Diablo III or Bust *UPDATED*

I just thought I’d put up my 2 cents that if Blizzard’s newest teaser is for the WoW expansion Wrath of the Lich King, something we already know about and have plenty of information available on already, and which is only aimed at people who have level 70 characters (or close), then that would be a massive disappointment.

For all the Diablo clones out there, for some reason, nothing has been able to match up to the original (and especially its sequel).  Perhaps nothing ever will, but that doesn’t mean that a sequel to the 2000-released Diablo II (and 2001 expansion) isn’t extremely anticipated.  A WoW expansion means nothing to me and only something to a (smallish?) subset of the 10 million WoW subscribers who have or are close to level 70.  But a Diablo sequel… that’s something that I, and probably a hell of a lot more people than the mentioned WoW subset, can firmly get behind.

*UPDATE*

Well, more teasers today from Blizzard but Diabloii.net supposedly has confirmation from “inside sources” that Diablo III WILL be announced this weekend at the Blizzard Worldwide Invitational (WWI for short).  Here’s hoping their sources are right (and that the game doesn’t take another several years to make it out).

Sci-Fi Shooter’s R’ Us

A new rumor popped up regarding Call of Duty 6 (yes, the one after the next one that’s going to take place in both the Pacific and Europe) that states that rather than returning to the “modern combat” of Call of Duty 4, it will instead be transplanted to a futuristic sci-fi setting.

Now, I like sci-fi as much as the next guy, but if there’s one setting we’ve seen more of than World War II, it’s sci-fi.  Not that I think Infinity Ward couldn’t make a great game with a sci-fi setting, but do we really need even more of these? And I’m not even including 3rd-person games or sci-fi set games that don’t use some version of a space marine on my list (yet).

It’s possible that, if the rumor is true, they could go in a more GRAW-like direction and simply use a slightly post-present setting.  This could work fairly well within the “Call of Duty” formula without substantially changing the setting that most gamers found so engrossing in CoD4.  Perhaps a more futuristic setting would also still work, but as a lot of gamers just got their first taste of “Modern Combat”, I wonder whether shifting to something else so quickly will upset them (particularly when they’ve already gotten such a generous filling of WWII shooters).