Rod Fergusson explained in an interview why Diablo 4 is approached very differently than its predecessor, Diablo 3, and that a lot of content is already in the pipeline.
When Diablo 3 was released in 2012, service games were still in their infancy. At that time, many games relied on expansions, not on live seasons and certainly not on free additional content.
Still, Diablo 3 was something of a trailblazer when it came to Seasons. New mechanics were added every few months to keep the gaming experience fresh and give players a reason to play a new character in the new season. You made it to Season 28, but now it’s over.
However, Rod Fergusson, general manager of the Diablo franchise, says in an interview with the YouTube channel “Kinda Funny Games” that more should have been done to deliver decent content and innovations over Diablo 3’s 11 years – the biggest problem of the game predecessor, who had to make do with just one expansion over the years.
However, one has adjusted to it and drives with Diablo 4 a completely different course.
Diablo 4 had some disciples in Berlin pray to Lilith for the release. We were there, check it out in the short video:
Diablo 4: The live event for the release in Berlin – disciples worship Lilith
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What’s different about Diablo 4? They wanted to create something that would run for a very long time and would always benefit from new content. For this, the development team has been set up completely differently and also have different expectations of themselves: “The release of Diablo 4 is not the end, it is the beginning,” says Fergusson.
You want to offer many years of seasons, each of which offers more than in the days of Diablo 3. In addition, expansions are also part of the fixed program of Diablo 4. Therefore, the team and the structures had to be created accordingly:
If you like a game [Diablo 4] you have to do it sustainably. You can’t push the team and say when the release is through it’s like a finish line and everyone falls down exhausted.
Because you know what: we have a season coming soon, we have the week 2 patch in the works, we need balance changes – you need to build your team and structure in a way that is sustainable because we need to deliver all the time.
We work on things in parallel. As I sit here, we’re launching the base game, we’re finishing Season 1, we’re working on Season 2, we’re working on Expansion 1, we’re starting Expansion 2. All of this is happening right now.
The interview does not provide any information about future content – only a short statement about the legendary cow level. However, it is already clear that two expansions are apparently already in the works, which would have directly overtaken Diablo 3.
You can watch the full English interview on the Kinda Funny Games YouTube channel (via youtube.com).
Despite the 11 years since the release of Diablo 3, the game still had a lot of fans who can’t expect any more innovations after the end of Season 28. It remains to be seen whether Diablo 4 can close this gap. What do you think?
You can find more information about the endgame of the new Diablo here: Diablo 4: Endgame Content Overview – These activities are available after the campaign