Following the underwhelming Diablo Immortal reveal at BlizzCon 2018, many believed Blizzard announced Diablo 4 early to win players back. It’s clear Diablo 4 was early in development, as there wasn’t much to show when it was revealed at BlizzCon 2019. Since then, Blizzard has been careful not to promise a release date for the dungeon crawler, as its development has been slow and seemingly rocky, especially given the atrocities going on at the studio. Still, Diablo 4 is shaping up to be an excellent game, with lots to look forward to. But what do we know about the upcoming dungeon-crawler RPG?
When is the Diablo 4 release date?
Diablo 4 was announced at BlizzCon 2019 without even a vague release date window. In February 2021, Activision-Blizzard's CFO Dennis Durkin said that Diablo 4 was not part of the company's outlook for the next fiscal year, indicating it wouldn’t be ready by 2021.
Blizzard co-founder Allen Adham told Game Informer back in 2019 that the fourth entry of the series is still in its early stages of development. “While we’ve been working on Diablo 4 for several years, we still have a ways to go,” he said.
“So we do want to set proper expectations. It’s a big, beautiful, contiguous open world. It’s packed full of creatures. It’s really grounded in the quests and the content that are an order of magnitude beyond anything we’ve done before.” Adham refused to give a rough timeline of when Diablo fans could expect another update.
Diablo 2 was released in 2001, and Blizzard made fans wait until 2012 for Diablo 3, so it’s clear that the company is in no rush to push out Diablo 4. Plus, there’s good reason to believe that Blizzard wants to make sure Diablo 4 is as close to flawless as possible after the disastrous announcement of the mobile game Diablo Immortal at BlizzCon 2018, which upset many of the game’s long-time fans.
In November 2021, Blizzard announced on an earnings call that more time would be needed for the team to realize its vision for Diablo 4, pushing it to 2023 at the earliest. The recent acquisition of Blizzard by Microsoft also may impact the game's release date.
Is there a Diablo 4 trailer?
Yes. There are multiple, actually. Blizzard has released a cinematic trailer and a sneak peek at a portion of Diablo 4’s gameplay.
The cinematic announcement not only revealed the main antagonist, but it showed the type of dark and blood-soaked inferno gamers will be battling through.
The gameplay trailer showed off a surprising amount of detail for a game that’s most likely still years away. Blizzard highlighted three types of character classes gamers will be able to play with and some early portions of the game’s campaign.
We also got a look at the Rogue class that will be implemented into the final version of the game. You can check that out in the trailer above.
What are the Diablo 4 platforms?
Blizzard confirmed that Diablo 4 would be playable on PC, as well as both PlayStation 4 and Xbox One consoles, during its BlizzCon 2019 announcement. With how far off the game seems, it’s also most likely coming to PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X, though neither console has been confirmed.
When Microsoft acquired Blizzard, there were some initial concerns that Diablo 4 wouldn’t be available on Sony consoles. But Phil Spencer said in an interview on Bloomberg, “I’ll just say to players out there who are playing Activision Blizzard games on Sony’s platform: It’s not our intent to pull communities away from that platform and we remained committed to that.”
What are the Diablo 4 classes?
The Diablo 4 gameplay trailer revealed three classes that will be playable when the game eventually launches: Barbarians, Sorceresses, and Druids.
- Barbarian: The Barbarian will be a melee-combat specialist emphasizing survivability and explosive, close-quarters damage. These warriors can dual-wield devastating weapons and use “warcries” to temporarily send them into a frenzy.
- Sorceress: The Sorceress will be a ranged spellcaster who harnesses the elements to freeze opponents in place and then blast them with fireballs. She’ll be most deadly at long-range where she can safely cast her destructive spells.
- Druid: The Druid is a hybrid melee brawler with shape-shifting and summoning abilities. He calls upon nature to imbue him with feral strength and can deal massive elemental damage.
What other classes could be added to Diablo 4?
If we take the aforementioned classes as a hint to what other character types will be included in Diablo 4, it appears that Blizzard wants to refine all of the classes from Diablo 2.
After the Diablo 2: Lords of Destruction expansion, the game had a total of seven playable classes: Amazon, Necromancer, Barbarian, Sorceress, Paladin, Druid, and Assassin.
Blizzard seems to be heavily inspired by Diablo 2’s class list, but the company could end up creating an all-new class or reusing a few from Diablo 3, like the Monk or Demon Hunter.
What bosses will you fight in Diablo 4?
Lilith will be your main adversary as you trudge through the corpse-riddled world of Diablo 4. She’s a reimagined Succubus queen from Diablo 2 that was summoned using blood magic in the Diablo 4 story trailer.
We don’t know much about what kind of unholy powers she’ll wield, but she'll be in control of the demonic forces you'll fight in the majority of the upcoming dungeon crawler.
Will there be microtransactions in Diablo 4?
Diablo 4 will have microtransactions, but it’s unclear what players will be able to pay for exactly.
Lead game designer Joe Shely told Twitch streamer Quin69 that the game will have cosmetic microtransactions, but he was vague enough to make it seem like Blizzard might take them a step further.
“Diablo 4 will be available as a base game, and … we’re going to have expansions,” Shely said. “You also will be able to acquire cosmetics in the game.”
Will there be Diablo 4 PVP be added?
Diablo has traditionally been a co-op game for most of the franchise’s history. Still, Blizzard said it was looking into player-versus-player areas that gamers could travel to in-game. They went into detail about the PvP elements during BlizzCon2021.
In Diablo 4, PvP is entirely optional and can be accessed in the Fields of Hatred, areas integrated seamlessly into the main game’s open world. When players enter these areas, they’ll find a mix of PvE and PvP gameplay. As well as being able to kill one another, players will have monsters to contend with, and it’s possible to team up and take down a monster before turning on one another.
The aim of the Fields of Hatred is to gather shards of hatred. These can be earned by doing a number of things, from killing other players and monsters to less violent acts. At first, the shards are completely possible to lose if you die. So if you want to lock them in, you’ll have to take them to an altar to purify them. This in itself is a dangerous act and puts a target on your back. But once purified, the shards can be spent at special vendors, so there is a real incentive to collect them.
It seems that engaging in PvP combat isn’t always necessary in the Fields of Hatred, though. In an interview with Eurogamer, John Mueller said that he’ll go into the area and “do some of the events or try to kill one of the bosses, which adds this element of tension because you never know if somebody might come in and try to go hostile on you while you’re doing stuff like that.”
Players who are out for blood can use a new mechanic called the Vessel of Hatred. The more people a player kills and the longer they’re hostile, they become marked on the map of other players. This means players can either stay away from you or form an alliance to bring you down. Vessels of Hatred are likely to be attractive targets as they will have plenty of shards of hatred.
When will we learn more about Diablo 4?
Blizzard Entertainment has consistently kept fans updated with quarterly blog post updates for Diablo 4 since its reveal, but fans are still eager to get a new trailer and in-depth at the whole game.
Given the current situation at Activision Blizzard, the company has more pressing matters to attend to than doubling down on game development, so it decided to pause planning for BlizzCon 2022, which is where it usually holds its reveals.
Assuming the event does come back, you can probably expect to find out more information about Diablo 4.
Diablo 4 is currently in development.
