumored expansion has been “replaced” by Diablo 4. Yup, it sounds like Blizzard is more keen on launching an entirely brand new Diablo game instead of working on an expansion for the current game. How did they arrive at this conclusion?
For starters there are job listings on Blizzard’s career page for Team 3, which is the Diablo team. The listings are also calling for Senior Concept Artists, Senior Character Designer, and Senior VFX Artist which hints that Blizzard is still in the early stages of planning the game. The report also points out how various key team members of Diablo 3 have left the company.
For example Leonard Boyarsky, the Lead World Designer for Diablo 3 has left, while other members such as John Yang and Don Vu have been taken off the team and are now working with the World of Warcraft team in preparation for the upcoming Legion expansion. With a skeletal crew remaining, it has been speculated that the remaining members will focus on patch-related material rather than a new game/expansion.
Of course this is just speculation and given how popular the Diablo franchise is, we doubt Blizzard will be letting it die anytime soon. However with Legion pegged for a release later this year and Overwatch next month, we reckon that Blizzard is probably trying to focus on those games, but what do you guys think? Would you prefer a new Diablo 3 expansion or would a Diablo 4 be of more interest to you?