“We’re going to keep making a better game”, Diablo 4 boss reflects on the disaster that was the launch of Season 1

2023-08-25 05:30:00

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If the launch of Diablo IV on June 5 was rather well received by players and critics who were starting to have good hopes for the quarterly seasons to come, the slope has since been rather downward. Doubtful updates deemed “anti-fun”, balancing to be reviewed, and above all a season 1 which has made the majority of players flee to Baldur’s Gate 3 as it is for the moment catastrophic, Blizzard must raise its head for season 2 of the game announced at Gamescom, scheduled for October 17th.

And who better than the General Manager of the license to apologize and make great promises for the future? Rod Fergusson is present in Cologne for this 2023 edition of Gamescom, and has announced his impressions and ambitions for the sequel to Diablo 4.

Blizzard aware of player concerns

Already before the launch of season 1, players were getting tired of it weird updates from Blizzard, and Rod Fergusson’s attitude in interviews and developer roundtables, which eventually faded away. Looking calmer and more composed, the latter, present at Gamescom 2023, admitted in an interview for Gamesradar the recent failures of Diablo 4, and wants to be ambitious for season 2, the Season of Blood.

It’s hard, because we thought the decisions we made were the right ones for the game. We tried to act fast, to respond quickly and intelligently to problems. We were like “Hey! We have 2/3 of a solution, let’s give them that and we’ll release the 3rd third later!” And that didn’t work in our favour. […] We realized that there was a problem in the management of expectations, we had to assume it and recognize that we had to do better, especially in the way of publishing updates.

Rod Fergusson

A season 1 to identify all the problems and fix everything from season 2? That seems to be the goal for Rod Fergusson and his team.

A revival season 2

A revival, only a few months after the release of Diablo 4. This season 2 must be an imperative success for Blizzard, under penalty of seeing its players leave for good. In any case, Fergusson seems convinced that their course is the right one, and that they have learned from their past mistakes:

We really learned in Season 1 and Season 2. We have our own polls, telemetry, roundtables, developer streams, and all of our own gameplay data as well. […] We’re going to do better and we’re going to keep making the game better.

Rod Fergusson

Recently announced, Season 2, titled Season of Blood and scheduled for next october 17, will introduce an evil vampire horde through a new series of quests. A likely loot overhaul, reworked elemental resistances, 5 new endgame bosses, new Renown rewards, and a new major character played by none other than Gemma Chan (Crazy Rich Asians, The Eternals…) named Erys, a ghoul hunter, season 2 of Diablo 4 promises to be bloody.

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