The first major expansion for Diablo IV was just announced at BlizzCon 2023. Diablo IV: Vessel of Hatred, the much anticipated next part of the title will feature Mephisto, Lord of Hatred. He also happens to be the father of the title’s main protagonist, Lilith Daughter of Hatred. They also revealed a brand new class character that has never been seen before in the Diablo universe.
We, and a plethora of other writers from other publications spoke with with Associate Game Director Joe Pierpiora and Production Director Tiffany Wat and spoke about the expansion, the upcoming Season 3, and how Season 2 has improved the overall quality of life in Diablo IV.
There was a lot to take in from so many questions being asked, but the biggest thing that came up the most during this group panel was the itemization issues of Diablo IV, and how feedback was integral to the upcoming expansion, and beyond. Pierpiora went into this in various forms of details.
Pierpiora: So I literally talked to her [Wat] about a lot of the feedback that we had been getting. But one of the things we really wanted to focus on was players when they start playing in a season of Diablo IV, or play Diablo IV at all have goals that they set for themselves. Diablo is sometimes a game about efficiency, you wanna feel like you’re very powerful and you’re getting really good items, you’re finishing your build stats, you’re getting everything to come online. We found in preseason, season 1 save Diablo IV that players were having a difficult time reaching certain goals for a way that felt fun for them while they were playing.
That ultimately is the most important thing that were doing when we make a video game, making sure that when you set up to start playing and the things you wanna do you can accomplish is fun for you. So if your goal is to reach level 100 or it’s to get a unique, or whatever it is for yourself, and you can do that or if there’s a path towards that, and your having fun the whole time as opposed to hitting walls occasionally. And this was directly related to player feedback and many of them were feeling that stages of the endgame or even around level 58 to 63 players started to see that things were slowing down. It made the game less fun and the paragon points with leveling up were a little more slowly, the worlds didn’t feel as meaningful. So we made a number of changes there we made changes to the item power level and monsters. We wanna make sure the players have having a good time.
Wat went into the how this will also be taken into account when it comes to the newly announced Vessel of Hatred.
Wat: As he [Pierpiora] was saying earlier, we are constantly listening to feedback and we want to continue improving the game as possible. We talk a lot about the quality of life improvements and there was nothing that we would specifically hold back if it was the right time to bring it to the game. The expansions are opportunity for us to definitely expand the world of Sanctuary, it’s a great opportunity to take that next step and see what’s happening when going off of the main campaign. I think the expansion has a lot of opportunity to bring a couple of things to the table but I would not specifically target types of content or features or updates to expansions or seasons.
Vessel of Hatred brings in a brand new class character that is still a mystery. Pierpiora and Wat go into how they decided on this for the new expansion and what generally goes into making a class.
Pierpiora: So we think about the current playstyles that we have in the game, which is generally ‘how does the rogue play, how does the barbarian play, how does the necromancer play, how does thee druid play,’ and we go ‘what can feel differently?’ It allows designer that space to explore interesting, weird, fun stuff. Also ‘what’s the fantasy that feels different from what we have right now?’
Wat: What I think is the greatest about the classes in this is that Diablo IV is a love letter to the community. So when we had that opportunity to revisit the core classes of the Diablo franchise, classes from Diablo, II, and III. Now what’s super exciting about Vessel of Hatred is that we made that decision of ‘lets bring something brand new’ to Diablo. I think that was definitely a role of ours, we want to just take people somewhere new. We’re visiting a nostalgic region, but the way that the player will interact with that with the new class will be a brand new way that they unlock it.
Wat also goes into the new region, giving it a name, and how Mephisto plays into this area for the Vessel of Hatred expansion.
Wat: If you played Diablo II, and you remember entering the area for Act III to take on Mephisto, and when you arrive in Act III you’re actually arriving at the Kurast Docks. That is the region that we are revisiting. Previously it has been referred to outsiders as Torajan. Torajan are actually real people in real life. While we have the opportunity to reach out to cultures in the real world and pull references on them and be inspired by them, we are not experts on any of those things. We want to make sure that this is a fantasy world, we want to pay respect to real people, but we wanted to differentiate our fantasy from there.
We’ll be able to visit the region in the Hantu, people within the Hantu refer to it as, that is something that we had the opportunity to rewrite it a bit, but we feel that it’s absolutely the right move. You’ll be able to explore and learn more about the people. It’s been 72 years since Diablo II, to be able to see how the people have changed in the past 72 years is really exciting. The gates to Nahatu have been closed for several years as Lilith has been wreaking havoc across Sanctuary. We really had the opportunity to bring that region to life, I have a lot of nostalgia for Diablo II but the graphics are a little bit better in Diablo IV and being able to bring that region to life, with new monsters, new tile sets, and new cities to visit.
During the Campfire chat, the development team spoke more on the expansion, going on with the story of main game. They also revealed that players going into the expansion will have the choice of transferring an already made character, or make a brand new one just for the additional content. This makes the expansion easily accessible as the majority of enemies will have an elevated difficulty compared to the main game. We also got some cool looks at some concept images, including the Lord of Hatred himself, Mephisto.
They showed us the Ziggurat of Kurast, the place revealed at the end of the teaser trailer, which will hold a place of significance for the area. The new class was still not revealed, and we’ll need to wait until Summer 2024 for more details. They also went a bit into the upcoming Season 3, which still doesn’t have an official name. This will include the weekly challenge called the Gauntlet, which has the the leaderboard that was announced during the Opening Ceremony. Players who do well will be placed high up on the board, and can be viewed globally or locally for perspective sake. The best players will be permanently recorded in the Hall of Ancients.
Diablo IV Vessel of Hatred launches in late 2024, while Season 3 will launch in early 2024.