Diablo Leak: Blizzard Raise Necromancer For Blizzcon
Big leaks before big announcements are pretty par for the course in the gaming industry these days. That’s a little sad, in a way, but this leak has me too excited to care – because this is a Diablo leak.
Earlier in the week some concept art leaked from the Blizzard Entertainment merch store of some skeletal, dark magic-lookin’ dudes surrounded by the undead. If you’ve played Diablo, you know what time it is.
Yes, that is indeed a pair of Necromancers, and the art itself certainly looks Diablo-esque, doesn’t it? Something that lends the leak some more credibility is that it came from the same server that leaked the legit Sombra art – a new character from Overwatch. Oh, and that signature is apparently John Mueller’s, art director for Blizzard.
There is essentially no question we’re going to see some kind of Diablo Necromancer announcement at Blizzcon. We’ll find out at some point after Friday, 6PM GMT, when the convention kicks off.
But speculation is fun, so speculate we shall!
The interesting thing is that the consensus was Diablo 3 would not be getting any further expansions. Earlier in the year, pretty significant rumours were going around that the second expansion Blizzard were working on had been broken down into patches. If you’ve played Diablo 3 recently you’ll probably believe that, with a huge amount of patch content being added since Reaper of Souls. Perhaps not enough to fill a whole expansion, but enough to be suspicious.
So, this is peculiar. Is this Diablo 4 or more Diablo 3? The fact that the concept art focuses on one class makes me think expansion, like how Reaper of Souls added the Crusader as a big selling point. That said, we were all convinced Diablo 3 was done a long time ago, the team having shifted around a lot internally. You’d think that concept art leaking for a brand new game in the series would be a bit more generic than just one class design.
Either way, we’ll find out on Friday when Blizzcon kicks off! We’ll be watching.
Oh, and isn’t it funny how Blizzard are just throwing fan service around these days? World of Warcraft players have been praying for playable Demon Hunters for years, and all it took was WoW losing a few million subscribers for Blizz to cave. Who knows… maybe Warcraft 4 is just around the corner?
I won’t hold my breath.