🔒 Diablo vs. World of Warcraft in design

I have gotten fully sucked back into Diablo 3 with Season 11, despite not playing a Necromancer at all, because the gameplay is pretty addictive. The bounties, the rifts, the greater rifts, it’s all set up to hit that treadmill and the occasional sound and sight of an orange or set item hitting the ground and glowing in a column of light just works. It hits some basal part of my brain and even when I know I’m not going to get an upgrade (because I have an Ancient Legendary Might Weapon 2h and there just isn’t much better at this point) I can’t fight off that atavistic ‘loot‘ sensation.

But as much as I love Diablo 3, playing it recently has me a little worried about World of Warcraft. Specifically, a lot of the systems in Legion that were very clearly borrowed from Diablo 3.

Rifts vs. Mythic Dungeons

Mythic dungeons borrow a lot from Greater Rifts — keystones, increased difficulty tied to affixes that cause mobs to explode or otherwise change the rules. Greater Rifts do this on a case by case basis — you can run into an Arcane Enchanted Waller pack, or a Molten Chains pack, or what have you. Mythics do this to everything via the Mythic + Keystones. But in a lot of ways the Mythic/Mythic+ system is pretty inferior to Nephalem Rifts and Greater Rifts. Mythic+ dungeons have no lockout, but Mythic dungeons do, whereas Nephalem and Greater Rifts can be done as many times as you want. A Mythic dungeon is essentially just a harder version of a heroic dungeons, not its own entity the way a Nephalem Rift is, while a Mythic+ dungeon is a five person mini-raid in many ways as much as it’s similar to a Greater Rift.

The affixes in Mythic+ (including the ones that only apply at +10 or higher) very much reflect the kinds of trash packs one sees in Diablo 3, but those aren’t limited to Greater or Nephalem rifts — you can run into a Molten Waller Arcane pack anywhere at any time in Diablo, and conversely, you’re never going to run into a situation where every single mob you meet has those affixes, the way entire dungeons can be modified by the affixes in Mythic + dungeons.

I definitely think Mythic and Mythic + are a step above challenge modes from Mists and Warlords. But that doesn’t mean the system being a fairly blatant imitation of Diablo 3 doesn’t have room to improve. I definitely believe some more variety in how the affixes apply and perhaps even simply having them apply to some trash pulls and not others or even having it so that certain pulls would have three affixes while others would have three different ones could be beneficial.

World Quests vs. Bounties

The World Quest system is very, very similar to Diablo 3‘s bounties. I don’t think anyone is surprised by this. And for the most part I think World Quests are a welcome addition to WoW, complete with emissary chests and everything. I have no complaints with the way this system has been imported. If I were to complain, I’d mention that Diablo allows you to do as many or as few bounties as you would like while WoW tends to limit them, but really, that’s just in terms of how many emissaries there are in a given period of time. If you wanted to, you could clear the entire world of World Quests and more would spawn in a few hours.

If anything, I think WoW does this slightly better than Diablo. In WoW, World Quests’ feel worthwhile even now for my significantly over-geared Warrior who isn’t likely to get gear or relic rewards from them. I tend to do the Broken Shore and whatever Emissaries I can when I do them. But in Diablo I’m only doing one or two Bounties for crafting resources like Death’s Breath and then flinging myself into Rifts almost non-stop because that’s where the rewards are.

Diablo’s gearing system doesn’t export well

A lot of the reason why Diablo systems might not export well is simply that same lizard-brain-bizzing loot system. Diablo is a game where a lot of the content is procedurally generated, somewhat random (Rifts a prime example of this system) and you end up doing them again and again, getting stitched together maps that only exist to give you a place to slaughter monsters. It all aims at a system where you’re looking for gear rewards, incrementally better adjustments that allow you to run harder and harder content to get more incremental upgrades for that same aim. In Diablo 3, you run Bounties for money and resources, then run Rifts for gear in the hopes of being able to turn up the difficulty another notch and run the exact same content at a higher difficulty setting for the exact same gear, but potentially better.

And frankly, if you look at World of Warcraft raiding you are starting to feel a trifle familiar with that model. Because LFR – Normal – Heroic – Mythic raiding essentially creates this exact same paradigm. The difference is that in Diablo you can play solo and access any part of the game. I’m not saying it’s easy, but I can run a Greater Rift, do bounties, run a set dungeon (if for some reason I wanted to) — there’s literally nothing in Diablo that’s kept out of reach of the solo player. But WoW is designed to be a group experience — content like Dungeons and Raids are group only, they can only be solo’d after you vastly outlevel them. As a result, there simply is no way to fairly and evenly import gameplay elements like the Diablo gear system nor would it be a good idea to even try.

Solo vs. Group

In fact, it’s this difference — the way Diablo scales up difficulty for groups and scales it down for solo play vs. how WoW handles these separate elements — that prevents true exchange between the two games. Diablo is in WoW’s DNA — the original talent system for World of Warcraft back in 2004 was clearly and obviously influenced by Diablo 2 — but the two are at a remove from one another due to their different focuses. Any time a system like Rifts or Bounties inspires a system in WoW it has to be translated for the MMO ecosystem it’s going to be inhabiting. So far that work has been done. Mythic + takes elements from Diablo Greater Rifts, but it’s not a note for note import, there are clear elements that are changed to fit the group focus of WoW dungeons.

WoW has seen some moves in the direction of making content less difficult to complete with smaller groups — both Normal and Heroic raiding has flexible sizing from 10 up to around 30, with the difficulty adjusting for these groups. It’s similar to how Diablo upscales difficulty when someone else joins your group, but clearly it’s never going to be aimed at allowing players to solo current group content the way Diablo simply makes no distinction between content for any group size. Frankly, I don’t expect WoW to move in that direction.

Clearly Diablo has and likely will continue to influence World of Warcraft, but just as clearly, there will always be barriers between the two games, and likely, should always be.