After weeks of outcry, Blizzard has seemingly caved to pressure from the ever-vocal Diablo 4 community and increased stacking on Prime Evil Splinters from 1, which means no stacking, all the way up to 99, a 9900% increase. That's not just a compromise, that's a full-blown reversal seemingly based on feedback from the players.

"WE GOT A SPLINTER STACK SIZE INCREASE," reads an excited Reddit post featuring a screenshot from the latest Diablo 4 patch notes, which confirm, "The stack size for Prime Evil Splinters increased from 1 to 99" starting October 28. Unfortunately, the reaction at least on the Diablo 4 subreddit hasn't been as positive as Blizzard is probably hoping. In fact, the vast majority of comments, including those with the most upvotes, are from players who feel the change is too late, if not too little.

"Nice. Wait until the bulk of the playerbase has given up in disgust," reads the top comment on the post. I very much doubt "the bulk of the playerbase" has really given up on Diablo 4 because of this, and in fact I'd argue the majority of players don't give a damn about stackable Splinters, but it seems the subreddit is in agreement that it simply took Blizzard too long to make this change.

Season 15 has been out for a few weeks now, and this whole time the seasonal Prime Evil Splinters you use to grant yourself Prime Evil powers have been locked to one per inventory, meaning you could only have one of each type on you at any given time. Diablo 4's endgame grinders hated that so much that they came up with an incredibly fussy and demanding workaround, but now Blizzard has made that technique obsolete by letting you stack up to 99 of the suckers, which seems excessive to me.

Regardless, Diablo 4 players aren't letting Blizzard off the hook for this one.

"Too fuckin late," says another disgruntled denizen of Sanctuary.

"I’m good. Too little too late!" says another, and so on...

Although unstackable Splinters have been seen as a season 15 bug by many, I'm convinced Blizzard was being very intentional when it limited players to just one per type. The wording in the new patch notes to me suggests a reversal rather than a bug fix, which makes this yet another example of Blizzard's willingness to make significant design changes in response to feedback from players.

Diablo 4 PTR 3.3.0 confirms Season 16 is "carrying forward" some features by popular demand, and Blizzard is taking Druids back to school to address broken tags

The new Diablo 4 PTR period is right around the corner, and Blizzard's revealed what changes players can tinker with ahead of the full update. The druid class is receiving some significant tweaks, war plans are getting deeper and more intricate, and more.

"Some features from the Season of Hell's Legacy will be carrying forward into Season 16," the introduction says. "However, these will not be part of this PTR, as we want to focus on new features for testing."

The notes from the devs start with what's happening to war plans, and it's a good place to kick off. Firstly, there's a new progression system specifically for the endgame quests. Conveniently called War Plans Tactics, the notion is to make the missions you do and what you get out of them more specific.

"Earn points from completing War Plans activities, then invest these points into nodes to increase the chance of preferred activities or rewards appearing," the official description reads. "This allows you to tailor your War Plans more closely with both your goals and playstyle."

You can add up to three points into any given selection, which will increase the odds of it coming up for you as a potential choice, and you can do the same for the type of reward you'll get. On top of this, Marks of Wisdom, a currency for war plans, is being introduced.

These are what allow you to change nodes across your war plans and tactics skill trees. It's mentioned they're capped at 20, but I don't know if that's the amount you can carry or have in use - one to clarify once you're in the public test realm.

The druid rework is pretty hefty, and according to the dev team, it's based around two guiding principles. First, prevent druids from stacking tags as much, and second, to give resolve and fortify more pep in their step as builds.

They go about the former by removing Nature Shift and Shapeshifting tags from skill upgrades. Instead, either will simply be tied to the base ability, and if one or other was part of the tags on an ability, it'll now be removed.

The second is achieved more roundly through changes across how druids are built up. There's a lot to go through in terms of what Blizzard's changing, and I'd expect a lot of experimentation when this PTR arrives. It kicks off on October 27, and runs until November 3.

Diablo 4 players rally for a homebrew fix to a huge season 15 annoyance, but you'll need at least one very good friend

The Splinters of Evil are some of Diablo 4 season 15's rarest drops, but once you get your hands on a specific type – Hatred, Terror, or Destruction – that's all you can hold of that type at once. Blizzard seems to have intentionally designed this specific seasonal drop to not stack, meaning you can only have one splinter of each type in your inventory at once. That might seem like a pretty niche problem applicable only to endgame players in the highest Torment tiers, and it is, but for those players it's a major issue precisely because splinters are so rare. Imagine having to walk away from one of the game's rarest drops simply because you already have one in your inventory, and then you can understand why endgame grinders have rallied for a homebrew solution, and found one.

As detailed in a new video from prolific Diablo creator Rob2628, there's a fairly simple – but tedious – workaround you can do if you really want duplicate splinters in your inventory. As Rob2628 points out, you'll need at least one friend who's leveled enough in Diablo 4 to access Torment tier 10 where you can farm Splinters of Evil from Diablo, Mephisto, and Baal.

Once you've successfully bribed your buddy with delivery pizza – ideally the good stuff from your local Italian joint and not just some fast-food slop – you'll need to invite them to your party once you've got your duplicate splinter to drop. Next, have them hang out near the splinter while you switch to another character that doesn't already have that same splinter in its inventory, and then have your friend invite your alt to the server with the dupe so that you can pick it up.

In Rob2628's words, your friend is essentially "holding the instance" so that the duplicate item doesn't despawn when you log out as your primary character, which makes it very important that they decline the prompt to return to their own world.

I haven't tested this trick out myself yet, and frankly I wouldn't be able to because I only have one character that can get into Torment 10, but I see no reason it wouldn't work. It's just bound by so many limitations and requirements tied to other players that I'd be much more likely to just close the game and play something else. Rob2628 adds in his video, "many of you don't have friends" anyway.

One of Diablo 2's most coveted items surprise-drops in Diablo 4, and it's just as overpowered as it was 25 years ago

A Diablo board game is on the way, but don't assume it'll be a classic dungeon crawler; the developers are calling it a "dungeon battler" where you'll fight to the bitter depths for glory and loot against unrelenting foes.

So far, it sounds grim enough to gel with Diablo's gritty atmosphere. After selecting a dungeon in the darkest corner of Sanctuary, you'll fill it with a horde of monsters and bosses represented by gnarly miniatures before grinding your way through them using one of four iconic classes (the Barbarian, Paladin, Sorceress, or Rogue). These all feature distinct playstyles, extensive customization, and unique skill-trees, so when combined with what Glass Cannon Unplugged describes as a "highly modular structure," the Diablo board game – officially titled 'Diablo: Unbound' – should be pretty replayable.

Although its crowdfunding campaign isn't due to go live on Gamefound until early 2027, the Diablo board game will be playable much earlier than that. To be precise, you can go hands-on with Diablo: Unbound at this year's SPIEL Essen (one of the world's biggest shows for the best board games) between October 22-25.

"You get the high-stakes showdowns of a boss battler—and hordes of monsters that never let up," says Glass Cannon Unplugged CEO Jakub Wiśniewski. "But you don’t crawl through dungeons. You battle your way down. That’s why we call it a dungeon battler."

Diablo: Unbound isn't a mindless hack-and-slash, though. Each boss has its own unique attacks, for example, not to mention a lair and multiple combat stages. When combined with the game's many ways to earn loot (be it via chests, side quests, defeating Elite enemies, or gaining a kill streak by battling mobs), there's a push-your-luck element where you're always tempted to do just a little more.

