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Posted 9-9-2024 11:20:03
Diablo 4's First Season May be its Most Important
With the current plan for three-month seasons in Diablo 4, Blizzard's offerings for each will need to be enough to keep players coming back and engaging in the grind without it devolving to monotony. Merely slapping on a battle pass and resetting seasonal progress will fall short of the expectations for today's live-service games.
Presumably, Blizzard has kept a keen eye on what the most successful studios have done to keep games like Destiny 2, Fortnite, and Sea of Thieves from withering on the vine, as well as the strengths and weaknesses of the live-service games the publisher's own development teams have maintained. Fortunately, Diablo 4 has a wealth of avenues it can look to build out, as well as plenty of space for new core features to be tacked on.
Besides adding new world tiers with higher-scaling stats, players will be looking for new items with creative perks that they can craft builds around, as well as new dungeons, events, bosses, class skills, and eventually additional chapters for Diablo 4's story. It is hard to say how much of that Blizzard can reasonably produce for the first season, but the studio has to take big swings at this critical point in a live-service game's journey, where players decide if it is an ecosystem they want to be with for the long haul.
For Blizzard, Maintaining Momentum is Easier Than Getting it Back Later
Blizzard has already come out to clarify that leaderboards will not be implemented in time for Diablo 4's first season. Without the competitive motivator, it will have to dial in the other aspects of the game that make it so rewarding, and most of all, fun. The seasonal theme could be an ace up the studio's sleeve, with an eye-popping aesthetic style, maybe wrapped around a core feature it kept out of release to polish for season one.
Something like the Uber Bosses in previous titles paired with a visual nod to Diablo 2, or introducing an item like the Horadric Cube would go a long way to satiating the fan base until the loop of seasonal ladders with leaderboads is up and functional. Whether it is something entirely new for Diablo 4, or just expanding on the least fleshed-out features, Blizzard can not afford to get by on the bare minimum.
The less it does to solidify its long-term players now, the more it will have to do with a larger-scale expansion down the line to claw them back. In terms of player retention, Blizzard will want to spend a penny now to save a pound later. Regardless of what season one entails though, Diablo 4's initial offering at launch is an impressive one, and bodes well for what is to come.
A Diablo 4 fan translated the in-game text used by the Church of Light, only to discover the word "werewolf" over and over again. If this hilarious detail is any indication, it seems the Church of Light in Diablo 4 has a bit of an obsession with lycanthropes.
The Cathedral of Light, the religious order created by the angel Inarius in Diablo 4, is one of the major factions in the game. All across Sanctuary, players can find stylized text from the Cathedral in various places, from statues and engravings to books and leaflets, which fans have affectionately dubbed "Lorath Ipsum."
Diablo 4 Player Comes Up With Genius Map Upgrade Idea
However, Diablo 4 fan TheoryOfN discovered something hilarious about the in-game text and shared their findings on Reddit. The Collector's Edition artbook for Diablo 4 has a key to translate the Cathedral of Light text. Using it, they were able to translate the words found in Diablo 4. When they did, they found nearly every piece of text in the game – and in the artbook itself – was some iteration of the word "werewolf." Occasionally the letters would be jumbled up in some other fashion, but werewolf was consistently repeated everywhere they looked.
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