World of Warcraft has been running for 22 years, and even now Blizzard sometimes struggles to keep up with demand. Yesterday, the WoW: Forever beta launched and immediately broke under the weight of everyone trying to get in at once. How is this still happening when Blizzard has decades of experience with launching new MMO content? The devs themselves say they were genuinely taken aback by just how popular the Forever beta has been.

"Man, it was hard to sleep last night, I was so excited," senior game designer Josh Greenfield says on Twitter. "Beta has been... crazy. The craziest numbers I've seen in 17 years working at Blizzard and almost 8 years on classic. We've got something really special here."

Maybe that sounds hyperbolic, but senior game producer Tom Ellis has posted a more exhaustive technical breakdown of what went wrong for the opening hours of the Forever beta. "It's not a Production stack by a long, long, long, long, long, long shot," Ellis explains on Twitter. "Betas for WoW aren't usually huge meter movers so this environment just isn't that powerful."

Because "our little BETA environment only uses one REGIONAL realm," Ellis says, math on the servers started getting screwy as this one little connection point was suddenly having to funnel in so many players. This is why people kept getting disconnected after sitting through the lengthy login queues.

It took the devs "around half an hour" to figure out that this was the bottleneck, because the game and Battle.net services both showed very little load. "We all recognized we need more logging and notifications when this system is kicking in, but this is the first time anyone's seen it kick in when [there] wasn't an obvious CPU issue to go along with it," Ellis explains. "20 years, always something new."

Ellis also addresses the long times players were experiencing while looting, accepting quests, and performing similar server-bound actions. "Our intrepid Oracle Database Engineers had to perform a manual analyze on all the tables and setup some automated jobs to periodically keep doing it," but because the servers were being hit so frequently, the typical rate wasn't sufficient. As soon as the devs addressed that, the database performance "cleared up instantly."

There were the restarts. "A few hours in, we noticed our WORLD pools that run, well, the game simulation you play on, were running crazy hot on CPU and almost out of memory," Ellis explains. Empty maps were not being correctly shut down, and those were slowly – or, actually, "not that slowly" – clogging up CPU and memory on the servers. The devs figured out a fix, but that fix needed restarts "to pick it up." Blizzard also took the opportunity to add additional worlds and expand the regional service for further stability.

Back in 2019, we interviewed numerous devs about why big online games always seem to break at launch, and it seems that all the same problems inevitably crop up. We heard one dev say "it's just impossible" to fully solve these kinds of launches, and WoW: Forever demonstrates how new issues crop up every single time. But hey, at least the fixes are coming faster. I'm old enough to remember when people were struggling to play Diablo 3 for weeks after launch…

WoW: Forever doesn't allow GDKP, Blizzard says the new MMO's economy is "something we're taking very seriously."

The unveiling of Diablo 5 during BlizzCon 2026 prompted a range of reactions from oohs and aahs to disappointment at the confirmation that the surprise sequel means no more expansions for Diablo 4. Diablo 4 currently has two expansions, 2024's Vessel of Hatred and this year's Lord of Hatred, and there won't be any more as Blizzard focuses on getting Diablo 5 out the door by its planned release window of spring 2029. The game will still get regular seasonal updates, like the wonderfully nostalgic Season of Hell's Legacy, but full-blown expansions are officially in the rear view for Diablo 4.

We haven't seen much of Diablo 5 yet, but one big departure from series convention is the complete removal of towns and safe zones, which ties into the narrative premise about Diablo having won the big war against humanity before the story kicks off. Even with such a big change from previous entries, a lot of Diablo fans have asked what made Blizzard decide on a full-on sequel instead of more Diablo 4 expansions, and now we have a clear answer.

Talking to GameSpot, Diablo 5 executive producer Matt Zitterman says the decision to make a sequel instead of more expansions came down to a deep understanding of the Diablo community and what it wants.

"Who are Diablo players? Why are they playing Diablo? What do they want out of a Diablo game?" says Zitterman. "That is a really critical step in the early conceptual phase for a game, even before you're thinking about, 'should we make this an expansion? Should we make it a sequel? How do we do this?' Really deep understanding of who are players are."

From there, Blizzard looked at what people liked and didn't like about Diablo 4 and used that feedback to figure out its overall "ambition" for the series. Zitterman says it became clear "pretty early" that "some deeply structural changes" had to happen "in order to achieve what we wanted to achieve with this game," and those changes would've been "frankly hard to do in an expansion."

More importantly, or at least this is my read on Zitterman's quotes, Blizzard just wanted to make a whole game about the Lord of Terror himself, the birthday boy celebrating 30 years, Al'Diabolos. "Diablo is the main villain. Diablo is the guy that we want to tell a real story about," says Zitterman. "We want to tell a story that's on par, and hopefully exceeds, the story that we told with Lilith and Mephisto, and to do that in an expansion just didn't feel right. We needed to give him his own game."

Of course, Diablo has arrived at long last to terrorize Sanctuary in Diablo 4 as part of the new seasonal questline, but Diablo 4 does still very much feel like Lilith's game. With big dawg having appeared as the main antagonist in every Diablo release so far, I'm curious what the distinction will be in Diablo 5 with him being front and center to the game's development.

Diablo 5 is Blizzard's darkest ARPG yet, and that's the best way to honor the game that changed my life 30 years ago

Whenever I play Overwatch with my friends and actually contribute to our success, I'm treated like a child who's 'helping' his parents put away groceries and manages to put the cheese in the right fridge drawer for a change. In short, I suck.

Even when I'm in the zone as my main man, Reinhardt, I'm not sure I've ever gotten MVP in the hundreds of matches I've played over the years. It was to my great surprise, then, that I found myself dominating as new support hero Doctrine over the weekend at BlizzCon 2026.

Don't get me wrong; I still didn't get MVP in the handful of matches I played. But I was surprisingly competent for someone who A) sucks, and B) had never played Doctrine before. Even without much time to get a good handle on the hero's moves, Doctrine's primary ranged attack, speed, and healing speed-buffing drones were so intuitive that my Quick Play performance made me feel like I wasn't being carried for once.

Unfortunately, I have a hunch that I didn't suddenly 'git gud', synchronizing with Doctrine's life energy as a lover of all things vampire myself. No, my impression after a few surprisingly great rounds as Doctrine is that a big, fat, bloodsucking nerf is probably waiting around the corner to take the wind right out of my sails.

Jack of all trades

What surprised me the most about Doctrine is just how incredibly well-balanced he is. With great mobility bolstered by straight-up flight via Infuse, solid DPS for a support, flexible engagement range, and an Ultimate with a nasty HP debuff and simultaneous team heal, it's hard to identify a major vulnerability in the vamp's toolkit.

I foresee his Deliverance Ultimate specifically becoming a real problem as players familiarize themselves with his abilities. It's probably going to be one of the main targets of the hero's inevitable first balance update. Meanwhile, Infuse changing the character's rush and drone abilities makes Doctrine a tough hero to predict and counter. With a perk that dramatically reduces Infuse's damage and healing cooldowns, that unpredictability becomes, well, even more unpredictable.

I brought up Doctrine's versatility in a conversation with Overwatch game director Aaron Keller. He pointed out the new hero's high aim skill floor as a potential downside, while ultimately agreeing with me about "flexibility."

"You need to have pretty high aim right there," Keller says. "He also has a pretty decent amount of mobility as well. He can get in, get out, get to high ground if he infuses his dash. So, I think that there's a lot of flexibility with somebody like Doctrine." Asked specifically what meta niche is being filled by a highly-adaptable hero like Doctrine, Keller says he's "not exactly sure who he's going to replace or what the best synergy is here," but "he's going to be versatile and powerful enough to where he gets incorporated into the meta."

Not another Jetpack Cat

Keller says it's a dangerous game, predicting how a new hero will be perceived – balanced, underpowered, or overpowered – because while the dev team tests out roster additions "a lot," it's still "just a team of a couple hundred people" all operating at "different skill levels."

Still, he insists players will grapple with Doctrine's "high skill cap" and strategic design, hopefully preventing all-out support meta dominance similar to Jetpack Cat at launch. "There's aim skill, and there's a lot of strategic decision-making that you need to do with how and when you're going to use Infuse," he explains of Doctrine's playstyle. "It'll be interesting to see if this becomes one of those heroes that is just played a ton at the high level and maybe played a little bit less at lower levels, or if he's played all over the place," Keller tells me.

If Doctrine really is the easy-to-learn but tough-to-master hero Keller says he is, that's terrifying. In other words, if a scrub like me was able to become a respectable, even valuable, team-player in my very first games as the new hero, imagine his potential in the hands of someone who actually knows what they're doing after six months in Ranked queues? That's why a nerf feels all but guaranteed once Doctrine officially joins the Overwatch roster on October 6.

If Overwatch isn't your thing, be sure to check out our ranking of the best FPS games to find your new obsession.

World of Warcraft: Forever has been on many a fan's mind since Blizzard's big reveal during BlizzCon 2026, especially as it's essentially a take on the long-requested Classic+. But how exactly will it differ from the other branches of WoW?

Well, according to senior game designer Josh Greenfield, there's one glaring difference: GDKP will not be a part of Forever.

In case you're out of the loop, GDKP stands for Gold Dragon Kill Points – an auction-based loot distribution system that sees a raid party's treasure go to the highest bidder, only for all of the accumulated gold to then be split across the players. It's controversial because lots of folks feel it encourages real-money trading.

So, what does Greenfield have to say about it? In a new Q&A session over on YouTube, the lead first explains that World of Warcraft: Forever won't allow GDKP.

"The short answer is no, we are not going to allow GDKP," he says. "I think the most important aspect of that to us is our first pillar – to nurture and protect social experiences. I think a lot of the concerns around GDKP start to get bundled up into that conversation, around things like that."

Is Blizzard making this choice because of real-money trades? Not entirely.

"The actual main reason that we are not going to allow it in WoW: Forever is that it has that sort of tendency we've noticed in the regions where [GDKP] has been popular for longer to reach a level of ubiquity," Greenfield says. "That can kinda overtake the traditional guild structure, and that's one of the really difficult decisions about being a game designer, managing this game at this scale."

It's not an easy decision, as Greenfield states. "Sometimes, you have to make difficult choices. We never really want to tell people how to play" – but systems like GDKP can get in the way of others' experience with the MMO.

They can act as a "big barrier to entry for new players, or players that do not have that many resources," he says. Longtime fans can quickly make some gold, while newcomers end up feeling forced to "buy gold."

That's no bueno, and "something we're taking very seriously in WoW: Forever," Greenfield explains. Plus, it feeds into the whole economy and real-money transaction debacle.

"GDKP is an excellent way for bad actors to launder large sums of gold," as he says. This complicates everything for both players and the developers alike, as they struggle to target bots and such. In World of Warcraft: Forever, Blizzard will "be very, very actively monitoring the economy."

Honestly, I'm happy to hear that Blizzard's settled on no GDKP runs in Forever – here's hoping the economy remains healthy, and the studio stays strong in its decision to restrict the auction-based raid loot system (and, it seems, combat add-ons, too).

World of Warcraft: Forever beta struggles to launch as devs say "the number of people hammering at the door of the Beta is... insane"

World of Warcraft: Forever is here in beta form, and the true WoW experience is intact, right down to the infinite queues and disconnects as players start banging on the door to get in. Even the devs seem a bit taken aback by the number of players lining up to participate, but they promise eager fans that everybody will be in soon.

"Thank you to everyone waiting to get into the WoW: Forever Beta," the official Warcraft account begins. "We're working through some final issues, and we expect the doors to open soon. Thank you for your patience!"

"Yeah, ok that’s a bit excessive for a beta," senior game producer Tom Ellis adds in a separate post. "Calm down now… give us a minute, this environment is taking a beating and we’re scaling various services up."

"Wow, the number of people hammering at the door of the Beta is... insane," associate production director Clayton Stone says in another tweet. "Thanks for showing up, everyone! We're scaling up and up and up (and up). You will all be in soon."

You can probably guess at the state of WoW discussion forums right now, and the WoW subreddit is predictably filled with memes about the queue times, early reactions from those lucky enough to get in, and big ol' threads for people to commiserate while they wait. And yes, everyone has already made the joke about it taking "forever" to get in.

World of Warcraft: Forever's controversial Skyborne race came from Blizzard veteran Chris Metzen himself - "We knew we wanted to add some sort of elves."

Blizzard made the surprise announcement during BlizzCon 2026 that Diablo 5 is officially in the works, with its 2029 release set for six years after Diablo 4. That may seem like a long way off, but it's a huge reduction in the time between entries; Diablo 3 launched 12 years after Diablo 2, and Diablo 4 followed 11 years after.

