Diablo 4's 2025 Plan Disappoints Hardcore Fans, Puzzles Former Blizzard President

Diablo 4 enthusiasts received a detailed roadmap this week, outlining the game's content schedule for 2025 and teasing what's in store for 2026. In an insightful interview with IGN, game director Brent Gibson delved into the roadmap, discussing upcoming expansions and potential collaborations with other IPs. However, the release of the roadmap has sparked a mix of anticipation and concern among the Diablo 4 community, particularly regarding the depth and variety of content slated for 2025.

Community reactions on platforms like Reddit have been vocal, with players like Inangelion humorously commenting on the new Helltide color and temporary powers, reflecting a broader sentiment among hardcore fans. "A new season in other ARPGs is like 'let's put in a little housing system where you build up a home base with vendors that give you more gear' or 'let's put in a whole shipping system where traders from other lands bring materials that let you upgrade your items in ways that change your class mechanic entirely,'" noted feldoneq2wire, highlighting the perceived lack of innovative content in Diablo 4's seasonal updates.

Fragrantbutte expressed disappointment, stating, "I'm not a Diablo 4 hater, I love the game, but there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of meat on the bone here which is a bit disappointing." Meanwhile, artyfowl444 pointed out the vagueness of future content promises, saying, "'And more' is doing a lot of heavy lifting here."

The conversation reached a point where Diablo community manager Lyricana_Nightrayne felt compelled to respond directly on the Diablo 4 subreddit, reassuring fans, "We added fewer details to the later parts of the roadmap to accommodate for things the team is still working on. This isn't all that's coming in 2025 :)"

One of the central issues raised is Blizzard's approach to seasonal content in Diablo 4. The one-shot nature of each season, where progress largely resets, has divided players. Some appreciate the fresh start each season provides, while others feel it discourages deep engagement with each new cycle. This has led some to consider pausing their gameplay until more substantial content arrives in 2026.

Adding to the discussion, Mike Ybarra, former president of Blizzard Entertainment, shared his perspective on social media. "Don't ship to check a box," Ybarra advised. "Season's need to get off the cycle of shipping, spending two months to fix issues, then repeating. Pause and give the team time to really address the end-game issues. Playing for a week to then one or three shot a 'uber' boss 500 times for a unique, then quitting until next season is fundamentally not fun."

Ybarra also critiqued the current expansion schedule, suggesting, "Expansions schedule is too long - should be yearly. Reduce 'story' investment (costs so much for one time element in a ARPG) and focus on new classes, new mob types, new end-game activities that last more than a few days. If the cycle continues to just ship w/o fixing the fundamental issues, then I'm not sure where Diablo is going. You can add all the end-game activities you want, but you'll be running in place with the same issues. At some point there's just so many random things, it's not worth the effort."

Diablo 4: Vessel of Hatred Gameplay Screenshots

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The delay of the second expansion, originally planned for 2025 but now scheduled for 2026, has been a point of contention. Blizzard had initially aimed to release expansions annually, with the first, Vessel of Hatred, launching in 2024.

In the IGN interview, Gibson discussed the challenges and opportunities of developing Diablo 4 as a live service game. "I definitely feel like gamers are more hungry than they've ever been," Gibson stated. "And even if you delivered on their appetite today, that appetite will shift tomorrow. And so you just have to be in a really good spot to adapt to that situation. Because a lot of times too, what's important this month is going to be completely different three months from now. The priority of things can shift very, very quickly based on another game release or the state of your own game. Or maybe we've discovered something really cool and we want to be able to get it in there to change the formula."

Gibson emphasized the importance of community interaction and catering to diverse player types. "The interesting thing about Diablo is that we have a lot of different community types, right? We have our casual players, we have our hardcore players. They all fall into subdivisions of types of players inside of that. And so what we look to do is season upon season, look at the things that are important to some of those groups and go after them with focus."

He detailed specific plans for upcoming seasons, such as improvements to boss lairs in Season 8 and shifts to nightmare dungeons in Season 9, illustrating Blizzard's strategy to address different player segments over time. "When you take a look at something like what we're doing in Season 8, we know we have a ton of boss lair feedback and so we're adding in the quality of life improvements for those players where that is a big focus of their gameplay type, or we might shift to nightmare dungeons when we're in Season 9. And so it's an opportunity for us to address different groups at different times, leading to an expansion where we're going to be addressing everybody all at once with something big."

Diablo 4 Season 8 is set to launch later in April, with Season 9 expected in the summer, and Season 10 slated for later in the year.