'Diablo IV' Director Gives Game Update, No Release Date Yet

Although there were hopes for a 2020 release, it’s looking less and less likely that the long-anticipated “Diablo IV” is coming anytime soon.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing though. Destructoid reports that Blizzard is taking the slow and steady approach to talking about “Diablo IV,” with the development team’s quarterly update for the month covering a big internal playtest, the open world, multiplayer, items, and other topics.

Initially announced at Blizzcon 2019 in November last year, “Diablo IV” is an online dungeon crawler action role-playing game developed by Blizzard Entertainment. The game is supposed to release versions for PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One.

With “Diablo III” being released way back in 2012, the wait has indeed been long for this installment of the franchise.

According to “Diablo IV” director Luis Barriga, his team recently “ focused on blocking in all the elements in a region known as the Dry Steppes, complete with campaign content, open-world elements, itemization, a PvP subzone, dungeons, and a cinematic to cap the completion of the region's narrative."

There will be PvP bouts as well as side quests for “Diablo IV” while camps (overrun locations that can be turned into outposts with NPCs) proved popular during the session. "For example, one of the camps in the zone was a town afflicted by a curse that turned villagers into piles of salt. Another was a crypt, haunted by a spirit that possesses the bodies of various undead – jumping from skeleton to skeleton until you defeat him,” Barriga said.

While admitting that fine-tuning the multiplayer in “Diablo IV” to make it seamless has been challenging, Barriga said that the team has a difficult balancing act to accomplish, and is trying to "incorporate elements from shared-world games without the game ever feeling like it's veering into the massively multiplayer territory."

Set in the Diablo series world of Sanctuary, Diablo IV takes place following the aftermath of “Diablo III: Reaper of Souls.” Cultists have summoned the main antagonist and daughter of Mephisto, Lilith. After the events of previous games, the forces of demons and angels alike have been depleted, allowing an opening for her to establish power in Sanctuary.

"We find that the game stops feeling like Diablo and the world feels less dangerous when you see other players too often or in too high numbers," he added.

Barriga also mentioned that the two-day playtest and ensuing feedback reinforced the feeling that this group of developers has "the key ingredients for a great ‘Diablo IV .’"

How early is the game’s development as of now? “We still have a lot of work ahead of us and to be clear, we are not at an Alpha or Beta stage yet," Barriga said. "We don't typically discuss our early milestones publicly during the course of development, but we think it's especially important to continue to share our progress during a year without a Blizzcon,” Destructoid reports.