You won't be down the proverbial mines all the time, either. A 'Town Phase' takes place before each encounter, letting you improve skills or respecialize character builds.

While the game features three acts with three dungeon levels each (and every dungeon takes up to 90 minutes), the fun isn't over when you've passed the finish line. There's also an endgame 'Torment' mode that lets you take on bosses in their ultimate form, so at least you don't have to down tools like in some RPG board games.

We'll hopefully be able to find out more (and go hands-on) with the Diablo board game soon, but until then, you should be able to get your fill via the Gamefound pre-launch page or if you're lucky enough to be at Essen this year.

Want something atmospheric for spooky season? Here are the nine best Halloween board games available right now.

• See all Glass Cannon Unplugged games at Amazon

Diablo 4's deeply nostalgic season 15 is loaded with all sorts of neat references to the series' history, including a whole quest recreating OG Diablo's critical path and an entire armor set themed around the notoriously elusive cow level first introduced in Diablo 2. Players were pretty quick to find out how to get all of the pieces of the Bovine armor set except one: the gloves, or the Foreshanks, sending the community into a weeks-long treasure hunt that, until now, has come up empty. As it turns out, the Bovine Foreshanks simply hadn't been added into the game until now. See, there's a cow you have to pet to get the gloves, and that cow didn't exist until patch 3.2.3 went live this week.

As reported by Icy Veins and independently verified by me, the newest version of Diablo 4 adds a cow that spawns in Old Tristram behind the Cathedral. All you have to do is pet the cow and it'll drop the Foreshanks of the Bovine. It's really as simple as that. Diablo 4 players have been tearing apart season 15 looking for the missing piece of the cow armor set for weeks, and Blizzard just casually snuck it into a patch with no mention of it in the patch notes. That's, uh, that's gotta sting a little.

On the bright side, Diablo 4's tireless loot chasers can finally acquire the full set, with this handy guide from Auscraft detailing exactly where to track down each piece. Now, depending on how you like to transmog your Diablo 4 character, you might find the Bovine set utterly repulsive or extremely cool. Personally, I'm a huge fan. It's disgusting, and I don't know how else Blizzard could've paid tribute to such a beloved part of Diablo history other than going full camp and making the armor look like an actual live cow grazing the fields of Old Tristram. I'll let you be the judge:

One of Diablo 2's most coveted items surprise-drops in Diablo 4, and it's just as overpowered as it was 25 years ago

We know development on Diablo 5 is well underway, since the sequel was announced at this year's BlizzCon with a snazzy trailer. How far along is another question, since no gameplay was shown; however, production on the action-RPG's cinematics is now in motion.

We know this thanks to Neil David Carter, the cinematics director for the Diablo series at Blizzard. He posted an image on Twitter of an empty soundstage, ready for production crew and actors to start putting scenes together.

"First shoot Diablo 5," he says in the caption. Nothing else is said, but he wouldn't be at liberty to discuss any of the finer details right now. And I imagine a lot of material will still be in flux, too.

This is day one of filming, aspects of the script will almost certainly still be up in the air. Things can change quickly, scenes can be shot that are either changed later or scrapped entirely. These things happen on TV and film productions all the time, and this is a medium where the cinematics are more dependent on what makes the cut for the released product.

Right now, Diablo 5 is eying a 2029 release window, leaving some time for the devs to sculpt the next installment of the beloved series. But it could easily be delayed, and, in fact, Chris Wilson, a central designer on fellow ARPG Path of Exile, believes we could be waiting until 2030 or beyond for the fifth Diablo to arrive.

Plenty of time and space for the cinematics to require another go. I'm curious about who they might get to star in these scenes. MCU actor Simu Liu did an advert for Diablo 2: Resurrected, and they've had the likes of Debra Wilson and Ralph Ineson perform various roles in recent games.

Those would all be worthy additions to this iteration. It's all go at Blizzard HQ, anyway. We'll be back in Sanctuary before we know it.

Diablo 4 update fixes problem preventing players from completing the Season 15 questline properly - but there's still no splinter stacking

As it turns out, there was a bug in Diablo 4 Season 15 that prevented players from finishing the main questline. Mercifully, the issue has been rectified in the latest patch, though there are other problems players hope Blizzard will look into.

The topline change in the update focuses on players getting access to a Splinter of Prime Evil before they're supposed to. Doing so stops you from finishing the central quest, because the Prime Evil powers are meant to be part of your reward.

The glitch has apparently been rectified, but anyone who's already gotten it will need to use Blizzard's workaround to sort out their character, since quest progress isn't affected. "This change prevents this bug from happening but does not reset quest progress on characters who are already bugged," reads a developer's note.

"To allow affected characters access to Prime Evil Powers, create a new character in the same partition (Normal/Hardcore and Normal/SSF) and complete the seasonal questline," the post continues. "This unlocks Prime Evil Powers for all characters in that partition."

Not ideal, but at least there's a fix of some description. Another bugbear where four affixes couldn't be rerolled using the Horadric Cube has been remedied as well - sadly, the wasted resources can't be returned, but at least it's sorted.

While these are certainly helpful alterations, they don't stack splinters, a mechanic players have been requesting for several weeks now. "Splinters not stacking is truly the dumbest decision of the season," writes one Redditor, summing up a theme across the comments responding to this update.

We'll see if Blizzard decides to address that problem in the coming weeks. For now, at least you can definitely complete the current questline without extra hassle.

One of Diablo 2's most coveted items surprise-drops in Diablo 4, and it's just as overpowered as it was 25 years ago

Old Diablo heads will remember the Annihilus charm from Diablo 2 as one of the iconic ARPG's most powerful and coveted items. Even in its worst-rolled form, having one in your inventory granted +1 to all skills, +10 to all attributes, +10 to all resistances, and +5 to XP gained. It's the only small charm in the game that grants bonuses to all skills and attributes, and because it's small, it only takes up a single inventory space. It's the crown jewel of Diablo 2's endgame, and now it's in Diablo 4 as a Unique Horadric Seal.

The unfortunate thing about Annihilus in both games is that it's really freakin' hard to get. The exact parameters required to initiate the encounter in Diablo 4 are still being figured out by the community, but we know from various reports on Reddit as well as an in-depth video from Diablo creator Rob2628 that one of the ways you can get your hands on the Annihilus seal is by triggering an encounter with Uber Diablo, which in every case seems to follow a battle with the World Boss Azmodan. After that fight is over, an on-screen message warns, "Diablo walks the earth." Annihilus recipients say Diablo Clone drops the item when slain, just like in Diablo 2.

Also similar to Diablo 2 are the ridiculous passive buffs you get from the item. At max roll, this gloriously, stupidly over-tuned seal grants +20% to all stats, +20% resistance to all elements, +10 to all skills, and +10% bonus XP. Best of all, you can re-roll it at the Cube until you get the stats you want, although reports indicate it becomes account-bound once you do so. If you manage to get your hands on one of these bad boys, that's a genuine game-changer for literally any build.

While I don't have anywhere near the patience to try my luck at spawning Uber Diablo, much less beating him, I'm very much enjoying seeing all of these callbacks to older Diablo games in Diablo 4. The recreation of Diablo 1's campaign as a new Waking Nightmares activity was heavily marketed from the jump, but it seems there are still plenty of more niche discoveries to be made in season 15.

