This week, *Diablo 4* unveiled its first roadmap of content, offering fans a glimpse into what's in store for 2025 and teasing even more for 2026. In an exclusive interview with IGN, game director Brent Gibson delved into the roadmap, covering topics from the much-anticipated second expansion to exciting IP collaborations. However, the community's reaction to the 2025 content has been mixed, with many expressing concerns over the depth of the new features and whether they'll be enough to keep players engaged.
Some players, like redditor Inangelion, expressed a mix of excitement and sarcasm, saying, "Oh boy! Can't wait for new Helltide color and temporary powers. It's gonna be so dope!" This sentiment reflects a broader feeling among hardcore *Diablo 4* players who were hoping for more substantial updates to the game.
Fellow player feldoneq2wire highlighted the disparity between *Diablo 4*'s seasonal updates and those of other action role-playing games (ARPGs), noting, "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.' 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?'"
Despite their love for the game, players like Fragrantbutte and artyfowl444 voiced their disappointment, with the latter commenting, "'And more' is doing a lot of heavy lifting here." The online debate became so heated that Diablo community manager Lyricana_Nightrayne had to step in, reassuring players 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. This isn't all that's coming in 2025 :)"
One of the core issues fueling the debate is *Diablo 4*'s seasonal content model. While some appreciate the reset each season brings, others feel it discourages deep engagement with each new season. There's a split in the community: some believe constant seasonal content would make the game overwhelming, while others are considering stepping away until 2026 when more significant updates are expected.
Mike Ybarra, former president of Blizzard Entertainment and now at Microsoft, shared his thoughts on the matter on X/Twitter. He emphasized the need for a more thoughtful approach to content release, saying, "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 delay of the second expansion from 2025 to 2026 has also been a point of contention. Originally, Blizzard planned to release expansions annually, but after launching *Vessel of Hatred* in 2024, the second expansion will skip a year.
In our interview, Gibson addressed the challenges of developing *Diablo 4* as a live service game, balancing free seasonal content with major paid expansions. He remarked, "I definitely feel like gamers are more hungry than they've ever been. 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."
Gibson also highlighted the diverse community *Diablo 4* serves, from casual to hardcore players, and how the team aims to cater to different groups with each season. He said, "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."
He further explained how the team plans to address specific player feedback, such as improving boss lairs in Season 8 and focusing on nightmare dungeons in Season 9, leading up to a major expansion that will cater to all player types. *Diablo 4* Season 8 is set to launch later in April, with Season 9 expected in the summer, and Season 10 later in the year.
