Diablo Immortal is no longer whaling as hard as we thought, but it’s still pretty bad

June 9, 2022 11:30 AM

Earlier this week, the internet was abuzz over a Reddit thread and subsequent viral videos that pointed out it could cost players over $100,000 to full equip their Diablo Immortal toon with the top gear. It’s an absurdly high number, and apparently, it was true before launch… but it’s not quite as high now.

The original calculator of this napkin-math on Reddit has since updated his post to incorporate some of the changes to monetization Blizzard apparently made between the beta and the launch, calling his earlier work “somewhat outdated.”

For example, over the last few days, he now says Blizzard reduced the total gems needed to rank up five-star legendary gems – a “decent cut” that reduced his estimate. “[G]iven the reduced costs of all of this, it’s definitely not quite $100K+ any more. It’s still a lot, though. $50K-80K probably to max resonating boards.” Only $50K-$80K! Yikes.

However, this morning he reports that Blizzard also nerfed the stat people were chasing to the point that it’s not worth chasing at any price anyway. So that’s progress? I guess? At least for the people who didn’t already drop thousands. If you’re a whale or an addict, you’re already screwed.

We’ve dipped a toe into Diablo Immortal on mobile and PC ourselves; our PC free-to-play tester found the gameplay itself disappointing enough to wander back to Diablo 3, while our gacha-and-cash-shop-enthusiast thought the mobile version was so absurdly expensive he said we’d all be better off just buying and eating a sammich.