A new video shows gameplay of Diablo 4 and a fight against a world boss in full length. Some fans took this as an incentive to draw a comparison to World of Warcraft, which had already been in the air before. Our author Benedict finds this very far-fetched.
This is seen in the video: In the new video from GameInformer, you can see how three testers, together with five developers, fight against Ashava, a world boss from the currently playable demo of Diablo IV at BlizzCon 2019.
The battle lasts about four minutes and costs numerous lives of the players, who are ultimately victorious and can secure loot.
This is how fans react: In the comments on YouTube, some users write:
- “I don’t want another payment system like WoW’s, okay?”
- “This isn’t Diablo, this is World of Diablo! No, thank you.”
- “So they want to make Diablo 4 the next World of Warcraft…”
Personally, I was amazed by these comments. As a WoW player, I do see that one can find similarities with a lot of goodwill (or malice), but Diablo 4 looks like something completely different. The statements that Diablo 4 would become WoW are nonsense.
Points of Contact between Diablo and WoW
First of all: I have not been able to play Diablo 4 yet. My knowledge about the game comes, like many fans, from previously released gameplay videos, reports from testers, and from published info from Blizzard at and after BlizzCon 2019.
From all of this, one can actually identify several points where WoW and Diablo 4 resemble each other in certain ways. I have briefly outlined what I believe are the strongest points here.
Diablo 4 sounds like an MMO: When Diablo 4 was introduced, one of the features in the spotlight was the shared open world. In Diablo 4, players play some content together in the world.
This includes world bosses, cities, and some open areas. In some ways, Diablo 4 has indeed become a little more MMO. However, the main endgame activities, the dungeons, are all instanced.
Are the dungeons “Mythic +”? These hundreds of dungeons that will be available for the endgame initially sound like a mechanics similar to “Mythic +” from WoW. Through keys, the dungeons become stronger and are equipped with random affixes that make them harder.
However, “Mythic +” changes fixed affixes for all dungeons weekly and in some cases even only in seasons. Here, too, players need keystones for specific dungeons to strengthen them.
Scaling bosses: As seen in the gameplay video embedded above and commented on by GameInformer, Ashava scales with the number of players attacking her.
When they were three, it was easier for them, and Ashava found her end faster than in an open group with eight players. Also in World of Warcraft, world bosses and bosses in most raid versions scale with the size of the groups.
No, Diablo 4 is not World of Warcraft
After stating the comparisons, I want to immediately add why they are all not valid. None of the features suddenly make Diablo 4 WoW.
MMO maybe, but not WoW: In the point that Diablo 4 sounds a bit like an MMO, I must agree. Indeed, the open world, world bosses, and “100 villages and places” sound like MMO and no longer like a strict dungeon crawler.
However, these are all features that do not define World of Warcraft. Public events that suddenly appear, I know more as an MMORPG player from Guild Wars 2 or even from Destiny 2.
World quests with bosses do exist in WoW as well, however, they are limited to one kill per character weekly – all further kills yield no loot. They are not a unique selling point of the game and do not primarily serve to farm the best gear effectively like apparently in Diablo 4.
But the boss fights are similar? I cannot understand the argument that the scaling fights look similar either. At least not from these first images that we have seen.
The iconic world bosses from the past of World of Warcraft, like Lord Kazzak or the famous dragons, did not scale back then. The new, scaling world bosses, on the other hand, are rarely as deadly as Ashava.
Moreover, Ashava apparently adheres to a “Stagger” mechanic. After enough attacks with control effects, a bar fills up, and she becomes stunned – similar to Monster Hunter. In WoW, bosses are generally immune to control effects (except through their own mechanics).
By the way, the scaling system was already present in Diablo much earlier. Enemies in Diablo 3, for example, became stronger depending on the size of the group, and that was released in 2012.
In the same year, Mists of Pandaria was released for World of Warcraft and later introduced the “Flex” raids for flexible sizes. However, that was later and only became the standard much later, especially in the open world.
But the dungeons are copied! Here too, the similarly sounding mechanics are the only thing that connects the two systems:
- The affixes in Mythic + change weekly for all dungeons; in Diablo 4, they change per stone.
- Mythic + is content becoming increasingly difficult for groups; key dungeons are also meant for solo players.
- In WoW, part of the challenge is to find the ideal route – in Diablo 4, dungeons are randomly generated.
The whole mechanic in Diablo 4 focuses on syncing up to a dungeon anew each time, preparing for it, and building the ideal build for it. In WoW, planning and teamwork are encouraged.
And the “payment system”? This is an argument that I do not understand at all. Diablo 4 will have microtransactions and will be monetized through that.
World of Warcraft has a subscription model with an additional shop for cosmetic items. The developers of Diablo 4 at no point stated that there would be a subscription – and if, contrary to expectations, it does come, Blizzard would surely face the next shitstorm.
Where does this confusion come from?
WoW “borrows” from Diablo: What has certainly contributed to the impression of many fans is the evolution of World of Warcraft. It has shifted in recent years in a certain way towards action-RPG:
- Mythic + was long seen as a copy of Nephalem Rifts in Diablo 3.
- The legendary items from Legion had a similar impact on builds as those in Diablo 3.
- A good portion of WoW’s dungeon gameplay now consists of gathering large groups of enemies and “bombing” them, much like in a dungeon crawler.
Also, the RPG elements of WoW have been toned down over the years for a more enjoyable gameplay experience (no more ammo, companions don’t need food, weapons don’t need to be leveled, etc.). And yes, they use the same color coding, but that’s nothing special.
Comparing all these elements from WoW Classic with Diablo 3, however, shows that there are still significant differences between the genres.
Are players simply disappointed? My impression from many of the comments is that players do not yet see the blockbuster in Diablo 4 that they desire. They have been waiting for years for the successor to Diablo 3 and were temporarily placated with Diablo Immortal.
That Diablo 4 now does some things differently than one might have wished certainly causes frustration for some. However, this is not due to features that Diablo 4 would have “borrowed” from WoW.
Diablo 4 will be different from its predecessors and I personally welcome many of the changes. I cannot understand how one sees WoW in Diablo 4 – but I can understand if the changes in Diablo 4 disturb you:
