Yahoo Finance 'Until you have a million people show up, you just never know': Blizzard on the Diablo 4 beta, loot and a development culture shift
One of the more positive problems to have when a heralded video game series returns after a decade hiatus is the amount of players that flock to its door. Even in a early access beta test this past weekend ahead of its full release in June, dungeon-crawler Diablo 4 saw over a million people descend on the gates of hell. And at first, such was the demand, they had to wait to be let in.
Queue times in the early knockings of the beta on Friday saw some players waiting over an hour. A problem, for sure, but one that allowed developer Blizzard to get to work. Less than a day later, the queues had vanished, but the players had not.
“One of the great things about this beta is that it is indeed a true test for us,” Diablo 4’s director Joe Shely tells The Telegraph. “We want to make sure that the game is ready for launch. So as we've run into issues, whether they're bugs or balance issues, we can fix them. Internally, we can test the game using automation and those kinds of things, but nothing compares to having real people playing the game.”
And those real people, broadly speaking, thoroughly enjoyed their weekend with Diablo 4. One of the original loot-driven action RPG series, Diablo has you peering down into a medieval world of monsters and magic. At its core, you slash, shoot and cast spells to duff up denizens of hell, picking up flashy gear as you go to make your slashing, shooting and spellcasting more effective (and more fun) against increasingly tough baddies.
This time Diablo 4 focusses on the land of Sanctuary, a sprawling open-world but one more grounded in the lives of its villagers and the creeping hand of hell on their lives. The demonic goddess Lilith has come to Sanctuary, unleashing monsters and cultivating everyday folk to join her cause. Your character --selected from the uniquely skilled classes of Barbarian, Rogue, Sorcerer, Druid and Necromancer-- is drawn into the battle of ostensibly good versus evil. But while the setup is simple enough, Blizzard has put a lot more weight onto the story for Diablo 4.
“This is the strongest story that's ever been in a Diablo game,” says Diablo general manager Rod Fergusson. “We're seeing that resonate, getting the feedback from the beta and the notion of ‘why do I care about the story of the townsfolk? I never used to care about the townsfolk!’
Fergusson believes this comes from the game’s villain and the tech on offer since 2012’s Diablo 3. “Lilith is really compelling as an antagonist and we have so many different ways to tell the story now. Technology has allowed us that. We have what we call complex conversations, which are bespoke animations with a zoomed in camera and we have real time cinematics so you can full render a story moment with your character.”
That grounding works a treat, as the game opens with the elaborate viscera of Lilith’s ascent and your own character’s near-deadly involvement with a turned hamlet. But, as ever with Diablo, the meat lies in its gothic environments and tactile combat. The realm of Fractured Peaks is an oppressive and wintry hinterland teeming with monsters ahead of your trip with the Ralph Ineson-voiced Lorath Nar to the militaristic capital of Kyovashad.
Out in the plains and in the procedurally generated dungeons, combat is your main interaction. In my time with the game I played as a rogue, with a nice balance of melee attacks and a ranged bow and arrow. Each has a pleasing amount of weight, with vanquished foes collapsing in a satisfying shower of gear, gold and guts. And as you unlock more attacks and better equipment, that feeling of empowerment only grows. That has been the highlight of the beta’s early impressions.
“People are having fun, which is what we're hoping for,” says Shely. “It's been a while since there has been a Diablo game and we had some people who said they want to see it for themselves. It’s gratifying to have the response that we've seen. Obviously we've got balance issues --this thing is too strong or this thing is too weak or this monster is too difficult or whatever-- but the overriding feedback has been ‘wow, this is better than I expected!’”
There is a palpable sense of relief from Shely and Fergusson over the broadly positive response to the beta. One that isn’t surprising since Diablo 4’s development has been beset by disruption. Fergusson joined Blizzard partway through development in 2020 to oversee Diablo as a whole, while Shely was installed as Diablo 4’s new director in 2021. Former director Luis Barriga and lead designer Jesse McCree were removed from the project and left Blizzard after a lawsuit was brought against the developer alleging gender discrimination and sexual harassment. Was Shely and Fergusson’s first job in the light of this a cultural shift or a technical one to keep development on track?
