This leaves the online focus of Diablo IV feeling equally too new for the series and too old for the larger industry. However, like other long-gestating projects that hoped to capitalize on this, the era of live service is already waning. One year later, Destiny 2 would be released, a game that is still going strong. Reports indicate that development on the current iteration of Diablo IV started as far back as 2016 when live-service titles were hitting their stride in full. It feels like a half-measure and a product of a troubled development attempting to capitalize on industry trends that are now becoming tired. But we couldn’t opt out of these interactions entirely because the game was online only. Yet at no point in doing these tasks with my group did we feel like the game actually encouraged us to engage with the other players in the way a full-on MMO would. The always online world feels more empty due to a focus on larger world events that rarely happen. And World Bosses require large groups of players to tackle and only occur a few times a day (at least in the beta). Larger strongholds that take a bit more effort. There are small events that pop up regularly across the map - akin to FFXIV’s Full Active Time Events (FATEs) - which can be completed in about a minute. To encourage a more communal style of play the world is dotted with different types of events for large groups to take part in. Diablo IV is by no means an MMO The social and online aspects are not as intense as you would see in Blizzard’s World of Warcraft, but it isn’t the co-op experience that the series prioritizes. It speaks to this entry in the series trying to find where it fits in amongst other popular games. Yet so far this only works to dilute the fun of Diablo. Diablo IV is online-only, as was its predecessor, to enable this kind of experience where you naturally run into other players. Every so often in the overworld, we would pass a player or two, and the influx of other players in towns felt akin to rolling through city centers in an MMO (not to mention how it immediately slowed down my PC due to the server load, but this is a beta after all). We did quests, gathered loot, sold it for money, upgraded our gear, and repeated the process ad nauseam as we talked endlessly over voice chat.īut the world wasn’t just our playground. Logging into the Diablo IV beta and forming a group with friends led to hours of the day slipping away as we talked and clicked away at the repetitive mobs. Diablo’s signature gameplay loop returns, and it's as good as ever.
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