You might expect that stunted development cycle to result in a sequel that's narrower in scope compared to previous entries. Actually, Diablo 5 sounds like the biggest departure for the series so far, leaving players to navigate a world fallen and enslaved by the series' namesake. That's incredibly depressing – and I think it's the only way to pay homage to the original Diablo just in time for the ARPG's 30th anniversary.

See you in Hell

With its iconic opening cinematic showing a ruined town, bodies swinging from a tree, and a crow pecking out the eyeball of a fresh corpse, 1996's Diablo is still one of the darkest games I've ever played. We see a hero dressed in heavy armor, hopelessly overwhelmed by darkness, and that sense of doom carries over seamlessly into the explorable map. Upon entering the town of Tristram, you're told "dark riders" came and destroyed your village, killing or enslaving everyone who was brave enough to rise up in defense of their hometown.

I was probably way too young to be playing it as a child in the late '90s, but Diablo changed my life. Every day for years, I would saunter over to my neighborhood friend's house to mooch off his coveted internet connection and play Diablo, and it felt like being transported to an entirely different universe.

And in a way, it was. Diablo was a portal to my first-ever shared, online video game world. I remember being transfixed by the idea of playing a game with random strangers from different countries, tackling dungeons before bed with someone who was just waking up and starting their day on the other side of the planet.

I made close friends I would never meet in real life, trudged through vertical layers of progressively bleaker places, and ultimately developed a morbid curiosity for unrelenting horror. It paved the way for me to become a video game journalist who would one day attend BlizzCon in person and watch Diablo 5 be revealed, smiling gleefully as flames engulfed a snarling demon on-screen.

"Sanctuary has been destroyed, and Diablo has won," says senior game director Joe Shely of Diablo 5's central premise. There are no more towns or safe zones, almost every human on Earth has either bowed to the Lord of Darkness or been turned into a demonic follower, and the lone few resistors have been enslaved. Now that's Diablo.

Of course, there's no such thing as a chipper Diablo game, but the visually bright Diablo 3 marked a low point for the series. Diablo 4 turned things around for the better, with a representation of Sanctuary that's much truer to the spirit of the original game. Still, capital cities like Kyovashad are completely shielded from dangers outside its walls; their streets are lively, bustling with players and vendors, and one would almost think humanity is thriving within these safe areas. Everything is pretty awful outside, but inside city limits, you'd be forgiven for thinking good has a fighting chance against evil. Diablo 5 makes it very clear that's not the case by explicitly handing the win to the dark side before the story even starts.

The snapshots we've seen and heard of Diablo 5 so far give little away in terms of gameplay, or major narrative beats. Thematically, though, it sounds like Blizzard knows what we all want: a tortured protagonist fighting back in the face of hopelessness, fire, blood, cracking bones, sons and daughters turned into snarling abominations, darkness, fear, and back-to-basics horror.

What that looks like in a next-gen (assuming 2029 is next-gen) Blizzard release remains to be seen, but I'm hoping it isn't purely a bloodier, nastier, more gruesome ARPG. Don't get me wrong, I want that too, but there's more to good horror than that. In Diablo 1, there's a burdening sense of longing in Tristram hinted at by grassy fields, lights still spilling out of abandoned homes, and even those timelessly haunting guitar chords that seem to vocalize, 'Things were pretty OK here once upon a time, but not anymore.' That adds a weight of real-world human sadness and emotional depth that can't be conveyed by traditional depictions of Hell alone, and we all know from movies like Hereditary and Bring Her Back that sadness amplifies horror.

Assuming Blizzard is walking the walk when it says it's "doubling down on darkness," Diablo 5 is shaping up to be an exercise in doommaxxing, a term that could've spawned out of the original 1996 Diablo rather than 2020s internet culture. And in the wake of Diablo's 30th anniversary, I can't think of a better way to honor the series' roots than by returning straight to them, burrowing ever further into the rotting ground, and bringing players closer to Hell itself than ever. Diablo 5 could be the darkest ARPG since the original, and that's music to my pointy little devil ears.

You know what they say: easy come, easy go. Diablo 4 added Solo Self-Found over the summer, much to the excitement of the action-RPG's ardent community, only for the mode to be temporarily removed in Season 15. Blizzard's confirmed it's coming back, just not exactly when just yet.

"We know many of you are waiting for Solo Self-Found to return," reads a statement on the official Diablo social media channels. "Restoring the feature remains a top priority for the team, but the work will take additional time."

No specific reasons have been given for why Solo Self-Found specifically had to go, other than it was due to some form of anomalous bug. It's a pity, because the community would've just been getting stuck into it after waiting some three years for it to finally be added. But these things happen when rolling out large-scale updates.

If you're not aware of this mode, it's essentially a true single-player way of playing. You handle the challenges and dungeons on your lonesome, without the benefits of assistance, and you can only use the loot you find and earn yourself.

It's a tricky way of approaching an already difficult game, but the rewards are high if you can hack the added stress. The mode is typical of action-RPGs like Diablo, Path of Exile, and other grueling crawls through a loot-filled hellscape.

"We’ll share another update as soon as we have progress to report," Blizzard's comment finishes. "Thank you for your patience and for standing with us while we work to restore it."

Expect an update in the coming days or weeks.

Diablo 4 Season 15 is trying to squash the Mythic problem once and for all by increasing their drop rate again and adding more loot drops besides

Although World of Warcraft: Forever impressed many Classic+ hopefuls last weekend during BlizzCon 2026, some fans left Blizzard's big reveal wondering why the new MMO looked so much like its retail counterpart.

That is, anyway, in terms of its art style and models. Conversations soared on the likes of Reddit as folks pondered why World of Warcraft: Forever feels "too retail" and more like a "retail minus" than a "Classic plus."

It's an amusing but reasonable concern, I suppose, as the community is understandably attached to the 21-year-old world Blizzard first invited them into way back in 2004. Is it truly something fans should worry about, though?

According to Classic developer Josh Greenfield, the answer is no – or, at least, they should give World of Warcraft: Forever a chance come its November release.

In response to a fan on Twitter asking why the art direction follows retail's aesthetic rather than Classic's, Greenfield says players should wait to experience the MMO in person to fully judge it, as it's not the same as viewing screenshots or datamined models.

"I'd encourage you to reserve judgement on any model you see datamined or in screenshots until you can see it in-game and in context with the rest of the world," writes the dev. "I can't get too deep into it… but what you see in datamining might not be fully representative of how things appear in-engine."

Honestly, that's valid enough, I suppose – trailers, screencaps, and model highlights can't match the vibe of the full game itself.

Fans seem content with Greenfield's response, too, with the original post replying, "Sounds good, thank you for communicating, judgement reserved." Another chimes in that they'll also "reserve judgement for now" but are "still concerned that models like these are too different as to not fit into the Classic world and player models cohesively."
More commenters share this sentiment, expressing that they're still unsure about the aesthetic.

I suppose we'll just have to wait and see how it all meshes together come World of Warcraft: Forever's big launch in a couple of months. Fingers crossed it feels more like an Old School RuneScape take on Blizzard's original MMO than the retail one.

World of Warcraft: Forever takes page out of retail's book as Blizzard confirms access to add-ons will be restricted in the throwback MMO

It's going to be a few years before we get to play Diablo 5, but the devs at Blizzard have some high aspirations for the upcoming sequel. While they can't reveal anything about the story beyond broad strokes, they can say the mandate was simple: it has to be the best one.

In an interview with the official Xbox podcast, Matt Zitterman, executive producer on Diablo 5, revealed they got word from on high on what approach to take. "Someone on the team, I don't know who, wrote a sticky note and put it in our director's office, and it says, 'Best campaign ever,'" he recalls.

"He looks at that all the time, and it's really become a pillar of how we think about the game," he continues. "That's an example of us taking what was great in Diablo 4, and taking it further."

In Zitterman's eyes, Diablo 4 "set a new standard for storytelling" within the action-RPG stalwart. You have the most elaborate cutscenes thus far, and an incredibly compelling antagonist in Lillith, as well as all the residual "depth and complexity." All of that is being taken into consideration when putting together the latest sequel.

"We looked at all those components that made Diablo 4's campaign really sing and saw that as an opportunity to take it to the next level," he adds. "One of the things players can look forward to in Diablo 5 is taking everything we've learned and built on for Diablo 4 in terms of how we tell an amazing, cinematic story, and really doing it better."

Lofty goals, but distinctly feasible, given the trajectory of the mainline entries thus far. Diablo 5 is already promising to be an intriguing entry, since it's going back to the RNG-heavy worldbuilding of the third game and before. How that all manifests narratively, we'll have to see, but Blizzard's aiming for another benchmark here.

Diablo 5 doesn't have towns or safe zones because you're the safe zone now, buddy: "You and your band of followers are the last remains"

World of Warcraft: Forever was unveiled this past weekend at BlizzCon 2026, giving us our first-ever look at Blizzard's official take on Classic+ (or, at least, the closest thing we'll get to it) – and much like the retail MMO, it won't be too supportive of add-ons, apparently.

Blizzard made waves in the World of Warcraft community after deciding to remove combat mods from the retail release, stating that it hoped to "level the playing field" with less outside help in raids and the like.

That decision wasn't too popular with folks at first, so it's not at all surprising that many of the discussions surrounding World of Warcraft: Forever online have pondered whether it too would cut add-ons out of the picture.

Well, as it turns out, the new version of Blizzard's 21-year-old MMO will indeed similarly restrict add-ons – even though they aren't in Classic.

World of Warcraft: Classic designer Tim Jones and lead encounter designer Mike Nuthals tell Kotaku as much in a recent interview, confirming that "computational add-ons" (think combat add-ons and those that automate communications and such) are something we won't have access to.

They tell the outlet, "the in-game or in-combat add-on disarmament where the programmatic, the calculations done to automate marking or communicating for players, we're going to bring that over so that players will not have access to those kind of computational add-ons."

In other words, Forever is taking a page out of retail's book here in restricting such add-ons – but it's not exactly a bad decision. Raiding in either isn't of the same caliber, after all.

Folks point as much out over on Twitter, with one person commenting, "Unless WoW: Forever combat is much harder and much more complex than I am expecting, this is not a big deal." Another adds, "The content isn't even hard enough to warrant it."

So, all in all, it's certainly not proving as unpopular a change as it did in retail – perhaps also because World of Warcraft: Forever is launching this way, rather than going on to remove a feature.

Here's hoping fans who want to use other sorts of add-ons are still able to, with all that said. Combat help is one thing, but quality-of-life is a whole other ball game – but I suppose we'll find out more when World of Warcraft: Forever releases in November.

World of Warcraft: Forever's controversial Skyborne race came from Blizzard veteran Chris Metzen himself – "We knew we wanted to add some sort of elves."

Diablo 4's 15th season, Season of Hell's Legacy, is officially live following a brief delay apparently caused by server issues.

Blizzard fully lifted the lid on Season of Hell's Legacy during BlizzCon 2026, showing off a nostalgic seasonal questline celebrating the entire history of the Diablo series coinciding with its 30th birthday—and confirming a September 15 release date. It's definitely one of the meatiest seasons so far for Diablo 4, so it's not a huge surprise that players had been reporting server issues all day today, leading Blizzard to delay it altogether without confirming a new time/date. Well, thankfully that turned out to be a brief delay, as Blizzard has announced that Season of Hell's Legacy is officially live "now."

I have also logged in and created a character in the Seasonal realm without issue. It is worth noting, however, that Solo Self Found mode has been temporarily disabled and there's no known timeline for its return.

In advance of the new Amazon class next year, Diablo 4 is whisking players off all the way back to the series' roots with a new seasonal activity called Waking Nightmares, which are essentially quests recreating the most iconic boss fights in the series' history. Longtime players will appreciate the return of beloved characters like Deckard Cain as well as some less beloved but equally familiar faces like Mephisto, Baal, and at long last, Diablo himself as Diablo 4's long-awaited final, final boss.

There is something of a horned elephant in the room with Diablo 5 having been announced at BlizzCon and the implications for Diablo 4. And yes, Blizzard has confirmed there will be no more full-blown Diablo 4 expansions as it turns to focus on Diablo 5, but it has also confirmed that seasonal updates like this one will continue to drop for the foreseeable future.

Diablo 5 goes back to a pre-Diablo 4 world of "constant discovery" and procedural dungeons: "The only thing beyond the fog of war is more questions"

Following our first look at World of Warcraft: Forever at BlizzCon 2026 this past weekend, Blizzard's answer to everyone's Classic+ prayers, a lot of controversy surrounding the new Skyborne race has made the rounds online.

From the $30 price tag to the ill-fitting lore, fans have shared quite a few concerns about the Skybrone. So, what prompted Blizzard to implement the pretty blue elves in the first place?

Well, according to senior game designer Josh Greenfield, it all boils down to Chris Metzen – you know, one of the fathers of Warcraft in its entirety, basically. He explains as much in a new interview with GameSpot, saying it "started with a lot of questions."