A broken Diablo 4 charm is dominating Season 15, but Blizzard has "decided not to make changes to it" for now

It's a day ending in 'Y', thus Blizzard is having to navigate some balancing problems in Diablo 4. In this instance, though, the devs have made the rare choice of just embracing what's going on, maintaining an unintended change from the Hellfire Torch in Season 15.

The Hellfire Torch is a new Unique Charm that came with the current season. Between serving as a Set Charm and a number of powerful bonuses, it's a particularly worthwhile bit of equipment that was even better than Blizzard bargained for.

In execution, players found they could get the bonuses of having three Unique Charms and a complete five-set of them at once through the Sea of the Golden Epiphany and the Seal of the Diamond Mind. This has rippled through the community pretty heavily, leading it to be a dominant force in the action-RPG's landscape. As such, players have been quick to feed this back to Blizzard, who're just rolling with it for now.

"While we've confirmed that this interaction is resulting in behavior beyond what was originally intended, we’ve decided not to make changes to it during the current season," Dan Tanguay, design director on Diablo 4, says on the official forums in a statement published by Rich 'Filthierich' Bantegui, a senior community manager for the Diablo series.

"We know many players have spent significant time earning the Hellfire Torch and building characters around it," he continues. "Because of that, we want to be thoughtful about making adjustments mid-season that could disrupt those investments."

It reads to me like the solutions right now involve either damaging people's builds in a way the devs dislike, or causing further disruption in a flailing house of cards sort of way. Tanguay asserts this will change, just not for the time-being.

"We’d like additional time to investigate the underlying issue and ensure that any future changes are implemented correctly and behave as intended," he says. While this may be frustrating, the acknowledgement demonstrates complaints haven't gone unheard. While you wait for a patch, see if the Hellfire Torch has any other quirks you're unaware of.

Diablo 5 "won't be ready for spring 2029," Path of Exile co-creator says, and "Blizzard money" won't change that

As of now, the release of Diablo 5 is set for 2029. That may seem like plenty of time for Blizzard, and it is, since it's three years away, but one of the co-creators of Path of Exile believes we'll likely be waiting at least a little bit longer for the next installment in the iconic series.

In a YouTube video discussing the game's announcement, Chris Wilson, lead designer on Path of Exile, provided his thoughts on Blizzard's plans. "They've announced they're targeting spring 2029, which is both quite specific and quite soon," he says.

He notes that Diablo 4: Lord of Hatred arrived in April of this year, indicating that development then shifted toward a sequel rather than another full-on expansion, a pivot similar to what Blizzard did at the end of Diablo 3's lifespan as well. Using this as a speculative benchmark, Wilson believes Diablo 5 has only been the team's central priority for around five months so far.

"This would explain why they did not show gameplay at BlizzCon, and mostly had concept art, design plans, and a short announcement cinematic," he reasons. "So how long will it take them to finish the game? Well, conveniently, in my past life, I ran a studio that was developing a similar-sized game."

He then points out that although Grinding Gear Games has "mature content pipelines and a custom engine specifically designed for that genre," development on Path of Exile has been going for eight years and counting. "Diablo 5 realistically needs around as much content at launch to be competitive, and they've even said that they have more character classes than any previous Diablo game, including expansions," he mentions.

"Their three-year timeframe feels like a very tight deadline to me," he adds. He concedes that, yes, they have "Blizzard money" and can pump up the team's numbers, but with rampant layoffs and budgeting concerns, that'd be a precarious strategy. Throw in the desire for in-depth playtesting before launch, especially for fine-tuning drop rates and balancing, and you have a cycle that could easily take longer.

"My best guess here is the game won't be ready for spring 2029," Wilson concludes. "But that's OK, delays happen and are normal in this industry. I can't count the number of times I had to delay a Path of Exile league release, and players were OK with it."

An underlying question here is why Blizzard made the announcement at all. Revealing plans too early can be troublesome; just ask Todd Howard about The Elder Scrolls 6. Wilson pins it on "Blizzard management," because Microsoft "wants more frequent releases for their core game series."

Around BlizzCon, Johanna Faries, the president of Blizzard, told Bloomberg that the company is "going to ship, and ship big, and ship on time." This was regarding both the new Diablo and the upcoming StarCraft, which is set for 2030.

Whatever the reason, we know this is coming. The release just mightn't reach our keyboards and mice before the 2030s roll around - but hey, patience is a virtue.

Diablo 5 director responds to concerns the action RPG is more action than RPG: "Any challenge can be overcome with the right build"

With a spring 2029 release window, Diablo 5 is still a ways off and presumably early in development, and as such there's a lot we don't know about it. We know it takes place about 100 years after Diablo 4 and that it won't have towns or safe zones outside of a Baldur's Gate-style caravan of traveling companions, but most of the sequel's core design pillars remain a mystery. Chiefly, we know next to nothing about how combat will work in Diablo 5, and considering Diablo games are almost exclusively about clicking demons to death, the ARPG community is waiting eagerly for more details.

Waiting right there alongside us is Chris Wilson, Grinding Gear Games co-founder and original Path of Exile designer. Wilson recently published a video on his YouTube channel in which he gives his in-depth reaction to the announcement of Diablo 5. Wilson says he's "tentatively hopeful" about Diablo 5 overall, but goes over a number of concerns he has about the direction Blizzard may or not be taking it. One of those concerns is the combat, which he says has been trending more and more "arcadey and actioney" since Diablo 3. His hope is that Diablo 5 goes back to the completely build-centric combat favored by his beloved Diablo 1 and 2, but he predicts it'll move even further into action territory.

I mention this in the context of a new tweet from Diablo 5 senior game director Joe Shely, which sounds like a response to Wilson's questions on combat even if it isn't intended as such.

"While Diablo V will continue to feature some DEX (moment-to-moment execution) mechanics, on balance the game will be an INT/STR game (planning and investment)," Shely says. "We are designing to the core tenet of ARPGs that any challenge can be overcome with the right build."

I've listened to Shely talk enough to know he's incredibly media-trained, so it's no surprise that his written remarks here don't actually reveal anything specific and substantive about Diablo 5's combat beyond some level of "moment-to-moment" mechanics. That could literally just mean you'll have to position your attacks in the direction of enemies and get out of the way of incoming attacks, or it could suggest a deeper embrace of action-like combat, but it's reassuring that the focus is still on build composition instead of, as Wilson puts it, "a dexterity player focus."

As a Diablo player from the very beginning, I'm not too worried about Diablo 5 having a slightly more intricate combat system so long as the fantasy is still about constantly iterating synergies between gear and abilities to make killing monsters easier and easier, and it sounds like that's still the case. I do agree with Wilson that monster scaling should probably be ditched or at least dramatically scaled back to make the world feel uncompromising and dangerous, but I suspect I'll be waiting a while longer for nittier, grittier details like that.

Diablo 4 seasons will continue after Diablo 5 launches "similar" to Diablo 2 and 3, Blizzard confirms

With the surprise announcement of Diablo 5 at BlizzCon 2026, some fans of the series are left with a bittersweet feeling. Sure, a new game sounds great, and with Diablo 5 looking like the darkest entry in the series since OG Diablo, it does look great. But what does that mean for Diablo 4, which is only three years old? Well, Blizzard itself has confirmed it means no more Diablo 4 expansions, but the developer has made it clear seasonal updates will continue despite Diablo 5 being the apparent main focus within Blizzard's Diablo team. But with Diablo 4 seasons being as meaty as they are these days, complete with miniature remakes of legacy Diablo campaigns in the case of season 15, how long can Blizzard really keep that going? Apparently, as long as players keep showing up.

