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Blizzard has been taking in Diablo 4 player feedback and using it to shape game updates since shortly after launch in May 2023, and the developer doesn't expect it'll ever stop.
In the latest issue of PC Gamer magazine, associate game director Zaven Haroutunian and game designer Aislyn Hall opened up about the challenges of keeping everyone happy in a game meant to be played over many years and hundreds of hours. It's the endgame, typically, that draws out the most fervent commenters, and Diablo 4's upcoming Lord of Hatred expansion is geared specifically for players who feel like they run out of stuff to do at the end of every season.
"I play a lot each season and the way I typically end a season is I find myself kind of in a rut where I'm just doing the same thing over and over," says Hall. "I think that pretty much all of these changes we're doing are trying to get you out of those ruts, make you think about the game differently for a longer period of time."
I've been playing Diablo 4 casually pretty consistently since it launched almost three years ago, and as someone who typically only has time for a couple of hours most nights, I've never been left wanting – but a lack of endgame challenge has been one of the most common pain points I've seen other players report from the beginning, and the issue has persisted through countless updates, many different seasons, and one big expansion, Vessel of Hatred, released in October 2024.
Haroutunian doesn't see that ever changing, because people play the game for so long that they start to change and want different things.
"The people who play an action RPG from the start change as they play that action RPG more and they start requiring different things," he says. "Friction points that we could never imagine – that players can never imagine – suddenly rear their head over the course of 10,000 hours."
Lord of Hatred is the follow up to Diablo 4's first expansion, Vessel of Hatred, and brings the three-year Mephisto narrative arc to a close. I've been having a great time with my Paladin build, which has been available for anyone with a Lord of Hatred pre-order for months now and will unlock for everyone else when the DLC launches, but I'm particularly excited to see the Diablo 4 iteration of the Warlock class, which hit Diablo 2 Resurrected in February.
Naturally, there will also be a new questline and some endgame shenanigans to, hopefully, give those ARPG diehards something more to chew on in the long-term.