Greenfield goes on: "We were talking about WoW Forever early on and we knew we wanted to add some sort of elves. Everyone on the team is a big fan of elves. We all love elves. They're very popular… and we knew we wanted to do something and came to him with a bunch of ideas and pitches and different variants of elves…"

Metzen's response? He "was really like, 'Yeah, we should do something; we should get a little crazy with it.'"

And, the rest is history. Blizzard "agreed and we had a lot of fun kind of concepting it with him." So, there you have it – a Warcraft legend himself approves of the Skyborne… but, it's not enough for many of the naysayers.

Over on Reddit, plenty of folks discussing Metzen's role in the new race's creation still believe it to be ill-fitting in World of Warcraft: Forever. As one comment reads, "They still look very out of place, they don't feel right…"

I wonder myself whether Blizzard will respond to all of the backlash the race has seen thus far – but I suppose only time will tell. As of now, access to the Skyborne is purchasable and will release with World of Warcraft: Forever in November.

World of Warcraft 2 isn't happening because Blizzard isn't sure what a sequel to the MMO would "give you that World of Warcraft: Forever isn't already giving you"

Blizzard gave WoW Classic+ hopefuls the news they were hoping for this past weekend during the BlizzCon 2026 reveals with a first look at World of Warcraft: Forever – a reimagining of the 21-year-old MMO's nostalgic beginnings.

In case you missed it, it ticks all the boxes and then some, with revamped visuals, a plethora of new quests, and much, much more… including a never-before-seen race, the Skyborne.

While that sounds incredibly exciting on paper, there's a bit of a catch: the Skyborne will cost you, and it's not cheap. In fact, it's at least $29.99, as per the official World of Warcraft website.

I say at least because it's DLC of sorts, and there are a few options. There's the Skyborne Epic Pack for some $20 more, and the Warcraft Forever Collection for a whopping $79.99, for example.

While these two come with more than just the Skyborne race – which is admittedly stunning, appearing as a soft periwinkle-skinned take on elves – the base $30 purchase is just to access the Skyborne come World of Warcraft: Forever's release in November… and, unsurprisingly, folks aren't thrilled.

Just have a search over on Reddit, and you'll find countless threads discussing the Skyborne race and its hefty price tag. Heck, there's even a huge "Skyborne feedback" post, given how hot a topic this is.

"I'm extremely positive about WoW: Forever and I'll be playing day one with high hopes," one comment reads. "That being said, not a fan of this race. They dropped the ball on that part."

It's not just the price, though. Others take issue with the fact that the Skyborne just… feel out of place.

As one person puts it, "From the aesthetic to the druid forms and mostly the blue variant has a weird retail vibe I just can't describe." Another dubs this a "mindbogglingly strange decision" on Blizzard's part, while many more consider it counter-creative. "They are just blue elves," after all – much like Night Elves.

"Should have been something else," one fan complains. "Something more interesting and new."

Honestly, there's a lot more to read through regarding the Skyborne controversy, from the race's price to its potential lore-breaking implications, but I do still have to admit I'm on the fence about it all myself.

I don't like the paywall or the lack of faction identity, but I find the design quite nice aesthetically.

I suppose the community will be split on this one as it is on just about everything, and that's that – 'tis the nature of MMOs, I fear. Blizzard also has yet to speak on the Skyborne debacle yet itself, but I'd advise keeping an eye on its channels.

World of Warcraft 2 isn't happening because Blizzard isn't sure what a sequel to the MMO would "give you that World of Warcraft: Forever isn't already giving you"

As you're no doubt aware, Diablo 5 is officially on the way, though we won't be seeing it properly for a while. Nonetheless, Blizzard's been teasing what's going on in this installment, and, well, things aren't great. Sanctuary has fallen, and in your adventures, the only real safety you'll find is within your own group.

During a panel on creating this new installment, several lead developers comment on what Diablo 5 will look and feel like. A sticking point is how rare any kind of genuine security will be. "This is personally one of my favorite parts of the game," Matt Zitterman, executive producer on Diablo 5, says.

"How do we represent a town or a place of safety in a world where [Al'Diabolos] has already won and there literally is no safe place," he explains. "The idea that really stuck with us is this idea that the player is the point of safety. You and your band of followers are the last remains of humanity, and the light in the darkness of Sanctuary."

That's a lot of pressure, but it fits not only the narrative but the game's make-up too. Diablo 5 is going back to RNG for the dungeons and overworld, and that's less conducive to reliable safe zones. If you're essentially bringing the safer areas with you, that's easier to work around.

"Throughout the campaign, you're going to be bringing your caravan, your traveling band of wagons and followers with you through-out the world," Zitterman adds. "Everywhere you stop is going to be a new part of the world to explore, and as you move through the world, meet new survivors, that caravan's going to grow, and they're going to become your merchants, your crafts-people, and your companions."

He hints Blizzard is going to "tell much deeper stories" about the collective cast as a result, and we don't to learn much about the characters who'll be there, but one is a "treasure goblin" called Zarg. All I'm hearing is that there'll be tears over accidentally letting characters you love die because of how ruthless the enemies are. At least we have a few years to prepare our emotions.

Diablo 5's narrative lead is a BioWare vet who says the new caravan system gives the ARPG the "best elements of traditional RPGs" like Dragon Age and Baldur's Gate.

Once again, there's a new Diablo 4 patch that makes changes to Mythics, but this one might well be the last. A number of tweaks have been made to how the items are acquired, in an effort by Blizzard to finally get the balance right.

The update comes as part of Diablo 4 Season 15, and there's a whole section dedicated to uniques. Firstly, unique items will now be available from the first level, across all difficulties. Then, Mythics dropped by initiate and greater air bosses and Belial's Hoard will only come from their distinct set of potential rewards.

However, drops will contain some generic loot, creating a lottery for finding rarer items outside of the set pool for each lair boss. Unique Mythic drop rates have been increased more or less across the board, and you're now guaranteed one from whenever you take on Echo of Mephisto - for which the loot is just better generally, too.

The Mythics saga has been going for months now. Since June, Blizzard's been taking feedback - to put it politely - on drop rates, since players have found you can literally be farming for hours on end and not get the rewards you're looking for.

We've had a steady drip of changes, tweaks, and alterations since, the devs gradually revamping how players encounter Mythics to appease the wider community. I don't envy their position, because even pleasing most in this scenario is difficult.

It's clearly something that needs to be addressed, but to what extent? Balance must remain the priority, even if some might still feel left out in the cold. What's available here suggests many of the complaints will be addressed, but we'll how it lands in practice in the coming days. Lessons for Diablo 5, at least!

"Almost all of Diablo 1" has been recreated in a new Diablo 4 activity taking you from Tristram Cathedral all the way down to Hell

World of Warcraft: Forever has been making the rounds online after Blizzard's big reveal at BlizzCon 2026, standing as the closest official thing we'll get to the long-coveted Classic+, but it does also mean we probably won't see a retail sequel.

In other words, World of Warcraft 2 – which, honestly, feels a bit silly to even write. After all, World of Warcraft itself is an ongoing project as you know, standing as the biggest MMO to date… one that's over two decades in the making now.

With Forever underway, too, there's little reason for such a sequel to ever actually come to fruition, anyway, as principal designer Kris Zierhut tells IGN in a new interview.

"I think one of the things that's singularly great about WoW is we have this game and this world and this design that has been continuously developed for the last 25 years," he explains – and, yeah, that checks out.

As Zierhut puts it, "We keep making it better. We made the graphics better, we made the rendering better, we made the lighting better," you name it. It's all better in retail, and, yes, Forever. All of that, plus the way things work behind the scenes.

"We've also made the way the engine draws things move more efficiently," Zierhut continues. "The way the server runs, handling players and moving them around, and all the things that handle spells and combat, all of that's been made more efficient and better over the years. We have this incredible engine and server infrastructure driving the game that is second to none."

So, "Why would you throw that away and start over?"

Why would you, indeed… not to mention the decades-in-progress lore that World of Warcraft sits upon. "It's not like there's something wrong with the story," as the dev says. "We love the story. So, going back to the beginning [with World of Warcraft: Forever], there's a chance to explore that story in new and different ways."

Considering all of this, Blizzard doesn't really have any motivation to move away from it all to try and conjure up a sequel.

As Zierhut concludes, "It's really hard to say, 'Well, what would a WoW 2 give you that World of Warcraft: Forever isn't already giving you?'"

I get it – it's not just a nostalgic rework with plenty of new features to look forward to, it's a chance to attract both fresh faces and longtime fans, too… the same way a World of Warcraft 2 would, except perhaps a bit better at grabbing the attention of the former.

I, for one, can't wait to dive into World of Warcraft: Forever come its November release – and, much like I'm not inclined to wish for a Minecraft 2, I'm not bothered about potentially never seeing a World of Warcraft 2 arrive.

World of Warcraft: Forever devs have "no plans" to implement Tokens or level boosts, confirms Blizzard, as "the journey is so important."

It's official, Diablo 5 is on the way. It's going to take a few years to get here, but another chapter in the hellish action RPG series is on the horizon, and this one is going back to procedurally generated areas, rather than the open-world design of Diablo 4.

During BlizzCon 2026, a panel on the design of Diablo 5 reveals a few titbits about the upcoming sequel. "In Diablo 5, we're bringing back the procedural worlds," Tiffany Wat, senior production director on Diablo 5, states. "Both in the dungeons and the overworld."

She goes on to make it clear that, yes, this does mean once you clear somewhere and return to the same spot, it'll be a different challenge. "If you go back to a region that you've been before, all that information that I did yesterday, that path that I found, that landmark that I was moving towards, how to fight those elite monsters, none of that information is going to help me today," she says.

"The only thing beyond the fog of war is more questions," she adds. She mentions there's an emphasis on "constant discovery," driven by the idea "you should never really feel safe, because all the towns are gone, and Sanctuary is just a brutal place to be."

This all sounds like Diablo, alright. The series used procedural generation for its dungeons more heavily before Diablo 4, which has a defined map you can mark out and chart. Naturally, this move divided the community, since many prefer the ever-present threat of RNG over being able to fully learn the hellish world you're in.

As of now, Diablo 5 is slated for 2029 – told you it's going to be a few years – but it seems like we can expect some old school ideas to re-emerge for this installment. In the meantime, enjoy the familiarity of Diablo 4 while you can.

Diablo 5's narrative lead is a BioWare vet who says the new caravan system gives the ARPG the "best elements of traditional RPGs" like Dragon Age and Baldur's Gate.

Blizzard is making enormous changes to the ever-divisive Sombra in Overwatch Season 5, grabbing her from the DPS category and transforming her into a support hero instead, as game director Aaron Keller admits that she's been considered "anti-fun" for some time now.

Sombra was added to Overwatch all the way back in 2016, and for 10 years she's been one of the most frustrating heroes to face. Between her hacking abilities that prevent enemies from using their skills, the fact that she can turn invisible, teleport out of harm's way, and generally cause chaos from a comfortable distance – away from her team, at that – it's fair to say that she's not everyone's favorite.

Speaking to GamesRadar+ during an interview at Blizzcon, Keller admits that for anyone who's been keeping up with Overwatch, "it's probably apparent that we've had issues with Sombra for a while." Poor Sombra ends up sounding like an unloved child the way Keller describes her though – even if he's right on the money with what players have found frustrating, you can't help but feel a bit bad for her when even her own creators are calling her unfun. But I suppose if the shoe fits…

"We've tried multiple reworks on her, and they're all kind of centered around some of the same issues," he explains. "You know, like she can be described as unfun to play against, or her mechanics are anti-fun. She takes away buttons, or agency from players. The way that she can escape, I think, a lot of times can be frustrating to play against, and the way that she's sort of popping in and out or invisible for large portions of the match can be frustrating too. And it's not that any one of these things is a problem in and of itself, but when you start getting a lot of these sharp mechanics all in one character, it really exacerbates the problem."

Keller acknowledges that the frustration isn't just limited to the team facing Sombra, but also anyone siding with her. After all, if you're trying your hardest to push a payload and one of your allies is nowhere in sight, it can feel like they're not being a proper team player.

"As Sombra is doing her Sombra things, even if she's doing them well, sometimes your team might not realize it. She's just not there enough, and you get that with some other heroes in the roster, but never to the degree with a Sombra," Keller notes. "You know, like Tracer can disappear for a while, Wrecking Ball can disappear for a while, but they typically come back. Sombra will come back when she does her ult, you know, that's the moment you kind of see it."

This brings us to her latest rework, which will certainly offer the biggest changes to the hero we've seen so far. Keller tells us that the devs have tried to solve Sombra's issues "in a lot of different ways because our goal is for her to keep her identity," so it doesn't sound like she's going to be a complete shadow of her former self, though.

