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Despite the negative reaction to Diablo Immortal, there’s real enthusiasm for mobile game development at Blizzard.
A big investigative report on “the past, present, and future of Diablo” on Kotaku recently dug into the development history of Diablo 4 and also the state of things at Blizzard. It was presumably spurred by the backlash against Diablo Immortal, a mobile game announced- to great derision - at Blizzcon. And hidden in its midst is a reference to another mobile game in the works, based on a different Blizzard game that you may have heard of: Warcraft.
Diablo devotees were disappointed by the Immortal announcement, but a source told Kotaku that Blizzard employees are generally very enthusiastic about it, and about mobile games in general. “The reaction inside the company to Immortal is very different than the reaction outside the company,” the source said. “Part of the thinking on a lot of these is, people want to work on smaller projects”
Pokémon Go is popular among staffers, and Blizzard’s famous, massive Orc statue is a Pokéstop that sees a lot of action. And while I don’t think it’s the most obvious pairing of all time, someone decided to put the two of them together, and a Blizzard “incubation team” is now working on a Warcraft game styled after Pokémon Go.