So what went wrong with this reveal? How did Blizzard mess up what should have been a fairly standard game announcement? Why is Diablo: Immortal such a bizarre shift for Blizzard, and why is it triggering such rage and anxiety in the audience? I disagree with this assessment, and it ignores the expectations that Blizzard itself has spent decades creating in its fans.

It’s pretty clear to us that there is a huge audience around the world that is gonna love this title. “So I actually think that those two items are being conflated.

“The way I’ve been kind of looking at the mixed comments is what those folks are really saying is they desperately, passionately want the next big thing,” Allen Adham, executive producer and Blizzard co-founder told Polygon in a previous interview.

And interviews after the controversial press conference indicate that the company may be confused about why fans are so angry. Blizzard wasn’t ready for the immediate, and overwhelmingly negative, fan reaction to the announcement of Diablo: Immortal.

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