"We do want you to be able to do a lot of those same things with Sombra, and I think by moving her over to support, we're able to still allow her to do a lot of that," he continues. "It's just for a much more limited amount of time.

"So, as you put heals on your team, it does give you that opportunity now to go stealth, hit the back line for a bit, do the Sombra things that you're used to doing. But you have a limited duration to do it before you need to get back to your team, start supporting them with heals again, hopefully, for them to be happy with you as a teammate again."

As an Overwatch support main, I'm personally really excited to see what Blizzard does with Sombra next season – she was always conceptually one of my favorites on the roster, but I was never able to click with her (and felt maybe that was for the best if I was just going to annoy everyone around me). Blizzard is also making more changes to Roadhog which we'll see at the same time, alongside the introduction of new hero Doctrine.

Diablo 4: Lord of Hatred and Overwatch's resurgence reportedly drove Blizzard to its "first back-to-back years of growth" in almost 10 years.

Diablo 5 is officially in development, and it promises to usher in the "next era of Diablo" as you step into a fallen world and fight to survive.

Announced during Blizzcon 2026, the team at Blizzard Entertainment celebrated Diablo's 30th anniversary by dropping a hellish teaser for the new game. Not only that, but the showcase also featured a "Forging the Next Era" panel that shed more light on the ambitions of the follow-up to Diablo 4. With details on the new direction for the longstanding setting of Sanctuary, some of its systems and classes were also revealed.

With a rough release date window that places it a little under a handful of years away, there'll be a bit of a wait until it arrives. But since the last Diablo entry is still counted among the best ARPGs of recent times, it's undoubtedly exciting to know an ambitious upcoming game is in the works that's setting out to take the series "somewhere genuinely new". So, if you're looking to catch up on what was revealed, read on as I take you through everything you need to know about Diablo 5, from its launch window, to its story and world, and more.

Diablo 5 release date and platform speculation

Diablo 5's release date is currently slated for sometime in Spring 2029, and no platforms have been confirmed so far.

With a distant launch window, it makes sense that no platforms have been revealed as of yet. It's a safe bet that it will launch on PC when it initially arrives. Of course, it's difficult to know what the landscape of consoles will look like in 2029, but judging by Diablo games in past years, it will likely come to Xbox and PlayStation. And since Diablo 4 officially joined the lineup of upcoming Switch 2 games for September 2026, there's every possibility Diablo 5 will follow suit.

Diablo 5 trailer

Diablo 5 story and setting

Diablo 5 is set to bring you back into the mortal realm of Sanctuary, but as Blizzard revealed, the world is no longer waiting for an apocalypse to happen because it's already going through one when you first step into it. Humanity has now fallen, Diablo has won and rules, and his reign of terror is reshaping the world. As detailed in the panel and on Blizzard's official site, this will be reflected in the game through a procedural landscape where monsters, points of interest, and terrain can change each time you return.

With Diablo at the heart of the story and events of Diablo 5 (having last appeared in Diablo 3 as a final boss fight), narrative director Jennifer Brandes Hepler (who was a key writer on the Dragon Age series) said, "once we decided that this game was going to bring Diablo back, we knew we had to do it right. He couldn't just be a final boss. He needs to be the force that's shaping this game from its opening moments. And that's how we decided that this time, you're not scrambling to protect Sanctuary before Diablo can rise and take it over."

As Hepler explains, other heroes tried to rise up and stop Diablo, but failed. Now, you're venturing into the aftermath of what they failed to prevent. Essentially that means that you're going to experience, as Hepler puts it, a world that "all other Diablo games were trying to prevent from happening".

Senior art director John Mueller adds that the team are "doubling down on darkness" for Diablo 5, which is captured in the apocalyptic setting. But as Hepler notes, they've tried to create a Sanctuary that's still worth fighting for, even if it's fallen to ruin.

As you fight for Sanctuary, you'll be playing as Heir to Westmarch, a continent that now serves, in the words of senior game director Joe Shely, as Diablo's "outpost of Hell". Now entirely overrun, most humans that remain have become corrupted or turned into cultists. Anyone who resists Diablo is put in soul cages or drawn into the Terror realm, which is where the story begins – as you'll discover, you can survive in the Terror realm, and it's here that you'll find out about some powers you have that Blizzard is keeping quiet about for the time being.

Curiously, in your role, you'll have a unique connection or bond with Diablo that you'll learn more about over the course of the game. Hepler says this will put you in a unique position to face him and gain insight into him, but you'll also have a particular vulnerability to the Lord of Terror and what he can do to you in turn.

Diablo 5 gameplay

While it's still early days and it'll likely be some time before we actually see any Diablo 5 gameplay, the team did share some details about certain aspects of the game and its features.

Survival, for example, is now connected to a caravan of allies you work to build up rather than clearing out strongholds or towns. As the team at Blizzard explain, these allies can come in the form of both vendors and companions, and each one has their own stories to tell, with their own "pasts, stakes, and scars from surviving Diablo's Sanctuary".

In terms of companions, we so far know that they will include a former sister of the Sightless Eye, and a stranded Treasure Goblin.

The team is trying to design items that "feel readable, memorable, and worth chasing across hundreds of hours". Gear-based stats will be returning with a deep crafting system that takes cues from Diablo 4: Lord of Hatred's approach, and Diablo 5 will also take inspiration from Diablo 2's Runes and Runewords.

Diablo 5 classes

Some of Diablo 5's classes have already been revealed, including an entirely new class that will be introduced in the new game. The classes are as follows:

• Demon Hunter – A ranged class that first appeared in Diablo 3, Demon Hunters make use of twin crossbows and use the shadows to their advantage to take out foes.
• Monk – Another returning class, the Monk is an agile warrior who uses their fists to fight enemies and holy powers to smite them.
• Plague Knight – A new class introduced in Diablo 5, the Plague Knight is described as "the embodiment of walking death" who can spread disease and pestilence on the battlefield.

Diablo 5 development

Diablo 5 is now in early development, with Blizzard stating that the reveal "marks the beginning of an ongoing conversation" with the Diablo player community. Setting out to take player feedback on board throughout the development of the game, regular updates are set to be shared as of 2027 to offer up a closer look at features, progress, and more.

"Bringing players into the process early gives us the opportunity to listen, understand what excites you the most, and allow that to inform the decisions ahead," Blizzard's official post on Diablo 5 reads. "We want to build a Diablo game that honors what players love while taking the series somewhere genuinely new."

If you're keen to follow the development, you can currently sign up for future updates here.

While you wait for the next Diablo, you can also check out our pick of the best Diablo games if you're looking to revisit or discover the series.

For more on what's next from Blizzard, check out our guide to everything we know about StarCraft, the new open world, story-driven shooter.

Hark, there's a new StarCraft game coming. This one isn't a real-time strategy game though - it's an FPS. The project was announced during BlizzCon, with Far Cry veteran Dan Hay at the helm, and he's explained a little more about its structure in interviews afterward.

Speaking to Inven Global, he mentions that it's not going to be a particular kind of experience. "If I were to describe the overall structure we currently envision, it's a 'box product,'" he explains.

"It is a narrative-driven open-world shooter where players create a character, name them, and follow that character's story," he continues. "The story has a beginning, a middle, and an end."

This sounds like it won't be live-service, or any such elements will be minimal, and I'm glad if that's the case. It seems like Blizzard is going for a Far Cry-type release set in the StarCraft universe, and that sounds appealing as is without trying to add more bells and whistles.

Hay does warn things could change in the coming months and years. "You can roam around and explore a rich open world, but our story has a definitive ending," he says. "Think of it as purchasing a standalone boxed game, playing it, and experiencing its story. We hope players enjoy it, love it, and return to us later. At the very least, what we are building right now is not a seasonal game."

A structure similar to the Borderlands games seems like a safe middle-ground here, if there's a desire to go down that route. The reveal trailer leans heavily into Helldivers 2 territory, but it seems like it won't be fully online the way that game is.

Hay, who's the general manager and creative director on StarCraft – yes, this is just called that – was part of senior leadership on Far Cry 3, 4, 5, and 6, giving him quite a bit of insight into what works when it comes to blockbuster shooters. He's worked on a couple of Diablo 4 expansions while at Blizzard so far, compounding his knowledge.

We'll see what emerges, but for now, I'm cautiously optimistic.

After announcing StarCraft and Diablo 5 years in advance, Blizzard president promises "to ship, and ship big, and ship on time."

Blizzard finally lifted the veil on World of Warcraft: Forever this past weekend at BlizzCon 2026, giving fans a taste of the official Classic+ (so to speak, anyway) that we're getting – one that apparently thankfully won't feature real-money currency like Tokens.

Clayton Stone, associate production director on WoW Classic, confirms as much in a recent interview on Forever with content creator Destin Legarie (below). The lead also says that there won't be any purchasable experience boosts, either.

He describes how Blizzard has "no plans for anything like a WoW token or a boost" in any online shop – and, even though I'm thankful myself, I do wonder why… but Stone says it's all about the "journey" to the top.

"The journey really is what the game is," he says. "I mean, the endgame is amazing… the endgame is epic. It's awesome. And, all the stuff we've done with the endgame is amazing, but the journey is so important and you play the game or you get better at the game by playing the game and it's all about that level 1 to 60 journey and the people you meet along the way."

That's why Blizzard is staying away from quick boosts.

"We've implemented these systems to really reinforce that because there's some players who just love that journey."

Honestly, I do get it, and while I'm thrilled at the prospect of less microtransactions (if you can call Tokens that, I guess), I am a bit worried that this decision won't, well, last forever.

I'm not alone in my concerns, either, as folks over on Twitter discuss World of Warcraft: Forever's lack of Tokens and what it might mean.

"'No plans' doesn't seem too convincing or permanent to me," reads one comment. "I'm still pretty sure they will be in the game sooner or later." Another speculates, "No plans is basically 'next year,'" while various replies similarly ponder whether Blizzard's choice of words here could pave the way for such real-money purchases later down the line.

There are also some worries about bots and the like, which are more than understandable.

So, how will this all play out? There's no way to really tell until World of Warcraft: Forever releases this November, but I've got my fingers crossed that Blizzard is indeed making the right move… and will stick with it, too.

World of Warcraft: The Last Titan launches 2027 and Blizzard says it's the "culmination of over two decades" of MMO storytelling.

The newly announced Diablo 5 is a significant departure from series convention in a number of ways. Chiefly, the game won't feature any towns or safe zones and will instead offer adventurers the lesser but still cozy comforts of a team of followers that form a caravan around the player, acting as something of a moving barrier between the myriad monsters creeping and crawling around Sanctuary. This idea comes directly from the influence of Diablo 5's narrative director, Jennifer Hepler, a BioWare veteran and key writer on Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age 2, and Dragon Age: Inquisition.

Hepler joined game director Joe Shely and executive producer Matt Zitterman at a panel during BlizzCon 2026, attended by GamesRadar+, and she explained how her eight years of writing experience with BioWare helped bring traditional RPG roots to Diablo's well-worn ARPG formula. Specifically, she says it's that caravan system that adds just a little bit of Baldur's Gate and Dragon Age DNA to Diablo 5.

"The caravan brings some of the best elements of traditional RPGs into Diablo's ARPG format by giving you that sort of Baldur's Gate or Dragon Age campsite where you can interact with your followers," says Hepler. "They're not going to be Dragon Age followers where you level up their skills and give them clothing and stuff, but they will be followers with personalities... so I think that my experience with traditional RPGs has definitely been a strength in building that out."

The Diablo and Path of Exile-style ARPG is a distinctly different, even diametrically opposed, experience compared to conventional RPGs like Dragon Age and Baldur's Gate, so it's interesting to hear how Hepler's lead role on the narrative team is influencing more fundamental design decisions like the caravan system. I'm curious to see which other elements of Diablo 5 are changing due to her involvement.

Diablo 5's first confirmed classes are the Demon Hunter, Monk, and the all-new Plague Knight: Blizzard says the sequel has "more classes than ever before"

Coinciding with the 30th anniversary of Diablo, Diablo 4's 15th season, Season of Hell's Legacy, is a fitting celebration of the action RPG series' entire history, going all the way back to the very first game from 1996.

Blizzard's Diablo team spent the majority of their time on stage at BlizzCon 2026 talking about the past and the future in almost equal parts. Whenever Diablo 4 was the talking topic, Blizzard waxed nostalgic for beloved games like Diablo 1 and 2, and to a slightly lesser degree, Diablo 3, whereas Diablo 5 conversations were naturally more forward-focused. During a panel attended by GamesRadar+, seasons lead Owen Leach dropped an absolute nostalgia bomb on old Diablo heads, teasing a Diablo 4-style return to the original Diablo 1 campaign via a new activity in Season of Hell's Legacy.

