This week, Blizzard unveiled the much-anticipated roadmap for *Diablo 4*, offering a detailed look at the action role-playing game's content slated for 2025, with a tantalizing glimpse into what's in store for 2026. IGN had the opportunity to sit down with game director Brent Gibson to dissect the roadmap, covering everything from the second expansion to exciting IP collaborations. However, following the roadmap's release, the *Diablo 4* community has voiced concerns over the 2025 lineup, questioning whether the new content will be substantial enough to keep them engaged.
“Oh boy! Can't wait for new Helltide color and temporary powers,” remarked redditor Inangelion sarcastically. “It's gonna be so dope!”
This sentiment resonates with many dedicated Diablo 4 players who were hoping for more thrilling updates in the upcoming content.
“A new season in other ARPGs is like ‘let's introduce a little housing system where you build up a home base with vendors that give you more gear’ or ‘let's create a whole shipping system where traders from other lands bring materials that let you upgrade your items in ways that change your class mechanic entirely,’ “ pointed out feldoneq2wire.
“A new season in D4 is ‘what color are we making helltides this time?’ And ‘what powers and reputation skins are we whipping up this time?’ “ they added, highlighting the perceived lack of depth in the seasonal content.
“I'm not a Diablo 4 hater, I love the game, but there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of meat on the bone here which is a bit disappointing,” expressed Fragrantbutte.
“ ‘And more’ is doing a lot of heavy lifting here,” chimed in artyfowl444, referring to the roadmap's vague promises.
The online debate reached a point where Diablo community manager Lyricana_Nightrayne stepped in to address the community's concerns on the Diablo 4 subreddit: “We added fewer details to the later parts of the roadmap to accommodate for things the team is still working on,” they explained. “This isn't all that's coming in 2025 :)”
Part of the issue stems from Blizzard's approach to seasonal content in *Diablo 4*. While some players appreciate the reset each season brings, others feel it discourages deep engagement, arguing that if all seasonal content were permanent, the game might become overwhelming. As a result, some players are contemplating taking a break until 2026, when more substantial content is expected.Mike Ybarra, the former president of Blizzard Entertainment and a corporate executive at Microsoft, weighed in on the debate via a post on X/Twitter.
“Don't ship to check a box,” Ybarra advised. “Season's need to get off the cycle of shipping, spending two months to fix issues, then repeating.
“Pause and give the team time to really address the end-game issues. Playing for a week to then one or three shot a ‘uber’ boss 500 times for a unique, then quitting until next season is fundamentally not fun.
“Expansions schedule is too long - should be yearly. Reduce ‘story’ investment (costs so much for one time element in a ARPG) and focus on new classes, new mob types, new end-game activities that last more than a few days.
“If the cycle continues to just ship w/o fixing the fundamental issues, then I'm not sure where Diablo is going. You can add all the end-game activities you want, but you'll be running in place with the same issues. At some point there's just so many random things, it's not worth the effort.”
Diablo 4: Vessel of Hatred Gameplay Screenshots
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Discussions about Diablo 4's expansions have been fueled by the delay of the second expansion, originally set for 2025 but now postponed to 2026. Blizzard's initial plan was to release an expansion annually, but while the first expansion, Vessel of Hatred, launched in 2024, the second expansion will miss its 2025 window.
In our exclusive interview, Gibson discussed the challenges of maintaining Diablo 4 as a live service game, balancing free seasonal content with significant paid expansions.
“I definitely feel like gamers are more hungry than they've ever been,” Gibson noted. “And even if you delivered on their appetite today, that appetite will shift tomorrow. And so you just have to be in a really good spot to adapt to that situation. Because a lot of times too, what's important this month is going to be completely different three months from now. The priority of things can shift very, very quickly based on another game release or the state of your own game. Or maybe we've discovered something really cool and we want to be able to get it in there to change the formula.
“And so it is definitely a new way of developing. It is definitely high interaction with the community. The interesting thing about Diablo is that we have a lot of different community types, right? We have our casual players, we have our hardcore players. They all fall into subdivisions of types of players inside of that. And so what we look to do is season upon season, look at the things that are important to some of those groups and go after them with focus.
“When you take a look at something like what we're doing in Season 8, we know we have a ton of boss lair feedback and so we're adding in the quality of life improvements for those players where that is a big focus of their gameplay type, or we might shift to nightmare dungeons when we're in Season 9. And so it's an opportunity for us to address different groups at different times, leading to an expansion where we're going to be addressing everybody all at once with something big.”
Diablo 4 Season 8 is set to launch later in April, with Season 9 following in the summer, and Season 10 slated for later in the year.
