Save 38% on Diablo: Sword of Justice – A Trip Back Into Sanctuary

Diablo's 30th anniversary has understandably put most of the attention on Season 15, Diablo V and the various demons currently finding new ways to ruin Sanctuary. But if all the anniversary nostalgia has left you wanting something from the older corners of Diablo lore, Amazon currently has Diablo: Sword of Justice at 38% off. It is a 128-page hardcover graphic novel collecting the complete five-issue comic series, and unlike another evening spent farming Prime Ribs, this one can actually sit on a shelf when you are finished.

Check the current Diablo: Sword of Justice deal on Amazon

As always with Amazon discounts, prices can change without warning, so the 38% saving reflects the deal available when we spotted it.

A Diablo Story From Before Diablo III

Sword of Justice originally appeared as a five-part comic series beginning in 2011, before Diablo III had even launched. Written by Aaron Williams and illustrated by Joseph Lacroix, it follows a young man named Jacob who has fled his northern homeland after being accused of murder. Unfortunately for Jacob, Sanctuary has never been particularly good at allowing people to simply move somewhere quiet and reconsider their life choices.

Jacob begins receiving visions connected to an ancient prophecy and eventually finds himself drawn toward a weapon considerably more important than the average rusty sword lying outside Tristram: the sword of the Archangel Tyrael.

The result is one of those Diablo stories that works particularly well away from the games. Instead of beginning with a hero capable of destroying several hundred demons before lunch, it focuses on somebody being dragged into the larger mythology of Sanctuary one unpleasant revelation at a time.

Tyrael Makes This Particularly Interesting for Lore Fans

The Tyrael connection is the obvious attraction. Few Diablo characters have been involved in more of Sanctuary's history, from the destruction of the Worldstone through Diablo III and the rebuilding of the Horadrim. We have recently spent plenty of time talking about how Diablo V wants its ruined world to tell the history of what happened before, but Sword of Justice comes from an era when Blizzard and its partners were filling some of those gaps through novels and comics instead.

That also makes it a nice companion piece to Diablo's current 30th anniversary. Season 15 has spent weeks digging through the franchise's past, bringing back old bosses, Runewords and pieces of Diablo history. Sword of Justice represents another layer of that history, created long before anyone knew what Diablo IV, Lilith or the current version of Sanctuary would eventually look like.

This Is the Hardcover Collection

The Amazon listing is for Blizzard Entertainment's later hardcover edition, published in 2021. It collects the complete story in one 128-page volume rather than asking you to hunt down five individual comic issues from more than a decade ago.

That is probably the best way to approach it today. Original Diablo comics can become collector hunting projects of their own, and there are already enough Diablo systems asking us to search for obscure objects.

The hardcover gives you the entire Jacob story, Lacroix's dark Sanctuary artwork and one of the more unusual pieces of Diablo's expanded universe in a single book.

A Nice Pickup While Diablo Lore Is Everywhere Again

The timing is also unusually good. Blizzard has just announced an animated Diablo series for Netflix, Diablo V is building an entirely new era of Sanctuary, and Season 15 is essentially one enormous history lesson disguised as an ARPG season.

If that has sent you back toward the books, comics and lore that exist between the games, Sword of Justice is an easy place to start. It is self-contained, short enough to read without committing to an entire novel series and connected to one of Diablo's most important characters.

And at 38% off, it is currently cheaper than discovering you suddenly need another cosmetic from a Phantom Market.

Diablo: Sword of Justice – see the current Amazon price and discount

Sanctuary has never been especially kind to Jacob.

Amazon, for the moment, is being slightly more generous to us.

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Blizzard Says Diablo 4’s Switch 2 Compromises Are “Barely Noticeable”

Putting Diablo IV on a handheld was always going to require compromises. Sanctuary was originally built for considerably larger boxes, stronger graphics hardware and people sitting close enough to a television or monitor to appreciate every miserable corpse Blizzard carefully placed beside the road. Nintendo Switch 2 has less power to work with, yet Diablo IV Game Director Brent Gibson says the concessions Blizzard had to make are “barely noticeable.” After years of wanting Diablo IV on Nintendo hardware, his reaction to the finished version is rather simple: it was about time.

