Diablo IV is set to release next year, but Blizzard is taking its quarterly update to talk about post-launch plans, including changes to the meta, and adding a seasonal model and Season Pass.
Key members of the team, including Game Director Joe Shely, are laying out some of what we can expect, and is in development, for the game’s launch and beyond. One shift in the update is the move to the seasons model, as used in Diablo II: Resurrected and Diablo III. Seasons support will begin with the first season set for soon after the game launches.
They will also have a dedicated Diablo IV season team to produce up to four seasons a year with new content. This means consistent content, including new features, new quests, new enemies, new items, and some surprises. Because every time a new season opens up, previous characters move to the Eternal Realm, you must create a new character for seasonal play. This, plus capping Paragon points, will mean that your skill and the time and effort you put in are going to be the key measures of how powerful you are. Because each season is a reset, no one has to feel that it’s too late to make meaningful progress or be competitive.
They also discussed that they want to keep the meta fresh, without overstepping and balancing the fun out of it but also making sure that it's not easy to go overboard and become too OP. With the season model, they'll also be adding new items, so this balance becomes more important. Among the other topics covered include the potential for live events that might be limited time events for unique rewards, and monetization.
Monetization is, of course, sometimes a contentious issue. Diablo IV will be a retail game that also comes with a cosmetics shop and a Season Pass. Using the seasonal model means that there will be consistent content updates and new things arriving, and there will be the usual free and premium tiers for the Season Pass, with varying rewards.
The August update is a packed one with a lot of details, including in development screenshots and a number of details on the passes, the cosmetics shop, premium currency, and a lot more of the post-launch plans for Diablo IV. You can read the full update over here.
