@RedRabbitRunFebruary 03, 2025
For me, this game marked the ever so sad transition from the heights of Diablo II, to the live-service entities that became Diablo III and IV.
Despite being a huge fan of Diablo I and II, I couldn't bring myself to financially support the always-online single-player model that was being forced upon us. We were told that this was necessary to combat piracy, but felt like a kick in the teeth to those of us who had happily supported Blizzard in the past. The later inclusion of in-game monetization would place considerable doubt on the supposed motivations to go always-online, but it made little difference to me.
Make a single player game that's good enough to buy, treat your customers with respect (staff, too, would be nice), let it be played offline, from a storefront I like and trust, and I'll be glad to buy from Blizzard again.
Diablo II and it's expansion, Throne of Bhaal, were the last Blizzard games I ever purchased, 24 years ago (GOG re-releases notwithstanding). I'll wait for as long as it takes. In the meantime, plenty of other studios I'm happy to buy from.