Speaking to TechRadar following BlizzCon 2026, Gibson described the Switch 2 version as something the team had wanted for a long time. The challenge was never whether Diablo made sense on a portable machine. Diablo III had already demonstrated that remarkably well on the original Switch. The problem was squeezing a much larger, more technically demanding Diablo IV onto Nintendo hardware without making it feel like the version you bought because no other version was available.

There Are Compromises. Blizzard Is Not Pretending Otherwise

We already went through the technical details in our Diablo IV Switch 2 performance breakdown, and there is no magic happening here. Performance Mode targets 40 FPS at 1080p in handheld mode. Docked Performance Mode also targets 40 FPS at 1080p, although Blizzard requires a compatible 120 Hz display. Quality Mode runs at 30 FPS, with 1080p handheld output and up to 1440p while docked.

There is no 60 FPS option.

Textures, effects and other rendering details inevitably have to fit inside a smaller performance budget than they do on a powerful PC, PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X. Blizzard has not discovered a secret Horadric recipe that turns Switch 2 into an RTX graphics card.

Gibson's argument is different. The compromises exist, but during actual play he believes they fade into the background quickly enough that the game still feels like Diablo IV.

Forty Frames Per Second May Be the Smart Compromise

The 40 FPS target initially looked slightly odd because console discussions normally revolve around 30 or 60. On a display capable of supporting the appropriate refresh rate, however, 40 FPS sits in a useful middle ground. It provides smoother frame pacing and more responsive combat than 30 FPS without requiring the severe visual reductions often needed to chase 60 on portable hardware.

Diablo IV is also unusually well suited to that compromise because its combat does not depend on twitch aiming or frame-perfect competitive inputs. Smoothness matters, especially when twenty demons, six explosions and half a Necromancer's extended family occupy the screen simultaneously, but a stable presentation matters more than winning a specification-sheet contest.

Early Switch 2 players have echoed some of that sentiment. Blizzard's own forums contain players praising the handheld 40 FPS mode while still reporting occasional frame pacing issues during especially busy scenes. That sounds considerably less dramatic than the sort of performance disaster people understandably feared when Diablo IV on Nintendo hardware was still only a rumor.

The Portable Format Makes Almost Too Much Sense for Diablo

The more important question is whether Diablo IV benefits from being portable enough to justify the compromises.

It does.

A surprising amount of modern Diablo consists of self-contained twenty-minute tasks. Run a Nightmare Dungeon. Finish several Whispers. Clear a few Waking Nightmares. Progress a War Plan. Farm Prime Ribs from demonic cattle for reasons that would require far too much explanation to anyone watching over your shoulder.

That structure fits handheld play extremely well. Diablo does not always require a four-hour evening with headphones and the curtains closed. Sometimes you want to clear one dungeon while sitting on a sofa and discover that the one dungeon has somehow become six.

Cross-progression makes that considerably more useful. Characters, progression and most account content can move with you between Switch 2 and other supported platforms. The handheld therefore does not need to become your new primary Diablo machine. It can simply become another door into the same account.

Touchscreen Support Is More Useful Than It Sounds

Blizzard has also done more than simply shrink the console version onto a smaller display. Switch 2 supports touchscreen navigation through most menus, the map and inventory. That sounds like a small feature until you remember how much time Diablo players spend moving through precisely those screens.

Inventory management has always been one of the slightly awkward parts of translating a mouse-driven action RPG to a controller. Diablo IV's controller interface is already good, but tapping directly on the map or inventory makes more sense on a handheld than repeatedly moving focus boxes around with an analog stick.