The new activity, called Waking Nightmares, are "recreations of key moments from previous Diablo games, but built in D4's art style with D4's compelling gameplay," per Leach. There are three kinds of these throwback dungeons, but the type I'm most interested in are the Prime Evil Waking Nightmares, which recreate "the most iconic moments, the moments that lead up to you killing Baal, Mephisto, Diablo." You'll run right into them in the seasonal questline, and as you might expect, they're basically remakes of the dungeons leading up to each of those three above-mentioned final bosses, culminating in the Lord of Terror himself.

"The last one, and the one I'm probably the most excited about, is actually a recreation of almost all of Diablo 1, so you start in Tristram Cathedral, fight your way to the Catacombs, down to the caves, and then of course into Hell itself to take down Big Red, the Dark Lord, Lord of Terror, Diablo."

There is some earned controversy over Blizzard announcing the end of Diablo 4 expansions in favor of Diablo 5, but if future seasons are anywhere near as substantial as what's being teased for season 15, I think I'll be plenty satisfied for the next few years. That said, I play for an hour or two, max, most nights, so I'm not representative of the most hardcore players, who are likely to rip through seasonal questlines much more efficiently.

Diablo 5 is coming in 2029, and "Diablo has won"

Blizzard has unveiled the first officially confirmed Diablo 5 classes, and they include a brand new class that's never been included in a Diablo game before: the Plague Knight, which sounds deliciously morbid in a way that's definitively Diablo.

ICYMI, Diablo 5! Yes, Diablo 5 was revealed in a surprise announcement during BlizzCon 2026. Although the game is still early in development and isn't due out until 2029, Blizzard dropped a surprising amount of details about the upcoming action RPG in a follow-up panel attended by GamesRadar+. One of those key details are confirmed classes, which include the returning Demon Hunter and Monk, as well as the aforementioned Plague Knight, which is new for the series.

Game Director Joe Shely said during the panel that the Plague Knight is a "heavily armored class" and a "walking death" that roams around the world "spreading disease and consuming it for power," which is about as dark as it gets and, I have to say, not very knightly. You're telling me this guy gives people the plague and then absorbs their death energy for his own power? That makes necromancers look downright friendly, but that's exactly what you want in a new Diablo game, and one I'll note already looks and sounds bleaker than any to come before it.

Not much is known about Diablo 5's story so far, but Blizzard confirmed during the initial announcement that it takes place in a world in which Diablo has won the battle against humanity, and "Sanctuary has fallen" to his evil will. That means there are no more towns or safe zones to take haven in, and that you're never truly safe.

Shely also announced that "Diablo 5 is going to launch with more classes than ever before," and clarified that, "I don't just mean more classes than another Diablo game at ship.

"I mean more classes total. And the thing about Diablo classes is that they're approachable. You can jump in; you can immediately have an exciting time playing them. But there's also deep ARPG mastery there, and a multitude of builds to explore."

Diablo 4 is finally getting its big final boss next week, new Amazon class coming 2027

Blizzard Entertainment just revealed a brand new StarCraft game. It isn't a sequel to 2010's StarCraft 2: Wings of Liberty, nor is it a real-time strategy game – this is a story-driven shooter set in an open world, taking place some 70 years after the StarCraft 2 campaign.

StarCraft was revealed at BlizzCon 2026 with an exceptionally pretty cinematic trailer. We've pulled everything you need to know about the new game into one place, including the first cinematic and screenshots. So keep on reading to get yourself up to speed on this impressive, long-awaited new instalment to the StarCraft universe.

StarCraft release date and platforms remain undefined

Blizzard Entertainment has announced that the next iteration of the StarCraft franchise is going to launch in 2030. The studio stopped short of announcing any further details about the StarCraft release date, nor did it confirm any platforms. At this stage, expect that StarCraft will come to PC and Xbox at the very least, although it's unclear if it will come to PlayStation – the Xbox Reset has introduced a return to console exclusivity, so we'll have to wait for more detail on this one.

StarCraft reveal trailer

The return of StarCraft made its debut at BlizzCon 2026. The cinematic trailer didn't display any gameplay, but it was a good mood piece that was designed to give you a feel for the world and story. Naturally, StarCraft was given a stunning cinematic trailer reveal, which you'll find embedded above.

StarCraft screenshots

Along with the StarCraft reveal trailer, Blizzard Entertainment also released a small handful of screenshots pulled from the cinematic. You'll find those in the gallery above, so feel free to swipe through them all if you want to get a better feel for the gritty StarCraft aesthetic.

StarCraft gameplay

There's a lot we still need to learn about the new StarCraft game. Here's what we can tell you about it so far: StarCraft is a brand-new, AAA game set in the wider StarCraft universe. It's not a real-time strategy title – the genre the series is known for playing in – but is rather an open-world experience. Specifically, it's a story-driven, open-world shooter, with production led by Dan Hay (creative director of Far Cry 5).

StarCraft story and setting

StarCraft is a sci-fi shooter that's set decades after the events of StarCraft 2. Blizzard Entertainment has confirmed that the game will take place in a "living universe" – specifically, it'll be set in the Koprulu Sector, some 70 years after StarCraft 2: Legacy of the Void. The Koprulu Sector is probably better known as a sector colonized by the Terran and Protoss factions, situated on the galactic fringe of the Milky Way.

The StarCraft reveal trailer suggests that we'll be joining up to battle a resurgent Swarm, and that the battles will be particularly brutal for the Dominion faction fighting to reclaim a foothold in the Koprulu Sector. Blizzard promises that we'll learn more in the years to come.

StarCraft development

StarCraft is in development at Blizzard Entertainment. This is the first new StarCraft game in over 15 years, with StarCraft 2 landing way back in 2010. The project is being led by Dan Hay, who previously served as creative director of Far Cry 5 and executive producer of the franchise.

This isn't the first time that Blizzard has tried to bring a third-person shooter in the StarCraft universe to life. Back in 2002, we almost received StarCraft: Ghost, which Blizzard had hoped to help push into the console gaming space, although the game was canceled after multiple failed iterations. It's rumored that another StarCraft shooter, codenamed Ares, was canceled in 2019 so that the publisher could put all of its resources towards Diablo 4 and Overwatch.

The StarCraft development team is packed with Blizzard veterans, including:

• Jeff Chamberlain – Creative Director, Story and Franchise Development
• Steven Chen – VP, Blizzard Animation
• Dan Hay – General Manager and Creative Director
• Paul Lee – Senior Game Producer
• Jens Sjöbergh – Senior Creative Director
• Benjamin Lee – Game Director
• Ben Dai – Senior Cinematic Director
• AnaLee Haertling – Associate Manager, Development Operations
• Jamie Wood – Art Director
• Jeff Guy – Production Director

Discover everything else that was announced at BlizzCon 2026.

After more than three years, Diablo 4 is finally getting its big, bad, final boss: Diablo himself is coming to the game next week in season 15, alongside familiar characters, locations, and items inspired by all eras of the APRG's history.

Diablo was a huge focus of this year's BlizzCon 2026, mostly headlined by the announcement of Diablo 5. Blizzard managed to keep the lid on Diablo 5 ahead of the event, so its reveal was quite the surprise indeed, but the studio made it very clear that it's not ready to abandon Diablo 4.

The game's next season brings everything full circle for the series' 30th anniversary with the long-awaited addition of Diablo, as well as the other two Prime Evils, Mephisto and Baal, as well as the iconic friendly character, Deckard Cain, and new Legendary items inspired by the series' past. Basically, it's one big Diablo birthday party, and it's all kicking off next week with the Season of Hell's Legacy, which launches on September 15.

Still haven't had enough? We also got the announcement of Diablo 4's next new class, the Amazon, which is of course a fan-favorite from Diablo 2 that I can't wait to see return in D4 in "the first half of 2027." The Amazon class wields a bow, naturally, but will also bring an entirely new weapon, the Javelin, which you can see being put to deadly use in the below gameplay footage:

Here are the best RPGs we recommend playing in 2026.

Diablo 5 is coming in spring 2029, Blizzard has announced.

Blizzard blew the lid off of BlizzCon 2026 with the surprise announcement that Diablo 4 is officially getting a full-blown sequel. It was widely expected that we'd see a new hero revealed alongside a new expansion, and we did see that, but Diablo 5 was truly unexpected. Naturally, we're still in the early development stages at this point, but we did get a brief cinematic trailer teasing a horrifying world where "Sanctuary has fallen, and Diablo has won."

"For the first time, you won't be fighting to stop Diablo from taking Sanctuary, you'll be entering a world where he already has," says Blizzard. "There are no towns or safe places to protect you."

It's particularly surprising to hear a new Diablo game is coming because Diablo 4, the most recent entry in the series, is only three years old, having released in May 2023. That said, there have been rumors and reports for a while now indicating Xbox is pushing its first-party studios to pick up the pace of new releases in beloved franchises, so this certainly seems to be evidence corroborating those claims. If it does release in 2029 as planned, that would be only six years between mainline entries, compared to the 11 years it took between Diablo 3 and Diablo 4.

A little while after the initial announcement, Blizzard unveiled Diablo 5's very first confirmed classes, and they include the Monk, Demon Hunter, and a first for the series, the new Plague Doctor, which sounds deliciously dark.

Diablo is getting an animated Netflix series as Blizzard teases Overwatch and Warcraft adaptations

Blizzard has announced a Diablo animated TV series coming to Netflix, and it's teasing similar adaptations for Overwatch and Warcraft as well.

Blizzard president Johanna Faries took the stage at BlizzCon 2026 and revealed the Diablo TV show as one of the big opening announcements, putting the emphasis on Blizzard Entertainment. The only confirmed TV show so far is Diablo, but Faries very explicitly said to watch out for news on adaptations of Overwatch and Warcraft as well.

"As a big Diablo player myself, and as someone who loves the indulgent darkness of Sanctuary, I am very excited to see this project come to life," Faries said.

Virtually nothing is known about the Diablo Netflix series other than the simple fact that it's happening, but there's no denying there's been a huge resurgence of video game adaptations for film and TV in recent years. For years, the stench of atrocious video game movies from the '90s (not naming names) seemed to have scared off Hollywood from wanting anything to do with gaming properties, but with massive success like Sonic, Mario, and Uncharted, it seems nearly everything's on the table these days. Genuinely, it's harder to parse which major video game IPs haven't been tapped for some sort of adaptation than it is to identify all of the ones that are being adapted.

Don't know what the heck I'm talking about? Just check out our exhaustive guide to the best video game movies you can watch and not hate yourself for having watched.

Blizzard union members represented by the Communications Workers of America (CWA) have won a contract that shields a total of 1,900 workers at the World of Warcraft developer ahead of BlizzCon 2026, and in the middle of parent company Microsoft's ongoing plan to layoff a total of 3,200 people.

"It's a new day at Blizzard, where greater power for workers is translating into more innovative games for players," says CWA president Claude Cummings Jr. in a press release. The union – which includes World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Diablo, Blizzard's story and franchise development team – is now guaranteed protections regarding layoffs, Microsoft's AI usage, and other urgent concerns.

"The company has to talk with us before implementing AI tech that affects our working conditions, and we get to negotiate over the impact of that,” senior World of Warcraft designer Paul Cox tells Aftermath "We'll also be regularly discussing AI as part of our labor management committee, which is the sort of meeting between the union and the company on a frequent basis where we can bring up everything from AI to 'Hey, people are complaining that the toilet doors have too large of a gap in them.'"

And since Microsoft is cracking its knuckles ahead of another 1,600 layoffs at Xbox, Blizzard union workers also made sure to secure "really strong layoff protections," Cox says. Union members are now eligible for at least four weeks of severance and recall rights that last 14 months, which give qualified laid-off workers the opportunity to be "recalled" into open positions at Blizzard during that time period.

Cox explains, "If WoW has a bunch of layoffs, but Diablo doesn't, and Diablo is looking to expand, the folks who are laid off from WoW can get recalled into Diablo if they're qualified, which has definitely never happened in our industry before, and is very rare to see just in general. So we are really excited about that."

Blizzard workers have been fighting to feel steady in an increasingly unstable industry for a while now – apparently, "a few hundred people" have been stationing themselves outside the Blizzard campus' 12-foot tall orc statue to make "noise on a regular basis," says Blizzard senior editor Alison Veneto. But Veneto thinks what really convinced Blizzard bosses to take the company's union members seriously was the threat of an awkward BlizzCon 2026, which starts on September 12.

"I'll go ahead and say it: BlizzCon is next week," she explains. "Going into BlizzCon without a contract with the level of mobilization that had been ramping up from Blizzard employees could have been uncomfortable." But now Blizzard union members' efforts have paid off, and everyone can relax – until the next thing.

43-year CRPG veteran behind Fallout and Wasteland "worried about job loss" from AI, which seems justified now that his parent company Microsoft laid off 9,000 in exchange for more slop.