"We are planning on supporting seasons as long as the community continues to show up for D4," game director Brent Gibson tells Icy Veins. "Similar to what we have in D2 and D3. There are still people who play those games, and as long as you're showing up, we’re going to continue to be making content."

As Gibson alludes, this isn't a huge surprise considering Diablo 2 and 3's seasonal structures still haven't been abandoned, not to mention Diablo 2 getting a whole new class as recently as this year. That said, those games aren't really getting new seasons as in actual new content; they're essentially on maintenance mode with old seasonal themes on a rotating schedule. It seems to me Gibson is suggesting Diablo 4's seasonal updates will take a similar structure once Diablo 5 is released, which makes sense. I can only imagine the resources required to consistently update two mainline Diablo games with whole new storylines, regions, items, etc. at the same time. Not even the Xbox-owned Blizzard has pockets that deep.

Diablo himself is the reason Diablo 5 is coming instead of more Diablo 4 expansions, says project lead: "We needed to give him his own game"

We haven't seen much of Diablo 5 yet beyond the cinematic announcement we got at BlizzCon 2026, but Blizzard has been leaving a trail of breadcrumbs indicating a dramatic departure from previous entries in the series, and in other cases, a return to its roots. I've written at some length about how Blizzard is doubling down on the Diablo series' trademark darkness and why that's the best way to pay tribute to the original 1996 action RPG, and now Path of Exile co-creator Chris Wilson is pointing out a few more clues that seem to suggest Diablo 5 is taking inspiration from its early forbearers.

Of course, Path of Exile wouldn't exist without Diablo 1 and 2, so Wilson has a thoroughly documented obsession with those iconic ARPGs. He's also been outspoken about not having clicked with Diablo 3 and 4 for various reasons, and in a new video, he explains why he's "tentatively hopeful" that Diablo 5 will be closer in spirit to the first two games in the series.

"I felt the Diablo series had just moved on from the type of game that I loved, but when I watched the Diablo 5 announcement, I felt a glimmer of hope," Wilson says. "This wasn't just due to the words they were saying, but also what they intentionally chose to show." Wilson points out that the Diablo 5 logo features the letters of the title engulfed in flames similar to Diablo 1 and 2, and decidedly not similar to Diablo 3 and 4's flameless logos. Similarly, inventory concepts revealed in Diablo 5's announcement show items with distinct sizes and inventory management just like Diablo 1 and 2, something that was ditched in favor of uniform item sizes in Diablo 3 and 4.

"These are specific signals to players like me that there's a chance they're taking things back to basics and learning from the original games that established this franchise to begin with," says Wilson.

Those might seem like small details to draw any significant implications from, and indeed, Wilson says there are much bigger questions waiting to be answered that'll decide whether Diablo 5 is the return to form he's hoping for, or another evolution that drifts further from the core design ethos that inspired him to form his own studio and start making games for a living.

Crucially, in Wilson's view, Diablo 5 needs to ditch the enemy scaling that ensures Diablo 4's mobs are proportionate power-wise to the player's leveling. He says, "In my opinion, Diablo 5 absolutely must use a traditional system where the world has progressively more powerful monsters and you can choose how fast you progress through it and where to grind based on your current capabilities."

But Wilson also thinks Blizzard's decision to go back to linear world structure is a positive indication that Diablo 5 will, in fact, abandon monster scaling, pointing to a PC Gamer interview in which game director Joe Shely said the sequel will take a "somewhat different approach" to level scaling.

Maybe the strongest evidence yet that Diablo 5 is embracing earlier games in the series is its confirmed return to procedurally generated environments in dungeons and the overworld, something Wilson is "very excited about."

And yet, Wilson still has some serious concerns about the direction Blizzard is taking Diablo 5; including whether it'll be online-only or include an option for offline single-player; how item trading will work; and whether the combat system will be designed to reward physical dexterity, i.e. via a dodge and attack system, or well-composed character builds.

Again, Wilson's a big fan of the different sized items, but he also says the 84 inventory slots, compared to Diablo 2's 40, could mean you'll be returning to town a lot less in Diablo 5. And of course, by "town," he's referring to your mobile caravan of traveling companions, which coincidentally was inspired by narrative director Jennifer Hepler's time at BioWare.

Wilson also says the early Diablo games were full of obscure mechanics and obtuse interactions that made them endlessly interesting to unpack even as years passed, which contrasts with the much more polished systems in Diablo 3 and 4, which he says are easier to get into but lack that same depth.

"I'm tentatively hopeful for Diablo 5," Wilson concludes. "I wasn't expecting to be, but they've said enough of the magic words and picked the right font for the logo. I have my fingers crossed that they'll do a good job with it."

As for why he wants Diablo 5 to succeed when he has his own unannounced ARPG in the works, Wilson says, "Every other action RPG developer" benefits when the genre's ecosystem is thriving – and it certainly would be with a banging new Diablo game.

As someone with a similar love for Diablo 1 and 2, I agree with most of Wilson's points, especially the stuff about monster scaling. There was an uncompromising danger in those early games' exploration that made getting back to town thrilling and satisfying, and I'd even go further and say Blizzard should bring back open PvP outside towns, or caravans, like the Wild West that was Diablo 1 multiplayer. That last feature was left behind as early as Diablo 2, though, and I'm not expecting that level of embrace of unhinged online gaming culture.

Diablo 4's 30th anniversary event is "pretty distasteful," Path of Exile co-creator says: "Games should have respect for their core storylines."

This year's BlizzCon brought the announcement of Diablo 5. Although we're still a few years out from the sequel, development is already winding down on Diablo 4, to the point we're not getting any more major expansions. One of the co-creators of fellow action-RPG Path of Exile isn't enamored by Blizzard's strategy here, believing it undermines the series and the fanbase.

Chris Wilson, one of the central designers of Path of Exile, made these points in a YouTube video. "It feels like they're abandoning Diablo 4," he says of the announcement. "They even clarified there would be no more expansions developed for Diablo 4, but there would be some content released, I assume by the small team left running it."

He finds the proposed roadmap disappointing, to say the least. "One of those pieces of Diablo 4 content is a 30th anniversary event called Season of Hell's Legacy," he comments. "To be honest, this event feels pretty distasteful to me. I feel that games should have respect for their core storylines, and treat their antagonists with the respect that they deserve."

As you might have guessed, he doesn't believe the proposed gameplay additions or their presentation manage this. "Diablo 4 was slowly building up to you eventually getting to fight the Prime Evils, and then they introduce them all at once in this special event that isn't really tied into the game's storyline," he observes.

"They brought back Deckard Cain for the event, even though he was canonically killed in Diablo 3," he adds. In his mind, this makes it seem like "causality and story events" don't hold the appropriate weight, and "that we shouldn't take them seriously."

This is compounded by Blizzard calling Diablo, the big bad himself, "the birthday boy" on-stage. "If your franchise is called Diablo, and you've made billions of dollars from games that sell a fantasy of players working towards getting to confront and defeat Diablo, the Lord of Terror, then you should treat him with the utmost respect," Wilson states.

Not really the place for kiddy nicknames, is it? Despite all of this, Wilson is "tentatively hopeful" for Diablo 5. It's going back to more RNG-heavy world design, it has a truly desolate worldview, and he's pleased by the font choice for the logo. Hopefully Blizzard stays the course in its decision-making.

