This week, *Diablo 4* unveiled its first roadmap, outlining the content slated for 2025 and teasing what's on the horizon for 2026. IGN had the opportunity to delve into the roadmap with game director Brent Gibson, covering everything from the second expansion to anticipated IP collaborations. However, the release of the roadmap has sparked a wave of concern among the *Diablo 4* community about the quality and quantity of new content in 2025.
“Oh boy! Can't wait for new Helltide color and temporary powers,” remarked redditor Inangelion, capturing the sentiment of many dedicated *Diablo 4* players who were hoping for more substantial updates. “It's gonna be so dope!”
Fellow player feldoneq2wire elaborated on the community's expectations, saying, “A new season in other ARPGs is like ‘let's put in a little housing system where you build up a home base with vendors that give you more gear’ or ‘let's put in 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,’ “ He contrasted this with *Diablo 4*'s approach: “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?’ “
Fragrantbutte expressed a mix of affection and disappointment, stating, “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.” Similarly, artyfowl444 pointed out the vagueness in the roadmap's promises, noting, “ ‘And more’ is doing a lot of heavy lifting here.”
The online debate grew so intense that Diablo community manager Lyricana_Nightrayne felt compelled to address the concerns directly 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 fresh start each season brings, others feel that the reset diminishes the value of deep engagement. There's a divide between those who believe that retaining all seasonal content would be too overwhelming, and those who are considering taking a break until 2026, when more significant updates are expected.
Mike Ybarra, former president of Blizzard Entertainment, shared his insights on the matter via a post on X/Twitter, stating, "Don't ship to check a box. 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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The conversation around *Diablo 4*'s expansions has been influenced by the delay of the second expansion from 2025 to 2026. Originally, Blizzard aimed to release expansions annually, but following the launch of the first expansion, *Vessel of Hatred*, in 2024, the second expansion will skip 2025.
In our interview with Gibson, he shed light on the challenges of developing *Diablo 4* as a live service game, balancing free seasonal updates with substantial 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, followed by Season 9 in the summer, and Season 10 later in the year.
