State of the Clan, August 2023

With Diablo 4 fully launched and Season 1 fully in effect, it felt like a good time to break down expectations for the clan, and roadmap what all of this is going to look like going forward. This is a bit of a lengthy one, but I wanted to make sure I cover everything in one go. Ready, let’s do this.

The site’s up:

For starters, our new website is officially live. I got the itch to throw something together for the release of Diablo 4, and well, here we are. It has been active for few weeks while I made tweaks here and there, but officially, this is it until I get the itch to change it again (which seems to be the case every few years). I have plans to slowly roll out a few more features in the coming months, like a fully supported mobile version, optimization of these crazy big animations, etc. It’s just a matter of finding the time these days. So stay tuned for that.

• Site feature – Streaming
  Our site has a feature that broadcasts twitch streams when they go live. This was one of the foundational ideas for this iteration of GreySoul. So if you have a stream you want to promote please ping me and I can add you to the list of signals our streaming bot will look for.

 

Diablo 4:

And speaking of time, Diablo 4 has (for better or for worse) “run its course” for the summer – launching, and moving into Season 1. Activity is down, the patches have done what they have done (for better or for worse), and let’s be honest, this is pretty much to be expected. 

A few years ago when I was talking with the other leads about bringing back GreySoul, it was initially met with a fair amount of resistance. But the argument I have always made is that Diablo at its core is a casual franchise. Diablo 2 manages to still be exceptional to this day with a limited amount of features. And Diablo 3, with all of its faults, had a very impressive 10 year run. D4 sits on a very strong foundation to do different things, stronger than all the other Diablo games IMO. The time barrier to have fun is low, much lower than other team based games. And I see myself, and all the other captains of the clan staying interested in this game for quite a while.   

 

The expectation of members going forward:

From the beginning of this version of GreySoul the expectation has always been to keep things casual – the complete and total antithesis of the original version we started back in 1998 that required meeting times and tests of loyalty (imagine having that kind of free time again!). And now much of that has been replaced with families, careers, and all sorts of IRL things that pull us away from our favorite gaming machine. All of this is to say that the expectation is very low. Be cool to each other, invite who you want into the clan, and play when you want. Which leads me to the next point. 

 

The future of GreySoul:

GreySoul isn’t going anywhere. Diablo 4 activity will wax and wane with the seasonal content until the release of a new expansion (and we can all hope for a little bit more social features involving clans) So in the meantime everyone is welcome to use the clan for their own means, drop in to say hi every once in a while, etc. There is also a very impressive list of aRPG’s on the horizon that I am open to having GS explore if any of you are open to it. For example, Path of Exile 2 is looking very promising. I am open to discussing the possibility of supporting any of these games. Feel free to reach out and let’s talk about it. 

 

Our Discord:

I welcome everyone to use the Discord server as much as you want. I have a private investment which is paying for the constant level 1 ranking of the Discord server, which includes better voice quality, video stream, and emoji support. So as a thank you to everyone, feel free to use the server to stream and VC other non-diablo related content. I’ll add more voice rooms to the server as we go.

 

Thank you:

Lastly, I wanted to take a moment to thank all of you for participating these last few months as part of this clan. This clan site serves as a memorial for all the good times we had under this name and I plan to continue this for a while. It has been a great experience to meet all of these new people, and even reconnect with old friendships – many are a result of starting this clan in the first place! It has been awesome to “get the gang back together,” 25 years after starting this clan. And it is going to be fun to see where this goes in this next chapter. 

Until the next post. -Ex