Diablo 5 tells "three stories" across the past, present, and future, and biomes will change shape depending on which of Diablo's minions is in charge

I've been thoroughly enjoying my time with Diablo 4 Season of Hell's Legacy even if it just makes me really, really want a Diablo 1 remake, but I'm not alone in experiencing some pretty bad server wobbles, not to mention the launch-day delay of the new seasonal realm and Solo Self Found mode. As a token of appreciation to players who continue logging in despite these problems, Blizzard is giving away one of the game's rarest and most valuable crafting resources for free.

As reported by Icy Veins and verified by yours truly, if you log into Diablo 4 and head to the newly added Horadric Post in any major town, there's a good chance you'll find yourself a lovely little note from Blizzard explicitly apologizing for "unexpected issues" with season 15. And if you're super lucky, like me, you'll also find a single Resplendent Spark with your name on it. Well, your name won't literally be on it, but it'll be yours to keep, again, if you're lucky.

I mention luck here because it seems not everyone is getting Resplendent Sparks. In a Reddit thread discussing the freebie, several users report simply receiving the written note without any attached Spark, while others say they aren't seeing anything in their inboxes at all. That could just be an issue of the game client not being fully up to date, but the fact that some people are getting just the note and no Spark suggests Blizzard isn't sending out the crafting material to just anyone. I've reached out to Blizzard for clarification on that and will update this story if I hear back.

Resplendent Sparks are incredibly hard to find, which is why we have a whole guide on how to get them, and they're essential to crafting Mythic Uniques, which are of course the game's most powerful gear. You'll need more than one Spark depending on what you want to craft, but I'm certainly not turning my nose up at Blizzard's offer.

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"

The success of Diablo 2 Resurrected proves there is hunger for updated versions of Blizzard's original genre-defining ARPGs, and the next remake should be 1996's Diablo. It's one of my favorite games ever and probably the most formative to my career in games. It's aged incredibly well for a 30-year-old game, or at least I thought it did until I saw parts of it beautifully reimagined in Diablo 4's latest update, Season of Hell's Legacy.

In case you missed it, which is understandable in the wake of Diablo 5's surprise announcement at BlizzCon 2026, Diablo 4's 15th season is one giant trip down memory lane for longtime fans of the series. Diablo himself, the Lord of Darkness, is one of the main highlights, but he joins other returning baddies like Mephisto and Baal, not to mention friendlier faces like Deckard Cain, who acts as your guide through the seasonal questline.

Waking Nightmares are the big highlights of the new season. Aptly timed to coincide with Diablo's 30th anniversary this year, these seasonal dungeons take you through iconic moments and boss battles from the series' history, with my favorite being an almost complete recreation of Diablo 1's main mission, all the way from Tristram Cathedral, down to the catacombs, the caves, and then into Hell itself to face off against the Dark Lord himself.

New Tristram

I can't think of a game more consequential to my love of gaming than OG Diablo, so this dungeon was super special for me. But when I found out you can actually return to a fully recreated version of Old Tristram, complete with the same landmarks and NPCs featuring original voice lines from the first Diablo, I knew I had to explore my old stomping grounds. Tristram – that music, those characters, they're like my virtual home. Diablo is the first game I ever became obsessed with as a kid, and I would spend hours chatting with strangers in Tristram, unknowingly forming friendships that would endure decades. Going back was intense, but more than anything it made me want a full-blown Diablo remake.

There are still three long years to go until we get to play Diablo 5, and that's assuming there won't be any delays. Diablo 4 is great, especially this new season, but three years is a long time, and we need something to do in the meantime. A full-fat remake of Diablo, not a remaster like Diablo 2: Resurrected, would not only give ARPG fans more demons to click to death while they wait for Diablo 5, but it would also give newer fans of the series, who might've started with Diablo 4, or Diablo 3, or even Diablo 2, a reason to go back and experience the very beginning of the whole saga, which could provide key context or at the very least a narrative foundation for Diablo 5.

Diablo 1 is also just a sick game with a great story and ridiculously vibey world that I think everyone should experience at least once. But with 1996 visuals and designs being what they are, I understand why someone under, say, 30, might bristle at the idea of sitting down for a full playthrough of a game that old. I would certainly accept a touched-up remaster with gratitude, but a ground-up remake would be a much stronger draw for people who've never played the game.

Blizzard missed a big opportunity to announce something like this during the series' 30th anniversary celebrations at BlizzCon 2026 – I suppose it was a little preoccupied – but it's not too late! Getting it into players' hands before Diablo 5 would be ideal, but even outside the context of a new game that's shaping up to bring the whole series full-circle, a Diablo remake just makes sense. It's a super old, equally beloved game that hasn't been updated meaningfully in 30 years. Diablo 4's bite-sized recreations are nostalgic treats, but they're mere teases of what's possible in a proper remake.

Check out all the best Diablo games to play while we wait for D5!

Diablo 5 takes place in a world where the titular Lord of Terror has already won, taking over Sanctuary and reshaping the world in his own image. For Blizzard, telling this dark chapter of the story means telling multiple stories in parallel: the past, the present, and the future.

That's according to game director Joe Shely, who tells our friends at TechRadar Gaming that there are "three stories that we're telling" within the world of Diablo 5. The past story is the tale of how Diablo took over Sanctuary in the first place. The present, of course, seems to consist of the main action of the game, where the familiar world has been taken over by the minions of Hell.

Diablo's top minions in this desolate world are called Dread Commanders, and they take an active role in reshaping Sanctuary in Hell's image – hence the future part of the story. "We call it terror forming because these Dread Commanders will actually transform the environment, transform the biome into a version of hell that relates to personal powers and powers at station," Shely says.

"The procedural world gives us a lot of levers to pull for that," narrative director Jennifer Hepler adds. "You can go to a place, and it is under the control of the Dread Commander of Undeath, and it's going to be full of zombies and things like that. And then later in the game, you could return there, and it's either been reclaimed by humanity or taken over by a different Dread Commander, and the environment will be totally different as a result of that."

Blizzard's publicly stated goal for Diablo 5 is to make sure it's got "the best campaign ever," and the studio is taking a big swing with the setting to make sure that's true. The devs are also insistent that a full sequel is necessary because the return of the titular big bad is too big for a mere Diablo 4 expansion. We'll have plenty of time to speculate on how these choices will pan out, since the game isn't scheduled to launch until 2029.

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.

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

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

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"

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"

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

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.

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.

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"

BlizzCon 2026 is well underway, but some of the show's biggest announcements aren't due to come out for years. StarCraft's debut trailer ended with a 2030 release window attached. Diablo 5's reveal similarly included a 2029 promise - a strange move for a publisher as big as Blizzard Entertainment.

Big game announcements nowadays don't specify a release year unless the project is close to the finish line, usually, since game production can be complicated and unpredictable. Promising fans a release year this far ahead sounds like a recipe for possible disappointment, especially for Blizzard, a company that sometimes takes more than a decade between mainline entries in its biggest franchises. Any number of problems might pop up between now and 2030, after all. So, what's different this time?

Bloomberg spoke to Blizzard Entertainment president Johanna Faries ahead of this weekend's convention and she seemed quite positive about StarCraft and Diablo 5's faraway launches. "We want to convey confidence in some of our biggest bets coming forward," Faries told the outlet.

Possibly shooting down fears that StarCraft and Diablo 5 might miss their dates, Faries continued: "We're a Blizzard that's going to ship, and ship big, and ship on time, and all hands on deck to set those projects up for success."

