Game is dead - I think a number of people pretty much said what needed to be said on this. Basically that the game is mostly-single player and co-op oriented / not an online service and so really, the game is the game and whether it’s dead or not just depends on whether people have gotten all their enjoyment out of it or not.
I’d do a 3rd expansion if there weren’t so many logistical / technical issues. Based on FG sales, it definitely seems like it would be financially worthwhile. The problem is, the way certain systems work and the way we designed some things, each expansion becomes exponentially more challenging and burdened by the interaction with existing content. Adding more can also inadvertently detract from the existing game - it’s already hard to find the gear you want for your build, due to all the different types of gear, number of damage types and amount of class or skill-specific bonuses. Adding even moar on top of that will only exacerbate the problem. To resolve that problem, we’d need to create a new loot / drop system that could tailor drops to your build to some degree… but that’s easier said then done with our class / item system. The flexibility people have in creating builds would be a hurdle in trying to create any sort of tailored drop system… and then, the amount of work that entails and which would be needed to update other systems, makes me feel like the effort would be better spent on GD2, then trying to overhaul the whole game.
If it were just adding story content, that’s a little more feasible but hard to say whether some sort of DLC that was just story / levels without new classes and such would sell that well. I imagine hardcore fans would buy it but it would still be a lot of work and unless it has some wider appeal, I don’t know if it would be financially viable. I think a big issue too is that it would have to be more side content and not content that increased level cap, which I think would put a lot of people off.
In terms of doing a GD2, it’s a definitely possibility. Right now though, I feel like we could make a better version of GD1, with the experience we’ve gained… but in terms of moving the genre forward, adding exciting new features, I don’t feel like I have a very good idea of where to go. Part of what frustrates me about the ARPG genre now, is that I feel like games have gotten so feature bloated and expectations are so high for what each game has to deliver. It’s like a nuclear arms race for new features, which basically just get added on over all the existing features everyone expects you to still carry forward. It’s gotten pretty muddy and very competitive with so many more ARPGs out / in development now than was the case 10 years ago. I don’t really want to start GD2 and try to include all the currently expected sort of features and then tack on a bunch of new stuff that will just make the game mechanics even more bloated and convoluted. However, I’m not sure what else to do currently. I think we need time to see what’s going to happen in the genre over the next couple years and also think about whether there is some fresh direction we could take, where we could evolve GD by doing some things new and different instead of just added moar and those sort ideas take time to arise.
In the meantime, we have plenty of ideas for other smaller projects and it is refreshing to do something a bit different, after almost 18 years of working on ARPGs. Gotta give the ARPG design battery time to recharge.