Something's being teased by Blizzard for StarCraft 2. A strange transmission started coming through the official site recently, and another is now available, potentially teasing the return of one Sarah Kerrigan.

The first teaser made it clear that Blizzard has made another ARG for the franchise, and now the second appears to point towards where this is heading. In this transmission, we get snippets about the contents of some crates going completely amok, potentially leading to a gruesome incident.

There's "screeching and screaming" going on within the precious cargo. It's all hush-hush, but distinctly ominous. Then we see a patient's shipping log. The person's name begins with a 'K', and the remaining seven letters are missing.

Hm. Eight letters, and starts with a 'K'? That seems like it might actually be Kerrigan, the infamous psychic spy who's infested by the Zerg to serve their bidding. Joke's on them, though, since she manages to take over the entire hive due to her extreme mental prowess.

She's made recurring appearances across the Starcraft series, often wreaking havoc of some description or another. We last saw her leaving with James Raynor, two years after she managed to kill Amon. On-screen text said James was "never heard from again."

She, on the other hand, isn't named in the epilogue. Convenient. Fans have been sensing something is on the horizon after a surprise patch turned the game on its head back in July. The last time Blizzard did an ARG with the Starcraft community was in 2013 for Heart of the Swarm. We'll see where this one leads, but fans are on the case, deconstructing every sliver of information that arrives.

Days before BlizzCon, Blizzard begins mysterious StarCraft teaser amid rumors of StarCraft 3

It's been over a decade since the last proper new entry in the StarCraft series, but hopes for a new game have intensified alongside a new report suggesting that Blizzard is finalizing a deal to hand off the long-awaited next entry in the series to Nexon. While that report hasn't been officially confirmed, somebody at Blizzard is clearly keen to get StarCraft fans breathing a little faster. A mysterious new teaser has hit the game's official site just days before BlizzCon.

If you head to the official StarCraft site right now, it displays the normal marketing copy for StarCraft Remastered – except it's not actually normal at all. All over the page, various bits of it are glitching out. The glitches aren't normal web display errors, either – they're clearly designed as visually arresting displays of static.

There's no clear indication of what any of this means, but the timing couldn't be more conspicuous. Rumors of a new StarCraft game have persisted for years, with word of a StarCraft shooter (not the long-dead Ghost) in development at Blizzard dating back to 2024. This year, reports began to circulate of an entirely separate StarCraft project in development at Nexon.

Now we've got a follow-up report suggesting that Blizzard and Nexon are close to finalizing a deal for that mysterious StarCraft game, and a vague-but-unmistakable teaser on the official site. All this comes just before BlizzCon on September 12, an annual convention that always serves as host for the publisher's biggest announcements.

While the reports suggest that this project is in development at a Nexon subsidiary known for free-to-play shooters, surely – surely – at least one of these games has to be a proper StarCraft 3, right? I can only hope we're not about to have another Diablo Immortal situation on our hands.

There's a reason StarCraft tops our list of the best RTS games of all time.

StarCraft sequel rumors are blazing after a report claims that South Korean-Japanese publisher Nexon is close to acquiring development rights for the sci-fi onslaught from IP holder Blizzard.

South Korean newspaper The Chosun Ilbo reports (according to machine translation) that, as of September 2, Nexon and Blizzard are on the knife's edge of finalizing their deal, which would allow Nexon to make that StarCraft sequel people have been fretting over since 2025. At that time, it seemed that Nexon was in competition with fellow South Korean developers Krafton, Netmarble, and NCSoft before the Arc Raiders publisher bested them.

The Chosun Ilbo – through a translation by Twitter account KoreaXBOXnews – notes that StarCraft is still immensely popular in South Korea nearly 30 years after the original game's release, and it consistently ranks among the top 10 games people swarm to PC cafes for.

Nexon apparently has to wait to make it official, but the studio has reportedly already started work on its hypothetical StarCraft sequel – which could very well be StarCraft 3, 16 years late. But no one knows that yet except Nexon, which hasn't shared any details about its StarCraft plot throughout this year-long saga.

It at least seems that Nexon's hypothetical StarCraft game is unrelated to Blizzard's hypothetical StarCraft game. Blizzard decided to halt StarCraft 2 expansions in 2020, though the developer was fiddling with another entry in the StarCraft series as recently as 2024. So there is a world in which famished StarCraft fans are suddenly handed two new games like plates of bottomless breadsticks. Nexon just needs to wrap up its rumored deal with Blizzard, and Blizzard needs to figure out if it's really as committed to keeping StarCraft alive as it occasionally pretends.

Nexon has at least seemed to make some progress with its take on StarCraft. It's reportedly collaborating with StarCraft map modder Choi Jun-ho, who would lead the StarCraft sequel at Nexon's subsidiary that made the free-to-play FPS Sudden Attack. StarCraft 3 sounds promising, if it exists.

Arc Raiders boss promoted to Nexon chief backs AI push for "redesigning game development" after building a hit "at a fraction of the cost you'd expect for a AAA game."

An unlikely collaboration has been revealed between Blizzard Entertainment and CD Projekt Red, the studios behind Diablo and The Witcher series, respectively.

The two companies announced the team-up in separate blogs posted to their respective websites, with CDPR sharing a substantive breakdown of the studios' relationship with each other, and Blizzard opting for a more straightforward explanation of what the collab actually means right now.

The TLDR is that The Witcher 3: Remastered, which was announced during today's Gamescom Opening Night Live, is coming to Blizzard's Battle.net launcher when it releases on September 29. Meanwhile, the upcoming Witcher 3 expansion, Songs of the Past, will also come to Battle.net when it launches next year, and if you pre-order it, you'll get a Geralt of Rivia-inspired skin in Diablo 4.

That's exciting enough, but it sounds like CDPR and Blizzard have a lot more planned for their big new partnership that's still to be revealed. "Both CD PROJEKT RED and Blizzard Entertainment create worlds that allow players to immerse themselves in captivating adventures for hundreds of hours," says CDPR global PR director Radek Grabowski in a statement. "Both studios have always had the ambition to raise the bar — for themselves and, in doing so, for the video game industry. Their worlds and characters have inspired not only other game developers, but also musicians, filmmakers, cosplayers, and, of course, countless players."

The official CDPR Twitter account adds: "And that's just the beginning of our partnership with Blizzard…"

According to Blizzard, we'll learn more about its collab with CDPR during this year's BlizzCon, which takes place on Saturday, September 12, and Sunday, September 13. GamesRadar+ will be in attendance and you can bet your bottom dollar we'll give you all of the firsthand details as they come.

The Witcher 3 Remastered has "improved combat," which hopefully fixes the 2015 RPG classic's biggest problem

World of Warcraft players enjoying Blizzard's Classic edition have been plagued by one very infamous PvP legend for a good couple of years now – but it turns out that banning him on Twitch wasn't the way to go, frustrations be damned.

If you've not heard of Redridgeguy, he might just stand as the most notorious PvP player on World of Warcraft Classic in all of Europe.

Why, you might ask?

Well, he absolutely destroys other folks – we're talking hundreds per day – by reaching hard (near-impossible) to access spots and sending his pet in to tear through unsuspecting Alliance players. He's been discussed over on Reddit and other online forums time and time again.

Heck, just two weeks ago, a fan asked if he was "allowed" to play the way he does, saying it felt unfair. It's safe to say that "infamous" is a bit of an understatement – and now, players have retaliated… or so they thought.

As a new post over on X outlines, Redridgeguy actually got banned on Twitch following various reports from disgruntled WoW fans. This "backfired," though, as Redridgeguy's streams were the only reliable way to tell where he was in-game.

How come? Redridgeguy's streams were the only reliable way to tell where he was in-game, basically. "With his stream no longer up it became an all-out bloodbath and even other Horde members joined in on the fight to camp the Alliance even harder," as Jerome puts it – and it's quite amusing all around.

As it stands now, Redridgeguy appears to still be banned over on Twitch, too. His YouTube channel is up, however.

It appears that players want him gone gone, though, with one comment writing, "People that do unhinged stuff like this guy deserve to be banned from the game entirely." I'm not sure I agree myself – but then again, I'm not a PvP enjoyer regardless.

The capacity to be downright annihilated (as Redridgeguy evidently does to just about anyone who crosses his path) is far too big, and I've got grinding to do elsewhere without fearing constantly my death.

I do wonder if Redridgeguy will reappear on Twitch someday, although part of me wonders if it'd be more amusing if he doesn't… Considering how he's known for obliterating hundreds while streaming, how many will he take down while completely concealed?

Blizzard takes rare World of Warcraft mount from players as the MMO's latest crackdown on real-money transactions continues

Diablo creator David Brevik is honest with himself. He truly loves the 1991 Dungeons and Dragons-lite, Dungeon Master cousin Eye of the Beholder, but he seems certain the landmark PC game has the worst ending. Ever.

Brevik recounts his time playing the game to PC Gamer in a new interview, saying, "I had mapped out all the levels on graph paper. I was really into it. And then at the end, I killed the final boss, and a little dialogue box pops up and says 'Congratulations, you win!' or whatever. Then quits to desktop.

"So that's the worst ending of any game I've ever played," Brevik concludes. He isn't alone in thinking this way – though Eye of the Beholder astounded '90s players with its stunning, nearly-3D graphics, but one contemporary review from the magazine Computer Gaming World complains, "Not since Sentinel Worlds I has any CRPG had so abrupt and unrewarding a finish. You kill the Beholder. You get a text box of congratulations. You are dropped out of the program to DOS. End of game."

Brevik agrees, "But I really love the game. It's amazing," he reminds PC Gamer.

"I mean I love/hate Eye of the Beholder," he admits. After not playing it "in a long time," he remembered it recently and decided to give it another shot.

"Eye of the Beholder was, in 1991, one of the best games that I'd ever played," says Brevik. "I was super into it. The graphics, the immersion. This is pre-Wolfenstein [3D], so 3D stuff was not really a thing. But this had some fake 3D-style graphics that you were taking a party through a dungeon, and it was turn-based and grid-based" – and he stills loves every inch of it, except for that insulting ending. I mean, come on, I can quit to desktop myself.

Playing Baldur's Gate 3 with no weapons at all forced me to progress my story in a very specific way.

World of Warcraft is unsurprisingly no stranger to account boosting and other no-no forms of real-money transactions, with Blizzard cracking down every now and then on guilty players.

This month is no exception, as the developer has sent out another wave of bans against folks it believes are responsible for engaging in real-money transactions – namely in the EU.

You can find countless streams (some mid-raid and all) of entire guilds being wiped out by game mods over on Twitch and the like, seeing players pulled from the game unexpectedly. It's not the first time that Blizzard has taken action, and it certainly won't be the last.

One of the biggest talking points with this round of bans, however, is the removal of players that supposedly weren't participating in real-money transactions but were in guilds that have other people who are – and, you know, reports that Blizzard is also ripping a very rare mount from fans' accounts in the process: the Mythic L'ura mount, to be precise.

You'll find such discussions over on Reddit, where players post the message they got from the dev.

"During a recent review, we found one or more rewards gained on this account were connected to activity that violates our in-game policies," the supposed prompt from Blizzard reads. "As a result, we have removed these rewards from your account."

Comments also mention other allegedly affected players, with some describing how they lost the Mythic mount even though they didn't violate the Terms of Service.

"A LOT of people in my guild (including myself) lost it because people were in our group who paid for a boost without any of us knowing," as one reply puts it. "Kind of fucking sucks."

There are various other threads on the forum (and elsewhere online) claiming the same scenario. It's a tough one, for sure, because Blizzard technically isn't doing anything wrong by cracking down on real-money transactions.

On the other hand, though, it'd be nice to see a better system of detection that snapshots individuals rather than entire guilds – and, evidently, I'm not alone in thinking so.

Blizzard fires World of Warcraft dev after using "development-only spells on a live realm" to help a friend breeze through bosses

If the Overwatch battle pass already made your eyes glaze over with its multilayered doodads and rewards, cover your eyes now, because Blizzard is about to make it substantially more complicated – but also better, if Blizzard plays its cards right.

The Overwatch "battle mass revamp" will arrive tomorrow, August 11, as producer director Chris McCabe explains in a newly minted blog post. You can also see a bit of the new BP in action in the new Season 4 trailer (below).

With it, Blizzard is splitting today's 80-tier battle pass system into five shorter "tracks" which players can choose from at the start of each season. Each track leads to different rewards, letting players select what goodies they want to unlock first.

As McCabe explains, "if you’re a Support player, you may want to unlock a Brigitte skin as soon as possible. By selecting the track that features Brigitte’s skin first, you’ll now earn a new skin for our cat-loving engineer far faster than if her skin was placed in, say, tier 70 of the previous Battle Pass design."