It's a sentiment echoed by StarCraft project lead Dan Hay, who told GamesRadar+ that 2030 is "a date we feel really confident about." He also confirmed the StarCraft team has been "working on this for a little bit" and "feel good about it, and so it's important that we share."

The topic of Microsoft and Xbox's sweeping job cuts also came up in the Bloomberg interview, and while Faries didn't comment on how those layoffs might affect Blizzard, she did say that preserving the storied company's culture "has been my ultimate focus" in recent times. "The unique special sauce that is Blizzard both culturally and creatively. And to the extent that we can perform well for Microsoft, I think that should be seen as a mutual win," she added. Blizzard recently became Xbox's best-performing studio, so things seem to be going well. At least, from an outside perspective.

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"

With Diablo 5 on the horizon, Blizzard Entertainment doesn't have plans for any new Diablo 4 expansions.

Last night's BlizzCon 2026 Opening Ceremony brought rare good news for the permanently dark and dour world of Diablo. The fantasy series is officially getting an animated Netflix show, Diablo himself is finally coming to Diablo 4, and - surprise - Diablo 5 is set to come out sometime in 2029.

But with so much going on in the world of Sanctuary, don't expect any new expansions for Diablo 4. Speaking to PC Gamer, game director Brent Gibson explained the team are now "all focused on [Diablo 4] seasons and getting to Diablo 5."

"We feel like we told the Story of Hatred," Gibson continues. "We had a great conclusion with Lord of Hatred with what we have with Mephisto, and we are moving towards telling the Story of Terror."

While Blizzard doesn't have plans for a new Diablo 4 expansion in the foreseeable future, never say never. Diablo 2 got a new class and paid expansion after a 25-year break, after all - so long as people play Diablo 4, it'll receive some kind of support, according to Gibson.

Diablo 5's story is also set 100 years after Diablo 4, in a hellish world where "Sanctuary has fallen, and Diablo has won." In the meantime, Diablo 4 seasons will need to bridge the gap between the sort of horrifying world we're in now and the even more horrifying world we'll be entering in 2029.

The 100-year time jump "gives us a lot of room to kind of still ride the wave with all the fans on where the story can go as we make our way there," Gibson told PC Gamer. "So continuity is something that we're really excited about, but we don't necessarily have a perfect picture on exactly where that's going to go because we want to see how fans are reacting season to season."

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"

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

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.

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

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."

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"

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

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.

What constitutes worthwhile evolution in RPG design is a contentious subject. For every player who prefers the action-oriented route of modern Final Fantasy games, you've got those who want a return to the turn-based days of yore. The same is true for Diablo and action-RPG fans, as Path of Exile co-creator Chris Wilson explains how more modern, intuitive character progression is less fun to genre diehards.

Wilson went through the logic in a new YouTube video. He says the key problem for ARPG players stems from what are known as breakpoints – the benchmarks for when a particular action stat actually changes or improves. For instance, you don't automatically get quicker in spellcasting each time you move up a level. Instead, your ability goes up by increments after you reach a certain number of levels.

"There are arbitrary sweet spots of attack speed, cast speed, and hit recovery that players want to reach, because the jump in animation speed happens all at once," Wilson explains.

As a response, Diablo 2 "players created tables of speed breakpoints and optimize their characters around these thresholds," Wilson says. "Many of them had a lot of fun doing so, and it was an important part of the game for them."

The Diablo audience is such that I don't think there's any struggle in imagining players putting together spreadsheets of information on how each build can best level up. I've not done it for this series, but I've definitely been known to open up Excel or get out a pen and paper for a Dark Souls game over the years.

In my experience, Wilson is correct: it's fun. Strategizing your build brings a more tangible element to what you're doing and lets you test just how far the developers went with their balancing.

Where Wilson's perspective also holds water is in the fact that other action-RPGs fail to capture the Diablo 2 playerbase. They have less of these breakpoints, thus disappointing people who live for a good graph.

If you want old school players, you've got to play by old school rules. It's that simple.

25 years later, Diablo 2 director still hasn't gotten over how much the stamina bar sucks: "It's like a newbie tax almost."

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."

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."

The Iconic Mythics saga in Diablo 4 just won't end, and as Blizzard continues to step on rakes to the wide ridicule of the game's most hardcore fans, the devs have announced that they're looking into how to escape the rake field they now seem to permanently reside in. In less hyperbolic terms – yes, they know Iconic Mythics aren't dropping, and yes, they're trying to figure out a solution.

A recent update was meant to actually get Iconic Mythics dropping again, as the patch notes promised that Blizzard had "increased the chance of naturally dropped Mythics being an Iconic Mythic." By all accounts, however, they're still effectively impossible to farm.

"Clearly the patch failed," as one irate post on the official message board put it. "Iconic mythics were supposed to start dropping. Now the community has collectively wasted millions of lair keys for no chance at iconic mythics still. Remove the crafted tag from AT LEAST the iconic mythics at blacksmith. They got nerfed with patch anyway. I just wasted 70 Lair keys on Grigoire for ZERO mythics of ANY kind."

In response to that message, a Blizzard community manager promises that "this is being looked into, as well as other issues surrounding mythics." The CM has, in fact, repeated that sentiment several times in response to other, similar messages over the past few days. But if you're looking for concrete details about what's changing and when, the devs have not provided them just yet.

Outrage over the state of mythic items across the game has been ongoing since before Season 14 hit the PTR at the start of June, and while Blizzard has offered various olive branches to the community and implemented changes to the system, it seems that there's still work to be done.

Diablo 4 streamer spends "20 hours non-stop" farming bosses for the ARPG's rarest items, doesn't get a single one: "Don't try this at home."

There's a new Diablo 4 patch out, and while it addresses a couple of the latent problems in Season 14, the bigger issues surrounding Mythic Uniques remain. Specifically, their drop rate is far too minimal, and crafting them is still not worth the effort.

As usual, players have been quick to see what's been altered in the latest update, and what they've found is disconcerting. Prominent Diablo 4 streamer and YouTuber Rob2628 noted on Twitter that after a quick session beating the newer Reaper Bosss over and over for loot, he got plenty of Mythics, but none of what he's been looking for.

"Got 14 Mythics in 30 minutes but still no Iconics," he posted on Twitter. Diablo 4 and Path of Exile 2 YouTuber wudijo did the same, and he had slightly different results. "Managed to get two Mythics from boss trophies," he says in a tweet. "They come with the 'CRAFTED' tag, though."

The problem here is that you can only equip one crafted Mythic at a time, another aspect that isn't sitting well within the community, because you can't stack them in your builds and it reduces the impetus to collect them. Another player delivered some dispiriting stats on Reddit.

"Out of a total of 830 boss chests, I got 38 Mythics in total but zero Iconic Mythics. I ran Grigoire, Butcher, and Reaper," they write. The drop rates vary between 2% and 14% depending on which one of these you're facing, and you'd think that'd ensure at least one Iconic across the bones of one thousand chests, but apparently not.

"Never regretted buying the add-ons more than right now," says another Redditor in the comments. "This season is a joke, a bad one," writes a second fan.

"I'm done with this shit. See you in S15 (or not, we will see)," adds another. "The fact that they are essentially doubling down on their decisions, by making the patch the way they did pisses me off. They just never learn, except if we quit and don’t buy the shit from the shop."

Blizzard did state this patch would remedy some critiques, but clearly more work needs to be done. At the very least, I'd expect those drops to get easier, because getting nothing doesn't do much for anyone.

