Diablo 4's 2025 Roadmap Disappoints Hardcore Fans, Puzzles Former Blizzard President

This week, *Diablo 4* unveiled its first content roadmap, outlining what's in store for the action role-playing game throughout 2025 and teasing what's to come in 2026. IGN's exclusive interview with game director Brent Gibson delved into the roadmap, covering everything from the much-anticipated second expansion to potential collaborations with other IPs. However, the roadmap's release has sparked concerns among the *Diablo 4* community about the depth of content planned for 2025, raising questions about whether it will be enough to keep players engaged.

Community reactions have been mixed, with some players expressing disappointment over the perceived lack of substantial new content. Reddit user Inangelion remarked sarcastically, "Oh boy! Can't wait for new Helltide color and temporary powers. It's gonna be so dope!" This sentiment reflects a broader concern among dedicated players who were hoping for more innovative and exciting additions to the game.

Fellow player feldoneq2wire compared *Diablo 4* to other action RPGs, stating, "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.' 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?'"

Despite their love for the game, players like Fragrantbutte have expressed 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." Similarly, artyfowl444 noted, "'And more' is doing a lot of heavy lifting here."

The online debate reached a point where Diablo community manager Lyricana_Nightrayne felt compelled to address the concerns directly on the game's subreddit, stating, "We added fewer details to the later parts of the roadmap to accommodate for things the team is still working on. 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 the game experience resets each season. While some players appreciate the fresh start, others find it discourages deep engagement, fearing that significant progress will be lost. The debate continues, with some suggesting that if all seasonal content remained constant, the game could become overwhelming, while others are contemplating a break until 2026, when they anticipate more meaningful content.

Mike Ybarra, former president of Blizzard Entertainment and now a corporate executive at Microsoft, shared his thoughts on the matter via a post on X/Twitter. He advised, "Don't ship to check a box. 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 delay of the second expansion, initially planned for 2025 but now scheduled for 2026, has fueled further discussion about the game's content strategy. While *Vessel of Hatred*, the first expansion, launched in 2024, the second expansion will skip a year, deviating from Blizzard's original plan of annual releases.

In our interview, Gibson discussed the challenges and strategies of developing *Diablo 4* as a live service game, balancing free seasonal content with paid expansions. He stated, "I definitely feel like gamers are more hungry than they've ever been. 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, from casual to hardcore gamers. He explained, "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 highlighted specific examples, noting, "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.