If a YouTube video is anything to go by, the big spenders will be the ones to truly thrive in Diablo Immortal.
Diablo Immortal launched ahead of schedule last week, and has been in the news for a myriad of things including its pay-to-win model. We saw a couple of weeks ago that the game wouldn’t be releasing in Belgium due to their ban on video game loot boxes in 2018, as well as in the Netherlands due to the inability to trade loot box items for real money.
It’s pretty easy to see why Activision Blizzard made this decision now, as the game’s monetisation system is choc-a-bloc. Considering it’s a free-to-play game on mobile and PC, the microtransaction model that Diablo Immortal has taken on makes sense for the continuation of its development and still earn the publisher a buck in the process.
However, a new video from YouTube channel Bellular News shows calculations that prove character min-maxing in Diablo Immortal to be quite the pricey journey.
As reported by Game Rant, there are ‘three progression pillars’ for characters in Diablo Immortal that dictate a player’s ‘endgame-tier progression beyond what is possible by simply reaching Diablo Immortal‘s level cap’. Legendary Gems are used in one of these three pillars, and are currently unavailable to free-to-play players.
According to the video, the Legendary Gems are only available through the purchasing of Legendary Crests (which are loot boxes), and they aren’t even guaranteed to be included in them. Matt and Michael of Bellular News explain that it would roughly take 10 years for a free-to-play player to fully kit out their character in Diablo Immortal.
But what if you simply don’t want to grind for 10 years? What if you’ve got bucketloads of money to waste? Well, never fear! Bellular News’ video states that if you’d like to fully max-out your character in Diablo Immortal, you’d simply have to pay roughly $110,000 USD ($152,760 AUD) through microtransactions! It’s just that easy!
Now, of course, you don’t need to spend this much money in the game. Heck, you don’t need to spend any money if you don’t want to. If the reviews on the game itself outside of the monetisation are anything to go by, it’s a great addition to the Diablo franchise. Diablo Immortal has quite the high rating on Metacritic according to critic reviews, but its user score is clearly tarnished by the nature of its monetisation model.
So if you’re a Diablo fan, feel free to give it a go. From current reports, it seems to be a great Diablo game. However, those not wanting to fork out a pretty penny will probably need a whole lot of self-restraint.
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