Diablo 4's 2025 Plan Disappoints Fans, Even Ex-Blizzard President Unsure of Game's Direction

Diablo 4 has unveiled its first content roadmap for 2025, offering a glimpse into what fans can expect from the action role-playing game, along with a sneak peek at plans for 2026. In an in-depth interview with IGN, game director Brent Gibson discussed the roadmap, covering topics from the second expansion to future collaborations with other IPs. However, the community has voiced concerns about the content planned for 2025, questioning whether it will be substantial enough to keep players engaged.

The sentiment among some hardcore players is one of disappointment. "Oh boy! Can't wait for new Helltide color and temporary powers," remarked redditor Inangelion sarcastically. "It's gonna be so dope!"

This feeling is echoed by other dedicated Diablo 4 players who were hoping for more thrilling announcements. "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,’" said feldoneq2wire.

In contrast, the sentiment towards Diablo 4's seasonal content feels less exciting. "A new season in D4 is ‘what color are we making helltides this time?’ And ‘what powers and reputation skins are we whipping up this time?’" feldoneq2wire added.

"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," admitted Fragrantbutte.

The phrase "And more" in the roadmap has been criticized for being overly vague. "‘And more’ is doing a lot of heavy lifting here," noted artyfowl444.

Amidst the community's concerns, Diablo's community manager Lyricana_Nightrayne addressed the feedback directly on the Diablo 4 subreddit. "We added fewer details to the later parts of the roadmap to accommodate for things the team is still working on," they explained. "This isn't all that's coming in 2025 :)"

One issue that has sparked debate is Blizzard's approach to seasonal content in Diablo 4. While some appreciate the reset each season brings, others feel it discourages deep engagement with each new season. There's a split opinion on whether maintaining constant seasonal content would be overwhelming or if players should wait until 2026 for more significant updates.

Mike Ybarra, former president of Blizzard Entertainment and now a corporate executive at Microsoft, weighed in on the discussion via X (formerly Twitter). "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."

He further criticized the current model, suggesting a more focused approach. "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 recommended a more frequent expansion release schedule. "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."

He concluded with a warning about the future direction of Diablo if the current issues persist. "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 conversation around Diablo 4's expansions was fueled by the delay of the second expansion, originally slated for 2025 but now postponed to 2026. Blizzard had planned to release expansions annually, but while the first expansion, Vessel of Hatred, launched in 2024, the second will skip 2025.

In our interview, Gibson shed light on the challenges of developing Diablo 4 as a live service game with both free seasonal content and major paid expansions. "I definitely feel like gamers are more hungry than they've ever been," Gibson shared. "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 in the development process. "And so it is definitely a new way of developing. It is definitely high interaction with the community. 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 elaborated on how the team aims to cater to different player types 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 scheduled for the summer, and Season 10 planned for later in the year.