It’s been a little while since we heard anything new on Diablo IV, but it sounds as though the team at Blizzard are hard at work on it. According to a new report and interview, Diablo franchise General Manager Rod Fergusson doesn’t expect players to be stuck for things to do once they reach the RPG’s endgame.
As reported in Gamesradar, Fergusson has been sharing his thoughts on the upcoming Diablo IV beta and the process of testing the title in general. According to him, players will have plenty of options on their hands upon reaching the title’s endgame content. Players keen to know more about the state of testing in Diablo IV ahead of the game’s beta can check out the most recent interview right here with both Rod Fergusson and Diablo IV Game Director Joe Shely, courtesy of IGN.
Fergusson is clear to point out that testing of Diablo IV so far has been done in a holistic way, with a view to getting the formula of the game just right before putting it out there for public testing. In addition, Shely makes a point of discussing the end game systems in Diablo IV and how a core focus of testing so far has been on ensuring they give players plenty of content. Partly, this is to do with the game’s transition to a live service model which will undoubtedly offer ongoing activities for players post the main campaign endgame.
Fergusson elaborates further in the interview, explaining that “it has to be a kick-ass campaign, you have to have great context and a great story, know what it is and why the world is the way that it is, and set it all up.” He adds emphasis to the need for the game’s post-campaign content to have undergone testing alongside the main storyline, explaining that “you’re unleashing players after they complete the campaign and unleashing them into a game that hopefully will entertain them for thousands of hours.”
It certainly sounds as though Diablo IV won’t be over with the main story. Fergusson explains that the team’s hope is that players see the endgame content as “the starting point” and “certainly not the end” of their adventures through Diablo IV‘s richly-crafted world. This will evidently be where the game comes into its own as a live-service title, although it will be interesting to see how that pans out once the game is released.
Diablo IV is scheduled to release at some point in 2023. It’ll be available on Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4 and PC. In the meantime, the game is expected to launch an open beta in the early part of next year, which players can take part in if they’ve signed up to be invited. With some specific invites having already rolled out in September, some testers will soon be able to check out the game’s endgame content for themselves.