Importantly, you can still unlock and clear all five tracks to obtain absolutely everything. "Play through one last track and you’ll finish the 80-tier pass; you’ll then start earning the usual prestige titles after that," McCabe adds.

I've progressed more battle passes than modern medicine would advise, and in my mind this proposition immediately raises two red flags: how long do these new tracks take compared to the old system, and how can I tee up all five tracks?

Blizzard is quick to address these points. "It’s important to call out that the number of tiers in the Battle Pass isn’t changing and you won’t have to work harder to complete your Battle Pass," McCabe tells Overwatch fans. So, the total reward count and the amount of time (or pass XP) it takes to unlock those rewards should stay the same.

Additionally, McCabe says "you can also change which track is active at any time, giving you total control over which rewards you want to progress toward."

The cherry on top is what Blizzard is calling a "Tier Hack" system. Uncover your battle pass-fearing eyes, because this bit sounds like a meaningful upgrade.

The buyable premium version of the Overwatch battle pass will now come with one Tier Hack that can be used to replace "any skin at the end of a track" with "a different Legendary skin of your choice from a curated list of past Overwatch Shop and Loot Box skins."

The selection of skins available to be hacked in will change each season. "This pool will always include skins for Heroes in all 3 roles, and it’s our goal to also represent Heroes that may not show up in seasonal Battle Passes as often," McCabe explains. "Season 4 is launching with 12 Legendary skins in the curated 'Tier Hack' pool, pulling from some fan-favorite skin collections of the past."

If everything works as described – and McCabe says the BP revamp will be shown in an incoming livestream alongside improved UI – this could be a nice change for Overwatch. Ideally, players get the new skins they want faster and have another way to acquire old skins they've missed.

"We also have other exciting BP updates coming in the not-so-distant future as well, including our Legacy Battle Pass Unvault system, arriving at the Season 4 midseason in September," McCabe concludes.

Overwatch escapes "Mostly Negative" Steam reviews 3 years after becoming the worst-rated game on Valve's store: "In 2026, we finally got back to just Overwatch."

Three years after its initial launch, Diablo 4 is reportedly set to arrive on Switch 2 next month – although I can't say I'm too surprised after an age rating for the game already suggested as much.

According to reliable leaker Billbil-kun via Dealabs, Diablo 4 is set to arrive on either September 15 or 18 on Nintendo's latest console. While you'll apparently be able to buy a physical box for it, it won't come with a cartridge, but reportedly a download code (no, not even a Game-Key Card).

It's claimed that the Switch 2 version of the game will cost $69.99 / £62.99 – this is the same price as the Age of Hatred collection bundle on other platforms, which includes the Lord of Hatred and Vessel of Hatred DLC as well as the base game. However, Billbil-kun notes that it's not known if the new DLC will be part of the Switch 2 version at this stage, but at that price, I certainly hope so.

Last year, before the Switch 2 even launched, Diablo general manager Rod Fergusson said "there's opportunity there" to bring Diablo 4 to the console, but noted that "live services on Switch have been a little bit challenging in the past." While he didn't expand on what these issues were, more recent evidence has been mounting up to suggest Blizzard has found a way to make the game work on the platform. Specifically, back in June, fans spotted an age rating from the Taiwan Entertainment Software Rating board that listed the Lord of Hatred expansion as coming to the Switch 2.

Assuming that the September launch date for Diablo 4 on Switch 2 is accurate, chances are we won't be waiting very long to see an announcement. Billbil-kun speculates it could be shown at Gamescom 2026 at the end of the month, a few weeks before its apparent release.

Blizzard "heard your feedback" on Diablo 4 Mythics and is completely changing how they work again: "The random factors are gone."

I still have an original PC copy of the 1996 action-RPG Diablo holding down the fort in my home office, but today it's a stark reminder of how much has changed in the 30 years since it came out. Former Blizzard president Mike Ybarra, who left the company in 2024, says the trend toward digital games is clearer than ever thanks to fresh data from Sony on PlayStation game sales, even if he wishes we could keep buying games on disc forever.

Reacting to PlayStation's Q1 FY26 results, which show 82% of the company's game sales are now digital, Ybarra says he's surprised discless games are dominating physical media to that extent. For reference, reputable games analyst Daniel Ahmad of Niko Partners has said Xbox's digital ratio is over 90%, while Capcom is expecting 95% digital sales by next year.

"82% of games purchased are digital? Wow, that's very high. I recall when I was in the business, we passed by 50% which was a huge milestone," Ybarra shares.

"I wish physical media was here to stay, but the purchasing trend from consumers is clear. I really hope we see a digital promise of trust, transparency, and clarity soon (across all media!)."

That isn't the first time Ybarra has called for some sort of system to guarantee permanent ownership of a digital purchase, having previously expressed his desire for a "digital promise" to ensure gamers don't have to worry whether "games will work in the future or not," as well as a second-hand marketplace for people to sell and trade digital games.

Ybarra's outspoken and frequently controversial views on the industry aside, this pretty much sums up how most financially disinterested feel about the situation with PlayStation killing discs in 2028 and the industry's broader shift toward digital-only games. Calling back to my opener about Diablo on PC, it's worth noting that disc drives haven't been standard in mainstream gaming PCs for more than a decade.

Even if it means bad news for pretty much everyone, a largely discless future, in which physical games are reduced to novelties and limited releases, has seemed inevitable for a while. At least we know one high-profile games industry exec is mourning along with us when he isn't rage-baiting World of Warcraft players.

PlayStation ditching physical games is "a bridge across the bad years" of high hardware costs, analyst says, but it means "casuals and youngsters will drift off to mobile, PC, and free-to-play even faster"

The controversy around Mythic items has emerged as the defining issue of Diablo 4's fourteenth season, and Blizzard is back yet again with another foundational change to how the game's rarest loot works.

Diablo 4's Season of Death Awakening launched last month with a big compromise for players who were upset about the big Mythic rework previewed in the PTR. Instead of completely removing a Mythic Unique's special powers and leaving the item's identity up to the RNG gods, Blizzard made it so that a Mythic Unique will always drop with two guaranteed stats, with the other two being random. Well, it appears that wasn't enough to win over the Diablo 4 player base, as PTR 3.2.0, which will be available August 4 to 11, is doing away with Mythic RNG entirely.

"We've heard your feedback, and we're making further improvements to Mythic Uniques and Iconic Mythics," says Blizzard in a new breakdown of PTR 3.2.0. "Changes will make the system simpler, offering more crafting choices and giving you far more control over that one major piece you'll need to carry your build into the highest levels."

Unsurprisingly, Blizzard isn't completely reversing course on Mythics 3.0, meaning Mythic items are still a type of Unique rather than their own distinct category, but whereas previous changes made for items with 50% RNG, the new versions will be "far more deterministic," which is pretty much what players have been asking for this whole time.

The Horadric Cube will now have a new "Upgrade Direct" recipe that'll let you do exactly what it sounds like. Instead of the old upgrade recipe that spat out a completely random Mythic item of the same slot when you put in a Unique, which was causing lots of players to mistakenly trash some of their best items, this new and more "direct" recipe gives you the exact same item but of Mythic quality.

"As the name implies, this is a direct transfer to a Mythic state: the random factors are gone," confirms Blizzard. "Put in a Tibault's Will with ideal affixes and dialed-in Tempering and Masterworking, and you'll get a Mythic-ized version of that Tibault's Will with all affixes and modifications retained.

"The only restriction is that you cannot use this recipe on an Unmodifiable item, so beware of Transfiguring your precious Mythic Unique candidate!"

There is one more pretty crucial caveat here. Any Mythic created using the Cube will have a Crafted tag on it, and you'll only be able to equip one Crafted Mythic at a time. You can have as many Mythics equipped as you want so long as they're all made at the Jeweler, but just one Cube-crafted Mythic.

Hopefully, this latest change to Mythics is the one that satisfies Blizzard and the Diablo 4 community, as frankly, keeping track of what's what has become a full-time job for me. Although, I suppose the Diablo 4 Mythic beat isn't the worst career trajectory I could've thought of.

Diablo 4 lead says "there's often no ideal solution" when it comes to doing anything in the action-RPG: "Often, we just have to pick a thing"

A World of Warcraft game master has been fired from Blizzard Entertainment after the community caught them using "development-only spells" to help their friends breeze through a dungeon and instantly wipe two bosses. Essentially, they were caught helping some mates cheat.

The cheating scandal first came to light earlier this week when a couple of Reddit users shared evidence that a game master had used insta-kill abilities usually reserved for Blizzard employees to demolish at least two bosses. A player from the group all but spelled out the situation in a stream with Yumytv, too: "I go to my GM friend and I'm like bro please can you do me a solid? This thing has 20 million [health] bro, can you please just one-shot it?"

Things sort of escalated from there, with the community wondering how commonplace incidents like this were. "Now you know it exists, therefore the pandora's box is wide open," one Redditor writes. "Which make you question a lot of stuff." Were secret GMs all around, helping their pals achieve titles and record runs?

As PC Gamer reports, Blizzard has now investigated the incident, fired the employee responsible, and assured folks that GMs aren't regularly manipulating games in secret.

"As we mentioned, we internally monitored and confirmed a recent incident in which a World of Warcraft group gained an unfair advantage by abuse of access to development-only spells on a live realm," community manager Randy 'Kaivax' Jordan writes in a recent forum post. "Our tools confirmed what was also surfaced in community discussions, and we have investigated the incident carefully. We can confirm that this was the action of a single Blizzard employee, in violation of our Code of Conduct. This employee is no longer with the company effective immediately. We are also taking action against the player accounts that were complicit in this violation.

"It has always been the case that a small number of Blizzard employees can use developer tools and spells on live servers: this lets us test and make urgent fixes to the live game when they’re needed," Kaivax explains. "Every use of these internal spells and commands on live realms is logged and shared with our Platform Security team to help ensure that the occasional use of this access is warranted. The use of development tools for anything other than development work is against company policy. It's because of the process we have in place around use of these tools that we're confident this incident was isolated to one individual."

The community manager than thanks everyone who brought the information to light, alongside community-led sites. "When your findings line up with ours, it helps confirm that our own tools are catching what they should, and we're grateful for the way we work alongside you all to protect the game and each other."

"You'll never get another World of Warcraft or Morrowind in the current climate," id Software producer says as constant layoffs batter the industry.

The One Ring in The Lord of the Rings is generally bad for you. Besides attracting Sauron's attention, the dark magic imbued inside doesn't yield many positive side effects. A particular piece of jewelry in Diablo 4 is garnering a similar reputation, since players are finding it causes them to die unexpectedly.

According to its stats, the Wendigo Brand is meant to make you more powerful the more kills you get. Specifically, getting 15 kills within 50 seconds makes you tougher and increases your life. What's not included is that wearing it could cause you to suddenly and inexplicably drop dead.

That's what fans across the community are reporting, anyway. Threads across Reddit, dating back months, have players saying their health is depleting rapidly after partaking in encounters wearing the ring.

This has led to people losing battles they really should be winning while grinding in the action-RPG. "One ring to rule them all," reads a Reddit thread. "This ring will make you go crazy and eventually will kill you."

The comments contain several more anecdotal reports of the equipment harming their progress. "Removed it from my build and random deaths just stopped," says the top commenter. What's happening, according to those who've experienced it, is that when you reach 50 stacks on the health effect, it starts draining your life instead.

Whatever's going on, it isn't good, and claims that it's a bug have been substantiated to an extent by Blizzard itself, as the developer is now investigating. "Thank you all for the reports, team is looking into this," Marcus 'Marcoose' Kretz, senior community manager on the Diablo games, said on the official forums.

I implore them to proceed with caution. We all saw what happened to Gollum. And Isildur. And Boromir. And Frodo himself. Patch it out quickly and effectively.

Diablo 4 hotfix makes it easier to farm Mythics as Blizzard confirms Season 15 will remove Mythic reroll crafting from the Horadric Cube, "adding a direct upgrade" instead

A World of Warcraft game master has been accused of helping a Twitch streamer's Mythic group cheat a high-level dungeon by using their GM powers to insta-kill an enemy, and Blizzard says it's actively investigating the situation as evidence piles up.

This began with a July 21 Reddit post from user Acrobatic_Pianist688, who claimed to have seen a "Blizzard GM death touching mobs in M+23 for their favorite streamer." Of course, we don't actually know if anyone's "favorite" streamer was involved, but Acrobatic_Pianist did link to a Warcraft Log record showing an abrupt end to a Mythic+23 fight in the Nexus-Point Xenas dungeon, caused by an "instakill" and "Area Death (TEST)" effect from user Daijosai, believed to be the GM in question.

Game masters are Blizzard employees with World of Warcraft privileges and permissions that enable them to resolve in-game disputes and support requests.

