Diablo 4's 2025 Plan Disappoints Fans, Even Ex-Blizzard President Unsure of Game's Direction

This week, *Diablo 4* unveiled its first content roadmap, giving fans a glimpse into what's in store for the action role-playing game throughout 2025 and teasing what's coming in 2026. IGN's interview with game director Brent Gibson delved into the roadmap, covering everything from the second expansion to potential IP collaborations. However, the roadmap's release has sparked concerns among the *Diablo 4* community about the quality and quantity of new content planned for 2025.

Some players, like redditor Inangelion, expressed a mix of excitement and sarcasm about the upcoming changes. "Oh boy! Can't wait for new Helltide color and temporary powers," they said. "It's gonna be so dope!" This sentiment reflects a broader feeling among the game's hardcore fans who were hoping for more substantial updates.

Fellow player feldoneq2wire contrasted *Diablo 4*'s seasonal updates with those of other action RPGs, highlighting what they felt was a lack of innovation. "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,'" they explained. "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, another fan, shared their disappointment, saying, "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." The phrase "and more" in the roadmap was also criticized by artyfowl444 for being too vague and not promising enough.

The debate grew so heated that Diablo community manager Lyricana_Nightrayne felt compelled to address the community's 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 clarified. "This isn't all that's coming in 2025 :)"

Part of the issue stems from Blizzard's approach to seasonal content in *Diablo 4*, where each season somewhat resets the player's experience. While some appreciate this fresh start, others find it discourages deep engagement with the game. The community is split, with some feeling that constant seasonal content could become overwhelming, while others are considering taking a break until more substantial updates arrive in 2026.

Former Blizzard president Mike Ybarra weighed in on the discussion via a post on X/Twitter. "Don't ship to check a box," he advised. "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 intended to release an expansion annually, but after launching *Vessel of Hatred* in 2024, the second expansion will now skip 2025.

In IGN's interview, Gibson discussed the challenges of developing *Diablo 4* as a live service game that offers both free seasonal content and major paid expansions. "I definitely feel like gamers are more hungry than they've ever been," Gibson said. "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 highlighted the diverse needs of *Diablo 4*'s player base, ranging from casual to hardcore players. "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 elaborated on how the team aims to address different player segments with each season. "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, with Season 9 planned for the summer, and Season 10 expected later in the year.