Diablo 4 News and Information
It’s time to take a look at what’s been going on in the latest week in Diablo. This includes what’s been going on here on PureDiablo and some other bits and pieces.
There has been a lot of stuff going on in Diablo, most notably two important things as many of you are aware: The Diablo 4 end-game beta testing came to a close on the 18th and IGN had quite a few videos featuring Joe Shely and Rod Fergusson. The nature of of the videos covered a fair amount of topics on the development and general ideas of directions they wanted to take when developing Diablo 4. Most notable: Layers. Layers is a wonderful thing in game design. You want a game to be simple and fun. That leads to happy players and solid sales. If you want them to stick around though, you need layers. Where I can take the simple design and make in more complex by just adding to it. My last article on the classes and choices video touched on some of that complexity added.
Podcasts
If you haven’t watched this week’s podcast with HCXanth, N3rdwards, and Neinball, I highly recommend it as they covered a lot of the interviews and added in a great deal of informative and well thoughtout speculation. All three of these guys did an amazing job this week and even I found it informative and they gel quite well together.
On the off chance, you didn’t see the previous podcast, episode 10, it had Jay Wilson, who was the game director of Diablo 3 at launch. He discusses some great things and it was awesome of HCXanth to have built a strong connection to be able to get him back on the site. If you read this, thanks Jay for your insights!
Game Awards
As the podcast stated, the game awards will come to us live on December 8th. Many of us are hopeful for an amazing announcement. Hopefully, we get two targeted date for Diablo 4. First is the open beta date. The second is the launch date. Get those vacation/pto/personal days approved today if your work requires those. I pegged April as the release date in a podcast back in October. I still am quite optimistic about that even after the recent rounds have been made, but let us see if my premonition skills are worthwhile sometimes.
Diablo 4 Wiki
The Diablo 4 wiki has been getting quite a bit of attention recently with new sections being added all the time. Recently all the class skill trees were populated with everything we know gathered from the latest videos and the end-game beta. Other sections are also expanding you as we get closer to the next beta phase.
We encourage the community to help out where they can on the section and add or edit anything that needs attention. This is very much a community project made by the community for the community. If you have a PureDiablo account, you can start editing or adding right away.
Another Class?
The last piece of news for Diablo 4 comes from our very own forum that Rush did an article on yesterday about the next Diablo 4 class, some sort of holy warrior detailed by Angzt. I would surmise that some sort of holy character will be done as the next class. I’d say a paladin over an assassin or monk, unfortunately. I have a good feeling a melee rogue is going to play like those other two until one or both get released. A shame really. I would really love a refined assassin with some charges if the combat more refined like Diablo 2 giving you time to engage a cool multi-charge-oriented character.
D2R, D3, and Diablo Immortal
Diablo 2 Resurrected season 2 is in full swing. Seems a lot easier to ding 99 as the terror zones have worked out quite well for that purpose. I have yet to really give it a go as I’ve been super busy and when I’ve had a few moments to play some I’ve been working on my sorceress in my yearly random tournament. Congrats Grisu for becoming the first guardian in this years edition.
Diablo 3 season 27 is currently ongoing for those that want to collect the seasonal rewards. Diablo Immortal is doing their thing and another monthly pass and events are coming up. If anyone is still playing, if so I’d love a comment in the Discord, forum, or in a reply to this. I haven’t touched it since about August personally and wonder how the Netease thing will shake out since they co-developed Immortal, though I imagine that agreement is not going to be affected. China’s youth restriction may have a financial impact on it though causing more restraints on both Diablo Immortal and other games licensed in China.
End of Year Podcasts/Vidcasts
Xanth has informed us that there will be two more podcasts before the holidays. The next one will take place on the night of the Game Awards as we’re expecting some Diablo 4 news.
There will be one more after that which will hopefully feature another special guest if all goes to plan. Stay tuned for more on that.
-Rush
Stay tuned for the next edition of This week in Diablo. We don’t want you missing out on anything!
Other Gaming
Tis the season and there are a few games that launched this week that I’d love to try. Elden Ring, where art thou discount? I haven’t bought it yet and was hoping for a good discount. Marvel’s Midnight Suns launches this week and as much as I want to play that, I am going to wait for a discount on it or maybe it’ll land free in Epic in the next couple months. The last big game of is Warhammer 40k: Darktide which looks to be one of the best in that universe. I might pick it up not on sale in the next couple weeks as it just looks glorious.
The last game I’d like to mention that has been sucking up some of my time is Marvel: Snap. Not a bad little card game and I find the season passes to be reasonable priced and feel like I get good value for that.
On a final note this week, Violent Night is freaking awesome. Go see it if your looking for a good Christmas action flick.
–Vang
Rush’s Other Gaming Addition
I am going to hijack this post of Vang’s to say that there’s another couple of games I’ve been keeping an eye on. Predecessor and Paragon: Overprime. I played a lot of Paragon before Epic closed it down and both these projects are remakes to a certain extent.
Predecessor has just gone into Early Access and it’s closer to the original Paragon than the new Paragon: Overprime which plays more like the original Paragon’s Alpha and early beta back in the day. I am no MOBA fan, but as far as MOBAs go, Paragon was a complete blast.
Predecessor is now in Early Access and Paragon: Overprime will be going into Early Access in about 4 days time.
If anyone is playing either of these, look me up under the name Rushster. Would be happy to team-up 🙂