![]() If you have a cool outfit on the cash shop, or a quality of life item… like the boss summon stone thing from GW2… I am going to snap that puppy up and swipe my credit card. That said normally speaking I am a player that does not think twice about microtransactions. The monetization scheme with this game is truly egregious as you will see as I dive into this discussion. I feel like it is important to understand that I have not spent a single dime on Diablo Immortal and I do not plan on doing so. ![]() ![]() These numbers will come into focus later on in this discussion, but for now, let me talk to you about the three castes of players in Diablo Immortal. There are two currencies that matter for cash transactions, Eternal Orbs and Platnium and each of these has a real-world conversion cost. Since Diablo Immortal does the thing that every mobile game does… and tries to divorce your understanding from the actual dollar amount I am going to bring that back in focus. As such I am going to set this pack as our baseline and then calculate the costs of everything else in the game from that point. Everything in Diablo Immortal drives you towards the $24.99 pack of Orbs, because that allows you to purchase a 10 pack of Eternal Legendary Crests and that also allows you to run a maxed-out Elder Rift. Before I dive into this I think it is important that we set some guidelines for costs. The one thing that I have noticed however in my time playing is that there are three distinct tiers of players in this game, which provide a sort of financial-based caste system. If it is not yellow or higher it is not worth even a moment of your time. If you watch any farming videos you will notice folks not even bothering to pick up half of the loot because it has no value at all even from a materials standpoint. What you do get a lot of even at 56 is white and blue trash drops, which are effectively useless. The truth is nothing I have been able to complete so far has given me the almost seizure-inducing cavalcade of loot that I am expecting from a Diablo game. Paul Tassi released a video that shows the difference in feel between a “Free” run and a “Paid” run and it is significant. A maxed-out Elder Rift requires you to spend 10 Legendary Crests, which costs roughly $25 in real-world currency. You can however pay your way to the dopamine hits that we are used to from running literally any content in Diablo 3. I am functional but a good chunk of this game is going to be grinding repetitive content in search of the right piece of gear for the right slot/ Given the anemic drops that occur from general content runs as seen above, it takes a lot of time before you see anything that is not immediately scrapped. I am using a specific set of gear that gives me traits associated with the abilities that I use, which in turn is reinforced by the legendary gems that I have managed to acquire on the “free” track. This changes as you introduce Legendary Gear and Legendary Gems, which combined give you the specialization structure that Runes provided in Diablo 3. One of my key complaints was that the class structure did not really feel very much like Diablo, in that there was the little interplay between abilities. I will say that the game does get considerably more enjoyable as more systems open up. I cannot comment about the true end game, but I do feel like I have a wealth of knowledge now about how the day-to-day functionality of this game works, since the key criticism from the monetization apologists has been that those folks reviewing the game have not really played all of the game. As of last night before I went to bed I had just dinged 56 which puts me a stone’s throw away from the level cap of 60 and the beginning of the paragon system. I figured the only way I would find out for certain was to push through and as a result, I have been spending a few hours a day over the last several days working through the game’s systems. There is quite a bit of sensationalism flying around about this game… some of which were mischaracterized or misquoted. In part, the game actually has its fun moments, and in part, I wanted to see just how deep and twisted this rabbit hole gets. Confession time… I have continued to play Diablo Immortal in spite of how I currently feel about Blizzard and this game’s monetization scheme.
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