“My job is to release a game for players to have fun playing the game but also for the team to be able to realise all of the work that they've been putting in,” says Shely. “Because if we're not able to do that. If we flounder and don't ultimately ship a game that everyone's proud of then it's much harder to feel like that time was well spent.”
“It was cultural but it was also a process shift in terms of how you run a project,” says Fergusson, who joined Blizzard after overseeing Xbox’s Gears of War series. “I felt like we didn't have as much production predictability and transparency that I wanted to have on the project. So it was really about modernising our production. We were doing great work and moving the project forward but we didn't have that ability to look beyond where we were. I really wanted to start leveraging our tools and our processes to be able to call our shot and say: this is our date. I love the whole creative process, but my favourite part of gamemaking is when you change gears to finish the game and get it into players hands.”
Diablo 4 will be releasing into a rather different audience climate than Diablo III. Following the success of ‘live service’ games such as Destiny, loot-driven systems --where weapons and gear with higher stats pepper your progress-- have come to dominate blockbuster gaming. Even when the game doesn’t suit the approach, these systems can often find themselves crowbarred in. It is a driving force for Diablo, but that oversaturation could make it harder for Blizzard to cut through the noise.
“I think one of the things that's really beneficial is the name Diablo,” says Fergusson. “Even though in the 10 years since since Diablo 3 there have been a lot of other action role playing games, there is that notion of ‘where's the next Diablo because we know that it's going to have a certain quality to it’. As the originator there is a certain weight of what you expect the game to be. We’re competing against ourselves.”
“One of the things that makes loot-driven games popular is that the loot has a lot of depth in terms of options and ways to develop your character,” says Shely. “But it's very easy to accidentally provide that in a way that's overwhelming for new players. A lot of the work that we've done here is making sure that it's easy for new players to get into Diablo 4. To provide that loot experience that players are expecting, but in a way that introduces new players to aspects of it slowly -- rather than assaulting them with a bunch of math!”
Shely and Fergusson say that making the game welcoming for new players was always a priority, even taking pointers from recent mobile game Diablo Immortal to help welcome players to the game. A year ago, says Fergusson, players were dropped into a cave in Diablo 4's open world and let loose but could find themselves lost or mismatched. While Diablo Immortal has faced criticism for its focus on microtransactions (something currently limited to cosmetic items in Diablo 4), its more authored introduction has played its part in its significant success.
But while there were lesson learned from its sister title, Diablo 4 is a “different game with different aims”. For all of the attempts to woo new players to Sanctuary, much of the feedback coming from the beta were from hardcore players with an long-standing investment in Diablo. One particular point of criticism from experienced players was that the procedurally generated dungeons were not varied enough. Something that the developers take on board, but suggest will change as players get deeper into the full game.
“The game world is enormous,” says Shely. “And the beta covers just a small part of it -- about 20% of the overworld. There are well over 100 dungeons spread out across the world and we want you to visit all of them! When you start to get into the end game and you get into all those deep systems, we come back and we modify them in really cool and interesting ways.”
Shely and Fergusson talk of their new Nightmare Dungeon system, which allows you to modify dungeons to make them more difficult, switch up the monsters within or add player buffs or debuffs to access new challenges and rewards.
“We have a lot of replayability in terms of of those dungeons and a lot of innovation in terms of how you can customise the End Game,” says Shely. “What we see in the beta is people experiencing [dungeons] for the first time and we've gotten really good feedback out of that.”
But before players can start thinking about the end game, there is another stop on the road to release. This weekend, Diablo IV throws open the gates again, this time for an open beta available to anyone who wants to download it. While the first beta weekend allowed Blizzard to patch in hotfixes, cut the queues and keep the game running smoothly; another influx of players will provide a sterner challenge.
“Part of why we needed to do this test was that until we have more than a million people show up to test your servers you just never know,” says Fergusson. “You can go ‘Okay, I think we can handle this number of players’. But until they actually show up… We had a bumpy Friday, but that Friday helped us find a bunch of issues we didn't know about. That means that this weekend and launch will be smoother because of it.”
The latter seems to be said in both hope and expectation. And one suspects that it took more than one bumpy Friday to get Diablo 4 to where it is; and will take a few more to get it where it wants to be. But on this evidence: so far, so good.
Diablo 4 is released for PC, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, PS5 and PS4 on 6 June. The open beta runs 24 - 26 March
