This week, *Diablo 4* unveiled its first content roadmap for 2025, along with a sneak peek into 2026. In an in-depth interview with IGN, game director Brent Gibson delved into the roadmap, covering everything from the much-anticipated second expansion to potential collaborations with other IPs. However, the release of the roadmap has sparked a mix of excitement and concern among the *Diablo 4* community, with many questioning the sufficiency of the new content slated for 2025.
Some players expressed their disappointment humorously. "Oh boy! Can't wait for new Helltide color and temporary powers," commented redditor Inangelion. "It's gonna be so dope!" This sentiment echoes the feelings of many hardcore *Diablo 4* enthusiasts who were hoping for more substantial updates to keep them engaged.
"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,'" added feldoneq2wire. "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 shared a more balanced view, "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." Artyfowl444 chimed in with, "‘And more’ is doing a lot of heavy lifting here."
The online debate grew significant enough that Diablo community manager Lyricana_Nightrayne felt compelled to address the 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 explained. "This isn't all that's coming in 2025 :)"
A key issue highlighted by the community is Blizzard's approach to seasonal content in *Diablo 4*. While some appreciate the fresh start each season provides, others feel that the reset diminishes the incentive to deeply engage with the new content. The debate centers on whether maintaining consistent seasonal content would be overwhelming or if waiting until 2026 for more substantial updates is the better choice.
Mike Ybarra, former president of Blizzard Entertainment, shared his perspective on the matter via a post on X/Twitter. "Don't ship to check a box," Ybarra 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."
Ybarra also critiqued the expansion schedule, suggesting, "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 conversation around *Diablo 4* expansions intensified with the announcement that the second expansion, initially slated for 2025, has been delayed to 2026. Blizzard had planned annual expansions, but after the release of the first expansion, *Vessel of Hatred*, in 2024, the second expansion will skip a year.
In our interview, Gibson elaborated on the challenges of maintaining *Diablo 4* as a live service game with both free seasonal content and paid expansions. "I definitely feel like gamers are more hungry than they've ever been," Gibson remarked. "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 emphasized the importance of community interaction and the diverse needs of *Diablo 4*'s player base. "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 addresses different player groups through seasonal updates. "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 expected in the summer, and Season 10 planned for later in the year.
