Blizzard was working on Diablo 4 Lord of Hatred before the base RPG even launched, and that's why some of its biggest features were "deployed early"

Diablo 4's new Lord of Hatred expansion is such a foundational shakeup to the ARPG's core systems - not to mention a massive content drop - that you'd be forgiven for thinking it's a whole new game. And as it turns out, it was in development even before the base game launched back in May 2023, a testament to the amount of development resources Blizzard threw at this thing.

It's wild to think that Diablo 4 itself, more than a dozen seasons worth of new content, the Vessel of Hatred DLC, and countless balance updates have dropped in the span of time that Lord of Hatred has been in development, but according to associate game director Zaven Haroutunian, that's exactly the case, and it really goes to show how huge Blizzard has become.

"Throughout the entire development of Lord of Hatred, the number of activities varied, is the right way to put it," Haroutunian tells IGN. "Part of this was because we had such a long start on this project; we've been developing it in some way since before the base game launched, so it's been cooking for a while."

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Similar to a lot of AAA live-service games, Diablo 4's nearly three-year path from launch has been nothing short of a rollercoaster as the game's proudly vocal community reacts to various additions and changes and Blizzard reacts by sending out more patches and larger updates. Since the team has been plugging away at Lord of Hatred in some form since launch, it makes sense that some of its planned features were siphoned over to the main game to help make those dips a little more tolerable.

Haroutunian says "some things that were in prototype or development ended up being deployed early," specifically the Infernal Hordes endgame mode. "It was like, a horde mode would be cool, but what would be even cooler is if we ship that earlier," he says. It was cool.

Lord of Hatred has largely seen glowing reviews from critics and players alike despite a characteristically rough launch from the technical side of things. The first big post-launch patch, which hit all platforms this week, nerfed down a previously unstoppable Butcher, made charms easier to track down, and closed a loophole in which a nameless "useless unique item could be transmuted."

Lord of Hatred is Diablo 4 at its best because it remembers Diablo 3 was good, actually