The incident caught fire online, and chatter only intensified after this Warcraft log was highlighted in a stream from WoW content creator yumytv during a conversation with Yiesus, a small Twitch streamer and one of the apparent teammates in this dungeon run, who's described by yumy as "witness testimony."

The moment was clipped and shared, the Twitch chat filled with accusations of "cheater," after Yiesus openly said, "I go to my GM friend, I'm like, bro, please can you do me a solid? This thing has 20 mil bro, can you please just one-shot? One time for the one time. I meant no harm from it. If Blizzard wants to revoke that key or revoke my title, whatever they see fit, I don't care. Personally, I think it was harmless. I didn't expect him to do it. In hindsight he shouldn't have done it. He was just doing me a solid."

One of the other streamers in this dungeon run, YaraByte, shared the same clip on her Twitter.

This mess quickly reached the official Blizzard forums, with players calling for the GM to be punished and the clear to be revoked, prompting a response from Blizzard. Late Tuesday night, community manager Randy 'Kaivax' Jordan replied, both in the forum thread and to the original Reddit post.

"Thank you to those who flagged this," Jordan says. "We are reviewing and will take action as appropriate. A fair and competitive playing field is essential to our games, and we won’t tolerate cheating."

Blizzard continues taking action against World of Warcraft private servers as it pushes on with a lawsuit citing "large-scale, egregious, and ongoing infringement" of its MMO.

The latest Diablo 4 Season 14 patch is now available, and once again, it's tweaking drop rates for Mythics and making them easier to get in general. This has been a running theme since Season of Death Awakening kicked off at the end of June, though the current changes should help alleviate lingering frustrations.

In Undercity, you now have a much better chance of getting a Mythic from the Mythic Tribute of Armaments. If you're Torment X, the odds are "greatly increased," while for Torment XII, they're now totally guaranteed. Those are more forgiving numbers all around.

On top of this, Superior Lair Keys are now part of the last Glints of Hope cache, creating a way to farm them. This will make getting more Mythics easier in general, in terms of gathering Pandemonium Fragments and for finding the items after a big encounter.

These efforts are part of an ongoing clean up from Blizzard since Season 14 turned the hunt for Unique Mythics into a complete disaster. Drop rates are practically non-existent in some cases, as multiple players and streamers found that they couldn't find any Uniques despite playing for hours-long sessions.

Then, a limitation of only being able to carry one crafted Mythic made building characters a headache. The devs have been progressively dismantling and reworking these hurdles, but as always, changes need to be methodical and gradual, lest they over-correct and create issues going the other way.

More changes are already hallmarked for Season 15's Horadric Cube, too. "We're removing Mythic reroll crafting and adding a direct upgrade to Mythic that preserves the original unique item," Marcus 'Marcoose' Kretz, senior community manager on the Diablo series, says in a developer's note referenced by YouTuber Cliptis. "We'll evaluate bringing back this rule for that specific crafting path only."

As it stands, upgrading to Mythic gives you a random item of that class in return – it doesn't guarantee what you're upgrading is what you'll get. Cliptis adds that he believes if Blizzard does this, the rule of only allowing one crafted Mythic will come back, but that's just conjecture at the minute.

The team would be hard pushed to make matters worse than high-level players not finding particular treasure whatsoever, but I digress. This hotfix, and others that are no doubt in the pipeline, should make people's lives in the underworld a little better. For now, anyway.

Diablo 4 players are accidentally trashing their best items due to an "objectively misleading" recipe, and it's the best argument I've seen for yellow paint in games.

Being the second-biggest game in any given corner of the medium is nothing to sniff at. It's a competitive industry, and having enough players to stay afloat is a luxury many never manage. RuneScape studio Jagex isn't exactly dissatisfied with silver medals at the minute, but the aspiration is to take the top spot someday.

The studio's CEO, Jon Bellamy, made as much extremely clear to The Game Business. "The dream is that we're not the number two biggest MMO brand in the world, we’re number one," he says.

"There's a big old gap between us and number one," he continues. "But if we get it right, we know we can make headway."

The top spot belongs to World of Warcraft, still the definitive MMORPG. We could split hairs for hours over what constitutes an MMO here and by what values we're ranking them (Final Fantasy 14 players would surely like a word), but RuneScape and WoW are both online fantasy RPGs, making them fairly direct competition even if they play very differently.

RuneScape's got a strong foothold at this point, since the original version predates our first quests around Azeroth by a few years. However, World of Warcraft's been impossible to overtake since soon after launch, with greater production values than practically anything else available at the time, and a business model that toed the line between affordable and sustainable.

But Jagex has hung in there over the last 25 years, providing a worthy alternative to anyone who doesn't enjoy WoW or sickos who want another grind on their second monitor. Bellamy knows how it sounds having the giant in his sights, but argues, what's the point of goals if they don't scare you a little?

"It's lofty and ambitious, but if you're going to set lofty and ambitious goals, why not swing for the top?" he adds. "So, that's the number one goal."

Honestly, I wouldn't count out the classic MMO. RuneScape's maintained relevance without abandoning the aesthetic and (very literal) old-school ideas that made it what it is. We'll see what the next decade has to offer.

RuneScape creators asked their mom to help design the MMO's first enemies: "Only much later did they even consider actually hiring people"

The latest Heroes of the Storm patch is here, adding a new map to Ranked, giving multiple characters a nice little rebalance, making some quality-of-life changes. However, the wackiest thing to many onlookers is the fact the game's still being looked after at all.

Right up top on the patch notes, is the reveal that Haunted Mines is now part of Ranked play. A good one for anyone who enjoys all things spooky; the Grave Keeper is the announcer, which is always fun.

Lucio gets a new skin, called Ruby Chromestesia, and the music for the homescreen and startup has been updated. Then there's a slew of nerfs and buffs across the MOBA's roster.

Abathur's Locust Strain has had its health taken down from 350 down to 225, and the Locust's base damage has been reduced to 36 from 58. But on the flip side, Locusts now do a 100% bonus hit on non-Heroes, which will surely come in handy.

Further down the list, Diablo's Shadow Charge has been buffed to inflict 45 damage instead of 40, and their overpower is similarly powered up to do 80 instead of 73. These are just a few examples of what's a long list of changes from the team, and you'd think they'd give people pause, but the replies on Twitter are merely fascinated by the fact a new patch is out at all.

"Wasn't this game shut down?" one account asks. "When did this come back?" another says. "Not trying to be funny, but I honestly remember reading it was closed down," a third reply says.

What they're referring to, I imagine, is Blizzard deciding to stop making new additions to the MOBA back in 2022. However, support was always going to continue, and monthly updates have been happening ever since.

I'm not sure what it is about this one that's attracted all the attention, but if it encourages anyone to boot the game back up, then it's a good thing. Go give Haunted Mines a look, I bet it's fun!

Final Fantasy 14's Third Walk raid starts with FF11's most infamous boss being bodied in a cutscene because a raid designer wanted to show off the true strength of your first foe

Another day, another Diablo 4 stir-up. This time, however, I'm not sure how much blame can be reasonably placed on developer Blizzard, as a big part of the issue stems from some very important – and not even very fine – print that's just not being read.

I'm always cautious to throw up a shield around Blizzard when disgruntled Diablo 4 players come a-knockin', but in this case, the root of the controversy can be pretty evenly divvied up between legitimately confusing precedent set by another crafting recipe, and also gamers' unwillingness to read onscreen text.

See, Diablo 4's season 14, which hasn't been going down well at all, introduced a new crafting recipe for the Horadric Cube. It's called Upgrade to Mythic, which at face value would make you think it's a way to take a Unique and make it a Mythic item with all of the same properties and one additional Mythic power. After all, the pre-existing Upgrade to Legendary path does exactly that, but at the Legendary tier. But no, the Upgrade to Mythic recipe takes your Unique and gives you back a random Mythic item of the same type. So your Unique dagger is going to come out a Mythic dagger, but here's the rub: it won't necessarily be the same dagger that went into the Cube, and in all likelihood, it will be a completely different item with its own stats.

The tooltip for the recipe reads verbatim: "Transmutes a Unique equipment item with at least 850 Item Power into a random Mythic of the same item slot," which is pretty darn unambiguous. That said, I can understand that the Upgrade to Legendary recipe being what it is can cause some confusion. It's just that, still, at the end of the day, simply reading that recipe description even just once would completely eliminate any doubt about what the crafting tool is going to do.

Still, "Diablo 4 Players Keep Destroying Valuable Items Because of One Misleading Recipe," reads a recent headline from Icy Veins. "Guilty," reads the top comment on a Reddit thread discussing the article. "I lost a really good dagger because I thought I was 'upgrading.'"

"Me too. I logged off for a few days afterwards," says another commenter.

"Same lol," says another.

"Yup me too," says another. And so on.

Again, I'm not saying Blizzard is completely blameless here. It is undeniably weird that the Upgrade to Mythic recipe destroys the input item and gives you something completely random when the Upgrade to Legendary recipe gives you the same item but Legendary, but I also can't help but think this whole mess is a pretty compelling argument for the infamous yellow paint that's often used as a visual cue to guide players toward their goal. In this case, it's not about reading between the lines – it's literally about reading the lines.

On the bright side: New Diablo 4 hotfix finally increases Mythic drop rates and removes limits on equipping them as Blizzard admits "not every idea lands exactly as intended."

There's been a new patch for StarCraft 2 from Blizzard, and you might think after 16 years there isn't much the studio can do to truly disrupt the game or its community. Well, you'd be wrong, because a tweak in the latest update is sending shockwave through the player base right now.

The alterations listed are based around both Proton and Terran against Zerg, and there aren't all that many. "We are making changes based on player data and feedback," writes Blizzard in the intro. And right at the top of the Terran list is the biggie: Command Centers now cost 300 minerals instead of 400.

This is rather significant, because it's the main strategic hub of the Terran forces, presenting quite a lot of strategic value for a comparatively low price. The immediate comparison is to Supply Depots, which are 100 minerals, because although Command Centers are still three times more, you get 15 supply. Building one much earlier in a round is a no-brainer, and you can make a bunch of them later with considerable ease.

"This is the most impactful change that we've had in StarCraft 2 since Legacy of the Void," StarCraft 2 YouTuber Harstem says in a video going through the patch. "This is such an insanely big buff to Terran."

To him, this will impact the early, middle and late stages of any confrontation, because of how it subsumes Supply Depots as a choice now. He echoes the sentiments of many fans. "Might be a way to fix Terran early game economy but ultra late game will be even more broken," one Redditor observes.

"Holy [fuck] what are they doing in Anaheim," another incredulously asks. "I feel like this was an accident," a third commenter on Reddit says.

This is very much the kind of change that gets tempered post-rollout, because it's either an error, or the impact is greater than the devs anticipated. One player tells the community to make use of it while it's available. "That shit is 100% getting reverted. Gotta abuse it while you can!" they exclaim. I don't think they're wrong.

StarCraft 2 devs take another swing at getting the RTS game's surprise new update right, but Blizzard still hasn't rolled back the one change fans most want undone.

After almost three weeks of community outcry, Blizzard is modifying the drop rates for Mythics in Diablo 4 Season 14. Players had been finding it tough to get Unique Mythics, to the point where many couldn't find any despite farming specifically for them, and now hotfixes are being rolled out to take the edge off.

"We've heard your feedback on Season of Death Awakening, including Mythic unique drop rates, equip limits, and more," Dan Tanguay, the design director of live service for Diablo 4, says on the official Blizzard forums, as relayed by Marcus 'Marcoose' Kretz, senior community manager for the Diablo series.

"In a patch releasing today, we're increasing the drop rate for Mythics from the Corrupted Reaper boss fight and removing equip limits for Mythic Uniques," he writes. "Additionally, in a patch coming next week, we're adding Superior Lair Keys to the Glints of Hope repeatable cache and increasing the Mythic Tribute drop rates in the Undercity."

How much the drop rate for the Corrupted Reaper battle increases will need to be tested, but seeing as numerous players have gotten exactly zero uniques from that encounter, things can really only go up. Letting people equip more than one is helpful as well – you can only have one crafted Mythic at a time currently, significantly reducing the options for any given build.

His post was made on July 16, yesterday at time of writing, meaning it should be live and available to you whenever you boot up Diablo 4 next. A fan on Reddit amusingly told others they can now "re-install Diablo 4," since a few had commented they were ostensibly avoiding this season due to what was happening with Mythics.

The second patch Tanguay mentioned should massage out further problems, too. "Seasons are where we experiment with new ideas and push Diablo 4 in new directions," he finishes. "Not every idea lands exactly as intended, but we’ll continue listening to your feedback, addressing what’s not working, and applying those lessons to future seasonal updates."

Diablo 4's Overwatch crossover skins have been revealed and they are completely cursed: "Mercy looks like a 90-year-old grandma."