Bizzard Announces Diablo Immortal, An MMO-Dungeon Crawler For Mobile

TheDiablo series, a dungeon crawler that’s come to define the genre, is going mobile. Blizzard announced Diablo Immortal for iOS and Android at its annual Blizzcon event. The game has no release date, but pre-registration is available by hitting the link above.

Diablo Immortal adapts the familiar top-down gameplay for phones and tablets, using tap-to-move for progression and thumb-based buttons for character abilities. Classic Diablo classes like the Barbarian, Wizard, Monk, and Demon Hunter are available, and the story takes place between Diablo II and III.

Blizzard is calling the game’s setup an “MMOARPG,” as in “Massively Multiplayer Online Action Role-Playing Game.” (Say that three times fast.) While previous Diablo multiplayer has been limited to a maximum of four, the gameplay video for Immortal shows a dozen or more players in a single co-op dungeon at once. That could open up the door for more MMO-style raid bosses and, naturally, some humongous loot drops.

Diablo Immortal is technically Blizzard’s second mobile game, after the Warcraft-themed Hearthstone card game launched on multiple platforms. But Immortal is made from the ground up for mobile, in cooperation with Chinese developer NetEase. Details on the revenue model are scarce, but a free-to-play title with in-app purchases seems like a safe bet.