Diablo 4
BlizzCon was an interesting, odd time, given that Blizzard was under so much fire regarding its decision about banning a Hearthstone player for voicing support for Hong Kong on stream. It was also meant to be an answer to last year’s BlizzCon where the biggest thing shown off was a quickly-mocked Diablo mobile game. This year? We had Overwatch 2 and Diablo 4 debut, though with no information on when either might be released, with Diablo 4 in particular seeming to still be many years away.
Now, Blizzard is not talking release dates, but they are talking about the next time we’ll hear about Diablo 4, and what communication will be like about the game going forward. In a blog post, game director Luis Barriga expresses gratitude for all the excitement at BlizzCon, and details these plans:
“We’ve been taking this week to assess and discuss our takeaways from BlizzCon, and we love all the deep discussions happening around the art, features, systems, and world of Diablo IV. We’re also excited about a cool update we’re planning for you in February of next year. It will be the first in a series of quarterly updates where we’ll share behind-the-scenes looks at our progress going forward.”
So, the plan is to have our first new info in February, and then going forward, we will be getting “quarterly” updates on development progress going forward. That’s more transparency than many studios offer, though there is kind of a reason that many places don’t, as if you show something early and it ends up changing, you have mad fans when you get to final release. It’s also not quite clear just how many quarters of updates we’ll get, and we’re still no closer to an actual release date being announced. Barriga previously said that the BlizzCon build was a “first step” and that the game was not even coming “Blizzard soon.”
Diablo 4
Strangely, Diablo 4 has been confirmed for current gen consoles, PS4 and Xbox One, which will no longer be current gen consoles this time next year when PS5 and Xbox Scarlett arrive. But I have a feeling that this is less about the game coming out soon (it’s literally impossible for it to be out in the next year) and more about the fact that it will support both current and next gen releases.
If I had to guess about when Diablo 4 will actually arrive, I would not say earlier than late 2021 or early 2022, given the state of where we are right now. That would be 2-2.5 years away, which seems about right to me. That’s…8-10 quarterly news updates!
I am mixed about what was shown at BlizzCon, partially because I’m unsure of some of the changes being made to make everything extremely Diablo 2-ish, partially because I wonder how truly representative this is of the final product, as we have seen demos crafted purely for show before. But we’ll see. I will play 1000 hours of this game no matter what. I just don’t know when that will start, and neither does Blizzard, right now.
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