There was no second expansion for Diablo 3 because Blizzard had to close the auction house

Jason Schreier has released a book titled “Play Nice – The Rise, Fall, and Future Of Blizzard Entertainment.” In an “Ask Me Anything” session, the industry insider now revealed some juicy details about the developer of WoW, Diablo, and StarCraft.

Who is Jason Schreier? The Bloomberg employee is considered one of the most well-known and influential investigative journalists in the gaming industry. His research and reports provide insights into problematic projects such as Anthem, Diablo 4 (via Kotaku), or Destiny 2, uncover scandals (such as at Blizzard), and give a voice to those affected.

After “Press Reset” and “Blood, Sweat, and Pixels,” Schreier has now released his third book titled “Play Nice – The Rise, Fall, and Future Of Blizzard Entertainment” to shed light on the 33-year history of the studio behind popular franchises like Warcraft, StarCraft, and Diablo.

Thanks to WoW: The War Within, Blizzard is currently on the rise again. But for how long?

World of Warcraft: The War Within – Cinematic Trailer

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Juicy Details and Anecdotes about Blizzard

What insights does Jason Schreier provide in his book? Anyone who has read the numerous Blizzard reports by the author for Bloomberg and previously for Kotaku may have a good idea of how detailed Jason Schreier can get on topics such as the sex scandal, the PR disaster surrounding the announcement of Diablo Immortal, or the problems with Warcraft 3 Reforged.

The book reportedly incorporates insights from over 350 interviews with people from the Blizzard or Activision Blizzard environment. In an “Ask Me Anything” session on Reddit, he shared an exciting sample of his insider knowledge. Here are some nuggets from Schreier’s answers:

For a brief time, Blizzard belonged to a company called Cendant, which was investigated by the Securities and Exchange Commission for massive fraud, and whose CEO ultimately had to go to prison.
There was reportedly a Lennon/McCarthy-esque feud between Chris Metzen (Lore guru for the major Blizzard franchises) and Rob Pardo (who was with Blizzard from 1997 to 2014, including as lead developer for WoW). The reason for this was likely Pardo’s leadership style at the time.
Apart from the sex scandal, there were consensual swinger parties among Blizzard employees, which may have affected the professional environment and power structure.
Mike Morhaime primarily stepped down as CEO because he was tired of fighting for control of Blizzard with Bobby Kotick – especially after the cancellation of Project Titan.
Overwatch was a huge success. The team was quickly overwhelmed because it had to deliver new content for the service game, assist with the Overwatch League, and develop Overwatch 2. Kotick’s solution: hiring hundreds of employees to build something like the Call of Duty teams. However, this destroyed the culture and led to many further problems.
The credo “Players First” is lived by many employees at Blizzard. They use BlizzCon to recharge their positive tank, which helps them make it through tough crunch periods or times.
However, Schreier also stumbled upon some incidents where players had a strongly negative impact on Blizzard. He cites the toxic behavior of parts of the community towards Jay Wilson after the launch of Diablo 3 and how negatively it changed the developer’s life.
At Blizzard, there was a team that developed various pitches and prototypes for a new real-time strategy game over the years – including Warcraft 4 and an RTS for Call of Duty. However, there was never a “go” from the decision-makers. Eventually, many developers from the team quit to work on Stormgate at Frost Giant.
The tightening of monetization of Blizzard games did not come from pressure from Activision but because Blizzard had grown incredibly following the enormous success of WoW and was burning a lot of money each month. Bobby Kotick only gradually increased the pressure after the cancellation of Titan, with many teams not noticing anything until 2017/2018.
The reason there was no further expansion for Diablo 3 was the abolition of the auction house, which came about due to the strong criticism from the community. Without the revenues from the auction house, D3 did not generate enough money to justify the developers of another addon.
Meanwhile, Netflix series for Warcraft, Overwatch, and Diablo were in production. However, when the streaming provider began poaching employees from Activision Blizzard, the projects were canceled – leading to a lawsuit (via variety.com).
The fact that Blizzard paid its employees very poorly for a long time directly contributed to the founding of ArenaNet (Guild Wars) and Carbine (WildStar) by former Blizzard employees.