Diablo 4 streamer spends "20 hours non-stop" farming bosses for the ARPG's rarest items, doesn't get a single one: "Don't try this at home"

Hopes were high that the latest Diablo 4 patch would address the problems around Mythics introduced in Season 14. Alas, this isn't the case, as the update, coming tomorrow, July 14, only addresses a sliver of the issues, leaving players hoping for more systemic change in the weeks to come.

Essentially, the new season, Death Awakening, made Mythic Uniques a general pain in the backside. Crafting them is trickier; the drop rate for the items as loot is staggeringly low, and even using them isn't as effective as it once was.

Blizzard made a small mess here, and despite allusions to fixing things in this patch, the most glaring problems remain unaddressed, per the patch notes. That said, the process of acquiring and using Fragments for crafting Mythics is becoming easier, which is a welcome alteration.

Prior to now, it took five Fragments to make a Mythic Unique in the Horadic Cube. That turned out to be a pretty high number for how rarely they actually appeared after an encounter. Now, Corrupted Reaper will drop two of them per Hoard Chest, and you can get four if you utilize the Lair of Plenty War Plan.

On top of this, you'll only need four Fragments to craft a Mythic Unique. These aren't the total systemic changes many players were hoping for, but they should relieve some of the tension while the devs look into fixing other aspects. Drop rates are rarely simple to fix, since an overcorrection in the other direction won't help the game.

The patch notes state a bug where some Lair Bosses weren't dropping Uniques like they should has been fixed too, which may help you find some if you've been trying and failing to build up your collection. The usual smattering of fixes and tweaks across various aspects is included otherwise.

Diablo 4 streamer spends "20 hours non-stop" farming bosses for the ARPG's rarest items, doesn't get a single one: "Don't try this at home"

It's supposed to be difficult to get a mythic drop in Diablo 4, but the latest season, Death Awakening, accidentally made it practically impossible. The Iconic Mythics are a unique treasure for experienced players, but after anecdotal research showed the drop rates are ludicrously low, Blizzard's doing some fine-tuning.

A patch is on the way that's going to respond to criticisms over season 14, according to information from the Diablo Partner Program. Specific details aren't given, but we can guess the update will fix a few known problems, such as all Mythic Uniques coming with the Crafted tag when gotten through the Horadic Cube, and the aforementioned chance of getting certain items in battle.

The latter's been tested specifically by Diablo YouTuber Wudijo, who spent hours grinding for an Iconic Mythic only to come away empty-handed after 20 hours. Seriously, he played for that long and didn't get a single one, suggesting the RNG here is off-kilter.

Annoying as is, because you want proper prizes for taking on the wretched hellspawn of Diablo 4's depths, this creates limitations for particular builds because certain staple pieces of equipment are now nigh unobtainable. It seems like a classic case of tuning the drop rate just a little too strongly for its own good, but we'll see what emerges in the patch notes.

This update is expected to roll out within the next week or so, making it around the middle of July. However, it's worth noting that Blizzard's parent company, Microsoft, has been making substantial changes across all its studios of late, including laying off hundreds of staff.

Expect release schedules to be at least a little up in the air for the time being. An internal memo suggested how this all impacts Blizzard would be revealed later, but don't be surprised if things take longer than usual at present.

Blizzard says fine, it'll "split the difference" with Diablo 4 players outraged over Mythics, keeps core changes intact to ensure the ARPG's "long-term health"

Diablo 4's new season, Death Awakening, kicked off on June 30 with some highly anticipated adjustments to the game's rarest loot, now called "Iconic" Mythics. The TLDR is that Mythic Uniques now come with two guaranteed powers that synergize with the item's unique abilities, replacing the completely random rolls that garnered so much controversy in the PTR, but even if Blizzard's compromise with players completely restored the community's goodwill (it didn't), it seems there's a whole new pain point emerging: drop rates.

According to one extremely thorough study from Diablo 4 content creator wudijo, Death Awakening's drop rates for Iconic Mythics are pretty darn stingy. In a new 20-minute video, wudijo says he spent "20 hours non-stop farming bosses" to bag himself some Iconic Mythics – in particular the El'Druin Sword of Justice – to no avail.

Wudijo spent most of two full real-world days farming Helltides, "not doing anything else in-between," and ended up with 850 lair keys, 900 greater lair keys, and 127 superior lair keys. Using those farming those bosses netted him a little over 100 Mythics, five Mythic Seals, and more than five billion gold, but unfortunately, not a single Iconic Mythic.

Even after salvaging "almost all" of the Mythics he looted at the blacksmith and trading them for Resplendent Sparks to make new items, "I just don't have that item, with all of my effort with all of the crafting, with all of the Sparks, and all of these lair bosses... so this is what happened here, and I am very sad," says wudijo.

Acknowledging that farming Helltides is an "extremely good" way to rack up regular Mythics and Mythic Seals, wudijo concludes that if you're looking for a specific Iconic Mythic, or really any Iconic, "this is definitely kind of disappointing."

It doesn't help that, in his experience, farming for a Mythic version of a Unique that otherwise fits your build often ends in disappointment.

"Most of the time you will have found so many good Uniques that, by the time that you have any realistic hope of getting the Mythic version, that the Mythic most often just ends up being worse, or at least not much of an upgrade in the first place," wudijo says.

As an example, wudijo says he found a particularly viable Unique Eaglehorn bow and wanted to see if he could find a better Mythic version for his Rogue build, but by the time a Mythic Eaglehorn actually dropped, it wasn't as good as the normal Unique one because "it rolled two bad stats," and since Diablo 4's reworked loot system only lets you re-roll one of a Mythic item's powers, his Mythic Eaglehorn went to the blacksmith for salvaging.

Wudijo is far from the only Diablo 4 player feeling unhappy with Iconic Mythic drop rates in season 14, with one heavily upvoted Reddit thread calling them "broken." Having fond memories spending entire summers as a kid chasing the rarest items in the games, I think there's value in having items so rare that they genuinely feel mythical when encountered, but at the same time, one of the new Diablo 4 season's biggest focuses is the Mythic rework, so it does seem peculiar that there's an item class eluding players as dedicated as wudijo, especially when Diablo seasons only last about three months. We'll see if and how Blizzard responds to the latest kerfuffle from the Diablo community.

Blizzard devs in the dark for now as president of the World of Warcraft and Diablo studio says they "can expect to hear more" soon about Microsoft's plan for the studio as Xbox faces 3,200 job cuts

Blizzard has partially caved to Diablo 4 players outraged over changes to Mythics introduced in a recent playtest and planned for a permanent release in next week's Season of Death Awakened. Instead of completely reversing course, the studio is meeting players in the middle, insisting that the fundamentals of the updates are necessary for build diversity in the long-term.

ICYMI, Blizzard revealed the full details of Diablo 4's 14th season in a recent blog post, showing off a slick (but slightly jarring) Overwatch collab, a new endgame activity, and a Warlock free trial. But despite all of that cool and fun stuff, everyone's talking about Mythics, which are now just Mythic Uniques instead of their own distinct item rarity. The big hullabaloo is that Blizzard planned to completely remove the guaranteed stats that synergized with a Unique item's, ahem, unique powers. Suddenly, Uniques didn't sound so unique anymore, and the most powerful, rarest loot in the game, Mythic Uniques, were shaping up to be barely indistinguishable from Legendaries.

