Blizzard Is Almost Certainly Remastering 'Diablo 2' And 'Warcraft 3'Blizzard has their hands full managing their full roster of present day games, but even they may not be immune to the siren’s call of remasters. We already know about a full remaster of StarCraft, coming this summer, and now two other classic Blizzard games may be on deck for a similar treatment, Diablo 2 and Warcraft 3.
This info comes from a job listing
located by PCGamesN which spells this out pretty clearly:
"Compelling stories. Intense multiplayer. Endless replayability. Qualities that made StarCraft, Warcraft III, and Diablo II the titans of their day. Evolving operating systems, hardware, and online services have made them more difficult to be experienced by their loyal followers or reaching a new generation. We’re restoring them to glory, and we need your engineering talents, your passion, and your ability to get tough jobs done."
If this does happen, it’s unclear whether or not the original Diablo 2 and Warcraft 3 would be released for free like StarCraft has been ahead of its remaster, but I can see Blizzard possibly doing that as some sort of loyalty-building exercise. The StarCraft remaster will cost money (though no price has been set yet), and so will these other two, if they exist, though I imagine that Blizzard may end up selling them as a bundle at some point.
While I’m not usually someone who dives back into super old games, even if they’re being remastered, I would absolutely make an exception for Diablo 2, which remains one of my most-played games of all time, and a title that vacuumed up a significant amount of my life in high school and college. Given that there’s relatively little to do in Diablo 3 these days until the Necromancer is released, I would happily dive back into a remastered version of D2, and I’m sure I’m not alone.
Warcraft 3 is also alluring, and there are currently rumors swirling that Blizzard is secretly working on Warcraft 4 in addition to its other projects. I’m a bit skeptical about that, given how out of favor RTS games have fallen in recent years, and how Blizzard struggled a bit with even a potential monster like StarCraft 2. But there’s certainly a crowd who would love to play WC3 remastered and line up to buy WC4 on day one, should that actually be happening.
Judging by the early previews of StarCraft remaster, I don’t think we should be expecting anything too crazy from these potential remasters, like you’re not going to have Diablo 2 suddenly remade in the Diablo 3 engine or something. But they’re cleaned up, looking (relatively) good, and the remaster may make playing with others online easier as well, which is something these old games suffer from. I’m excited to see this hopefully pan out, though we don’t have confirmation or a timetable yet.
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