Blizzard announcedDiablo 4at BlizzCon 2019, but people are still loving and playingDiablo 3in 2019, almost eight years since Blizzard released it. But before theReaper of Soulsexpansion,Diablo3wasn’t the lovable, wildly replayable game it is now.
At BlizzCon 2019, we sat down and spoke to executive producer Allen Adham, art director John Mueller, and game director Luis Barriga about avoiding the franchise’s past mistakes.
The real-money auction house
When we asked which mistakes the team worked to avoid, Adham was quick to bring up the real-money auction house. The team agreed that it wasn’t a feature they’d go back to. But Adham said that Blizzard still wanted to enable trading between players inDiablo 4.
“There are a lot of great elements to trade if it’s done in a contained way,” said Adham. “So we’ve got some pretty solid ideas on how to make trade viable without letting it disrupt the game.”
During our interview, Blizzard mentioned players trading with one another in town for a powerful item, or loot distribution from a guild leader in Diablo 4.
When Blizzard launchedDiablo 3, it featured a real-money auction house, a store where players could buy and sell gear for in-game gold or a real-money equivalence. The auction house created a Diablo that was worth farming for gold, rather than gear. Instead of earning loot from monsters, players best avenue for loot was from other players. That seemingly won’t be the case withDiablo 4.
Error 37 – server issues
Players who tried to playDiablo 3on launch day still remember the the server issues. Many players – ourselves included – sat all night trying to play, only to face down a devilish red box by the name of Error 37.
Barriga said that avoiding these kinds of server issues at launch is almost as important as not recreating the auction house. One of the ways Blizzard plans to combat day-one server instability is through longer beta programs.
“We were pretty protective of our not showing too much of our content and we had a limited beta duringDiablo 3, ”said Barriga. I think you will see us take a different approach here. ”
The team mentioned plans for longterm betas forDiablo 4. We don’t have details of when or what they’ll feature, but the process could be similar to the studio’s beta programs forWorld of Warcraft– where the upcoming expansion sits on a test environment for months at a time.
Barriga also mentioned plans to seriously stress testDiablo 4before unleashing it upon millions of hungry fans.
Content drafts
Finally, Adham mentioned a desire to keep the Diablo content flowing post-launch.
“We aspire to generate more content at a higher cadence, and so we’re building out the team from the ground up in service of that, ”said Adham.
Diablo 3had only two notable paid downloadable add-ons over the past eight years: theReaper of Soulsexpansion and the Necromancer character class pack. But in terms of free updates,Diablo 3still sees a balance pass every few months as part of its rotating seasons.
It’s unclear what exactly Blizzard will add over the years ofDiablo 4, but post-launch support is a priority for the team this time around.
Blizzard announcedDiablo 4at its BlizzCon 2019 opening ceremony. The studio has yet to reveal a release window for the title, although it is coming to PlayStation 4, Windows PC, and Xbox One.
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