As you might expect, that didn't go down well with Diablo 4 players, and after testing the changes in the PTR, Blizzard has a pretty significant update tucked into the new season's announcement. Mythics are still just charged-up Uniques and any Unique can still be turned into a Mythic at the Horadric Cube, but crucially, Mythics will have two guaranteed bonuses instead of being completely random. The other two stat bonuses will still be random, but one of them will be able to be re-rolled through the Enchantress in town. Also, you'll still be able to convert a Unique to a Mythic Unique at the Cube, but now it'll give you something for the same slot, whereas in the PTR you could chuck in a Unique helmet and get a Mythic shield.

All in all, this updated system seems like it'll restore a lot of what made Mythics so fun and rewarding to chase in the first place without letting any single item completely dominate the meta, which of course means everyone's happy and no one's upset and life can just go on now, right? Right?!

Nope.

"So they ignored all the PTR tester feedback on the Mythic changes and they still went ahead with them?," reads one of the top comments in a Reddit thread discussing the new season. So much for that.

While that comment has more than 400 upvotes at the time of writing, suggesting, at the very least, people on Reddit who play a lot of Diablo aren't happy with Blizzard's compromise, there's no denying there is a compromise happening here. The original plan as tested in the PTR was for Uniques to drop with completely random stats just like any old item, which I was admittedly baffled by, but with the new setup of two fixed stats and two random ones, Blizzard is essentially going halfsies with players. It gets the randomness it wants for long-term build variety, and players get the thrill of chasing down one of a kind, incredibly powerful items as a reward for all their clicking. That's the way Blizzard sees it anyway.

"There's a handful of them that just become best-in-slot," Diablo 4 live-service lead Dan Tanguay says of the current selection of Mythics in an interview with GameSpot. "Once you can earn that, you get lucky enough to roll it, drop it, or craft it, that's it–you're never going to worry about that slot again.

And it kind of narrows the types of builds that players will pursue, especially if they're reading Maxroll or Icy Veins or something like that. We really want to increase the possibilities at the end of the game for what your build can be, and we need to look at mechanics that allow us to do that."

Blizzard softening its initial plan from the PTR and making Uniques considerably less random is part of its plan to "split the difference" with players wanting a full reversal of the new structure. That's not going to happen, but Tanguay says Blizzard will "keep iterating" on Uniques "until we arrive at something that we think is good for the long-term health of the game and that players really like."

You have to feel for the people at the frontline fielding these sorts of problems at Blizzard, constantly in a push-and-pull with the community over issues that, realistically, 90% of the player base will never even encounter. Again, Mythics are the rarest items in the game, and unless you're at the point where you're farming endgame bosses to get an item you need for a build you read about on Icy Veins, you'd never even know or care that those drops went from fixed stats to random ones. But because Blizzard is wisely taking on feedback from its most devoted players, I can only imagine the people calling the shots on this sort of stuff are in a near-constant state of stress.

Evidence of Diablo 4 coming to the Nintendo Switch 2 ramps up, as Blizzard Entertainment's RPG gets another rating.

A crossover between Diablo 4 and Overwatch should be an easy win. They're both owned by Blizzard, and they each have huge fanbases who generally love aesthetics and a bit of novelty. The in-game rewards are all well and good, but the action-RPG's new skins from the FPS aren't getting the strongest reaction from players.

Just like World of Warcraft and Starcraft before it, Overwatch is stepping into the hellfire of Diablo 4. Starting June 30, you can earn Eye of the Overwatch currency through defeating Elite and Champion foes to spend on special loot, for a limited time. In the game's regular shop, you'll find skins themed around the hero shooter, though players don't seem too fussed about those from first impressions.

"None of these look appealing or fit the universe to me," a fan bluntly says on Reddit. I can sympathize with the latter, because a couple of them are close to their original designs. Mercy's the biggest perpetrator, in my eyes, and the skin sticks out from Diablo's gloominess.

Commenters aren't holding back. "Mercy looks like a 90-year-old grandma here," writes another fan on Reddit. "This some bad comic con cosplay type shit," says a Redditor. "And even that's being disrespectful to cosplayers because most of them are miles better than this."

The frequency and pricing of these collaborations are big factors for the disdain. The StarCraft skins, for instance, ran you $185 for a complete set. World of Warcraft's came to over $540. Those are comfortably more than what it would cost you to buy the individual games and their expansions.

One player on Reddit notes the pricing on Fortnite, where such crossovers are rife, is much more reasonable collaboratively. "For context, an expensive bundle in Fortnite is generally less than half what the 'discounted' WoW bundle cost," they write. "Diablo 4's item store is completely insane and totally unacceptable for a game someone has already potentially spent £100 buying."

The Overwatch collaboration kicks off as part of Diablo 4 season 14, on June 30.

Overwatch charges nearly $100 for cosmetic bundle introducing a new skin rarity, and even cat maid outfits aren't enough to quiet the backlash.

Diablo 4's Age of Hatred story arc, which began with the base game's launch back in 2023 and included several seasons and two distinct expansions, has come to a close with the recent Lord of Hatred DLC, and the first new season of the next era of the action RPG kicks off next week.

Blizzard announced the aptly grim Season of Death Awakening on its official website, teasing a characteristically macabre story involving ruptures spawned from dark rituals across Sanctuary. Three different types of ruptures comprise the new season's endgame activity, sending out waves of new Gravehound monsters with a chance to summon the enormous Realmwalker boss. Kill that and you'll gain entry to the Deathtoll Chamber mini-dungeon where, you guessed it, more baddies await your sword, but here's where you'll find the lair keys you need to access this season's Lair Boss Hoard.

Anyway, it's a new Diablo season. If you've been around the block at all, you know generally what to expect. New enemies to kill, new loot to get, a new seasonal battle pass, a freaky new pet to collect for free. All good stuff, but fairly standard fare. That said, there are a few things coming with Season of Death Awakening that break from the usual Diablo 4 seasonal mold.

For one, Blizzard says it heard your feedback from the PTR about that change to Mythics. Instead of getting rid of the guaranteed stats that synergized with a Mythic Unique's powers, which was the controversial plan that led to widespread blowback from the PTR, Blizzard now says Mythics will have two guaranteed bonuses, "preserving what makes it distinctive while opening new possibilities for build diversity." Everything else will still roll randomly, but this new change will let you swap exactly one of them out to your liking.

Following the Paladin free trial from back in March, Diablo 4 will soon let you try out the new Warlock class from Lord of Hatred free of charge, for a limited time. From June 30 to July 7, all Diablo 4 players on all platforms will be able to sample the demon-summoning ways of the Warlock class up until level 25, and naturally, your progress will carry into the full game if you buy the Lord of Hatred DLC. I'm more of a Paladin guy myself, but I hear Warlocks offer a little more to chew on for buildcrafters.

Finally, Blizzard is doing the inverse of Overwatch's recent Diablo crossover with Overwatch-themed items in Diablo 4. Right at the start of the season, you'll be able to earn Eye of the Overwatch currency from elite and champion monsters and use it to unlock themed cosmetics, which will also be available in Diablo 4's cash shop. This is also the first time we actually see Overwatch characters in Diablo, and I have to say, the bright, colorful look of the hero shooter clashes pretty starkly with Diablo 4's grimdark world. It's neat seeing characters like Reinhardt, Genji, Reaper, Mercy, Brigitte, Moira, Roadhog, and Kirkio in a Diablo setting, but the promotional image below makes this look more like Diablo 3 than 4:

Diablo 4: Season of Death Awakening kicks off June 30.

Evidence of Diablo 4 coming to the Nintendo Switch 2 ramps up, as Blizzard Entertainment's RPG gets another rating