Darkhaven Authors Understand the Need to Compete with Diablo for Players' Attention
Phil Schenk, the original character artist of Diablo 2, now working on the action RPG Darkhaven, spoke about the ongoing development of the second part.
Diablo II: Resurrected recently received a new class and launched on Steam — Schenk was happy about all this despite the struggle for audience attention and the feeling of "pressure." Meanwhile, Peter Hu, a programmer for Diablo 2, Moonbeast Productions is an independent studio that has to raise funds for the ongoing development of Darkhaven through Kickstarter. Competing for gamers' interest against a giant like Blizzard Entertainment is a "challenging path."
At the same time, Phil Schenk noted that Darkhaven will not be a simple copy of Diablo or Path of Exile (players of the demo praised elements reminiscent of Minecraft here). Currently, the developers do not know exactly which audience they will have to compete for — they want to bring ARPG elements from Valheim and other "survival" games with procedurally generated worlds into the genre.
Returning to Diablo 2, Blizzard does not rule out further game updates. And the original character artist believes that adding the warlock class as the first new content in a long time is a logical step. After all, introducing new story acts requires a lot of work, and given that the game is from 2000, the existing story and "lore" must be taken into account.
In the meantime, Darkhaven has managed to raise over $200,000 on Kickstarter out of the required $500,000. The campaign will last for another 24 days, so there is a good chance Moonbeast Productions will reach their goal.