Diablo IV Launch Date Announced

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was recently updating my Battle.Net game launcher and happened to notice that Blizzard was offering pre-release purchase options for Diablo IV and sweetening the deal by giving players early access to the game’s Open Beta. I’m looking forward to the next release in the Diablo series, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have some reservations about the game design. For that reason, I may buy the game early so I can have at least one “Day 0” article to release. Of course that largely depends on whatever NDA agreement Blizzard has players agree to for playing the game in Beta. For those who want to wait for the release date, it’s currently scheduled for June 6, 2023.

Before the Open Beta, they’ll be testing the End Game in an invitation only beta. The requirements for that invite is, per Blizzard,

Specifically, we’ll be using gameplay data to invite a limited number of Diablo players who have recently spent significant amounts of time playing the end-game experiences of Diablo II: Resurrected, Diablo III, and Diablo Immortal.

– DEVELOPER UPDATE: CLOSED END GAME BETA DRAWS NEAR, Blizzard

So if you got burnt out on playing Diablo 2 and 3 and found Diablo Immortal to be “meh” at best, then good luck getting invited. More on this below in our expectations.

Diablo IV Game Design Expectations

My expectations for Diablo IV are mixed. To be more specific, I’m excited about the idea of having an open world, but I’m also displeased with the idea of forced multiplayer in the ways of World Events and, if they are taking design cues from Diablo: Immortal, higher tier dungeons. When I was playing Diablo: Immortal I had this slight suspicion/concern that it was being used as a playtesting platform for features that will ultimately end up in Diablo IV. If that ends up being even remotely close to true, I’m not looking forward to the release.

Some Concerns

I’m slightly bothered by how players who’ve invested a large amount of time in the infamously Pay-to-Win Diablo: Immortal will have an impact on how the end game is designed. Diablo 3’s end game wasn’t really all that hard either, but the issue always came down to itemization. I never got any good drops so I couldn’t push max Infernal/Hell levels without just wasting a lot of time (and dying a lot). Aside from it’s old design, Diablo 2 veterans would probably be the best pool of players to use for end game design feedback since the game had a balance between the character and the gear. In D3, the character was nothing without the gear.

One of the things I hated about Diablo: Immortal was that players were everywhere and you were competing against them for mobs. The other thing I hated was that to run dungeons, which were changed to an instanced experience like in World of WarCraft, at any difficultly above Normal required you to be in a party. It would have made more sense to lock the dungeon difficulties behind a gear score level which was in the game already. Especially if they were going to copy the WoW Raid formula.

Some Hope

I am looking forward to the concept of having a continuous open world that you can traverse. Hopefully, it’s actually an open world and not just a series of interconnected maps like the previous Diablo titles. Itemization seems to be taking cues from Diablo 2, for better or worse, in that items can grant you skill/perk levels bonuses. If they are borrowing elements from Diablo 2, then I hope they also bring back the skill tree system. That to me always made a RPG fun to play because it felt like you had more control over your character’s development.