Diablo III: A Cautionary Tale | 12 Years of Development Hell

As the "final word" on how Diablo III's long and arduous journey from Blizzard North's Diablo II successor to what it is now, Diablo III: A Cautionary Tale explores the story, reasoning, interviews, BlizzCon presentations, articles and deliberation surrounding the most anticipated PC sequel ever made.

Diablo III quickly became the fastest-selling PC game of all time-success only outshone by its diabolical release. Bugs, login errors, changed or removed features, an axed Player Versus Player mode, wildly revamped progression systems, and broken itemization plagued a game that received nothing but praise in reviews before its release.

Did you love the game, hate it, or had ambiguous feelings around it? This video attempts to uncover why, and in excruciating detail, the development of this anticipated sequel turned out the way it did.

0:00 Introduction
4:12 2008, Announcement
18:58 2009-2011, Development Hell
48:59 2012, Cancellations, Major Changes
1:02:28 Launch
1:23:58 Post-Launch Problems/Patches
1:39:55 Lessons Learned

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Written, directed and voiced by Indigo Gaming
Voiceover editing / mastering by @vikingguitar (Erik Peabody)

A special recognition to Paul Eiding and Michael J. Gough for their immortal voice contributions to the Diablo series. Quote readings were inspired by their performances.

Butcher artwork by Gerald Brom:

FULL LIST OF SOURCES, GAMEPLAY AND FOOTAGE:

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MUSIC CREDITS

Diablo original soundtrack by:
Matt Uelmen, Joey Lawrence, Laurence Juber, Glenn Stafford, Russell Brower, Edo Guidotti, and Derek Duke

Diablo Remixes by Rezodrone (Jason Charles Miller & Jamison Boaz)

Licensed tracks through Envato Elements
Licensed tracks through Epidemic Sound

#diablo #diablo3 #blizzard

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[Indigo_Gaming]

Diablo III changed _so much_ since its announcement, that documenting its many twists and turns in a presentable way took hundreds of hours of research, editing, upscaling and restoration.

[TheGodfather]

"They saw D2 as something to be corrected instead of something to be perfected." Well said.

[AlexJay]

I had no idea diablo 3 went through such a development hell. The whole cycle sounds like overthinking hell instead of just making a game that’s fun

[snowballandpals]

Can we take a moment to appreciate that we're in a golden age of independently created gaming documentaries?

[danielhale]

Two words are very important for effective design: Fail Faster.
You need to get core systems figured out really well, and locked in, before you start investing heavy into content. Play your game with playtesters with the ugliest art you can find and make sure your game is fun to play and does what you want. Iterate as you need throughout this process -- do the hard design work early. Run into failures and resolve them as soon as possible. You could still pivot later, but you really don't want to. Failing later is much more expensive, even lethal, than failing fast and early.

[lovecraftcat]

I'm like 6 minutes into this vid and yeah, boy oh boy let's antagonize our fans by mocking them. Truly, Blizz are ahead of their time, this wouldn't become popular until years later.

[MitzyPep]

I feel like one of the worst things a game can do design-wise is to discourage or even disallow the player from making mistakes. Not only can it reduce uniqueness between games, but it also takes away from a lot of the fun of these games, as making mistakes and retrying and figuring out the solution is oftentimes the best part of a game for me.

[mathismohr]

Diablo 3: Promise PVP, never deliver
Overwatch 2: Promise PVE, never deliver

Conclusion: Never buy Blizzard products on promises. Buy when its there. Or better yet: Shove Blizzard in the same bin EA is in, and be happy.

[arislanbekkosnazarov]

"You think you do, but you don’t, " will never stop being iconic

[HeirofAzaran]

I love watching retrospectives on Diablo, but every one I watch seems to gloss over the development at the start of three, so this is a real pleasure!

[thrazamund]

Would you consider making a deep dive documentary on Diablo 1-2, Warcraft 1-2? I’ve watched countless documentaries on the subject but none of them explain the magick that was going on at Blizzard in those early years. So many devs(including David Brevik) say the true genius at Blizzard was Allen Adham but no documentaries really say what he did. I would love for you to shine a light on this golden age of gaming which is still shrouded in mist.

[Indigo_Gaming]

Thank you all for staying a while and listening...

[GamePlayMetal]

"People's memories of D2 were way different than the reality of D2" Bitch please, I still play D2R to this day. And I remember very well my first character getting annihilated by Duriel in normal difficulty

[xdevantx]

I'll tell you what went wrong. I listened to an interview with Jay Wilson. Everything he loved about Diablo 2 were IMO the worst aspects of the game. Everything he hated about Diablo 2 were in my experience exactly what made the game so enticing and kept me coming back night after night.

[Dylanm]

"We wanted to see what we loved about diablo 1 and 2 so we went back to play those games. In our memory (the memories that loved Diablo 1 and 2) it was very colorless but we spotted some color in the old games so we said fuck it and went all out on color"

[brianhedley]

Many could not forgive the lame way Deckard Cain was put out of the game. the last of the Horadric order. The main character who had came through all the Diablo games was wiped out in a lame way. His death was pitiful and put a lot of people off in the game regardless of what happened from there. It was screw the previous Diablo players all you know follow the new story and screw your muliple years of loyalty.

[JustGrowingUp]

This explained so many things I didn't understand!
Special mention goes to using a Diablo-style narrator to read quotes from the devs, and conclusions, it's brilliant and I love it!

[Ana_Ng]

just a quick note on the early parts of the video: blizzard entertainment didn't come up with diablo 1 and 2. they provided valuable input to the developers, but diablo 1 really was david brevik's project. condor had already decided to make diablo when they got bought and renamed to blizzard north, and its 3 leaders (brevik and a couple of schaefers) maintained autonomy.

diablo might be known as a blizzard game, but blizzard north was blizzard only in name. (note: some of the blizzard north employees _are_ still at blizzard, but as far as i can tell it's mostly people who joined just before blizzard north shut down, e.g. wyatt cheng who joined in 2003) (yes, that wyatt cheng)

[icedogg]

Diablo 3 was the first and last game I pre-ordered.

[RutabagaSwe]

It's quite ironic to listen to the "you think you want it, but you really don't" quote today. Even though i think that is often true, that fans don't really know what they want until they get it, in this case it was clearly Blizzard who had no idea of what either they or the fans wanted.