USB mouse and keyboard support is available too, which creates the slightly strange possibility of turning Nintendo's portable console into a tiny Diablo PC.

One feature is conspicuously absent: Joy-Con 2 mouse functionality is not supported. Blizzard confirmed that before launch, despite the feature looking like a natural fit for Diablo's PC heritage.

The Biggest Portable Compromise Has Nothing to Do With Graphics

Ironically, the Switch 2 limitation that may matter most is not the one Gibson was discussing.

Diablo IV remains an always-online game.

That requirement is much easier to ignore when playing on a desktop PC connected to home broadband. It becomes considerably more noticeable when the game is running on something designed to leave the house.

Want to play on a train? You need a connection.

Want to clear a dungeon during a flight without Wi-Fi? Sanctuary is closed.

Want to suspend the console, put it in a bag and resume hours later? Diablo IV's server connection may have other opinions.

Some Switch 2 players have already pointed out that this undermines one of the traditional advantages of owning a portable version. Blizzard can optimize shadows, texture quality and frame pacing. It cannot optimize the railway tunnel currently blocking your mobile signal.

This Is Still the Full Modern Diablo IV

What Switch 2 does not feel like is an archival version of Diablo IV arriving several years late. The Age of Hatred Collection includes the base game alongside Vessel of Hatred and Lord of Hatred, which means Nintendo players are entering the same modern Diablo IV ecosystem as everyone else rather than beginning with the version released back in 2023.

That distinction matters even more after Blizzard confirmed that Diablo IV seasons are expected to continue even after Diablo V launches. Switch 2 is not receiving Diablo IV near the end of its useful life. Blizzard expects the game to remain active for years.

Season of Hell's Legacy is already available there, and future classes, seasonal stories and systems are intended to arrive as part of the same ongoing game.

“Barely Noticeable” Is Probably the Right Goal

A Switch 2 port was never going to become the technically definitive version of Diablo IV. Anyone expecting 4K, ray tracing and 120 FPS on a handheld was probably setting both Nintendo and mathematics an unfair challenge.

The more realistic goal is exactly what Gibson describes.

Make the compromises disappear once you actually start playing.

If you stop thinking about texture resolution halfway through a dungeon, the port has done its job. If 40 FPS feels smooth enough that you notice the monsters rather than the frame counter, the compromise worked. If cross-progression means you can put the console down and continue the same character elsewhere that evening, the Switch 2 version has justified its existence.

Diablo IV is not at its prettiest on Nintendo's handheld.

It may be at its most convenient.

And for a game built around saying “one more dungeon” far too many times, convenience can be a dangerous feature.

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Diablo Immortal’s Spawn Event Has a Big Divide Between Free Rewards and Premium Cosmetics

Spawn has officially arrived in Diablo Immortal, and Blizzard has done something slightly more interesting than simply placing a famous comic-book character inside the shop. The actual crossover contains a surprising amount of playable content that costs nothing extra: a Spawn-themed version of Survivor's Bane, six Hellspawn abilities, a Malebolgia boss fight, an event reward track, ten weapon skins and a new Legendary Gem. If you want to actually look like Spawn, however, Sanctuary suddenly remembers that it is Diablo Immortal.

The iconic Crimson Cloak lives inside a limited-time Phantom Market. Lil' Violator is attached to a separate shop bundle. Blizzard has even created an Empowered upgrade for the Spawn cosmetic with classic color variations, enhanced weapon effects and unique finisher effects.

So the collaboration has developed a remarkably clean dividing line.

Playing Spawn content is largely free.

Becoming Spawn is where the wallet enters the story.

The Free Side of the Event Is Actually Substantial

That distinction matters because it would be unfair to describe the crossover as nothing but a cosmetic sale. Blizzard's official Spawn event breakdown includes several real activities running through November 1.

Hellspawn's Bane transforms Survivor's Bane into a Spawn-themed mode with six new temporary abilities inspired by the character. Players can attack with Hell Chains, surround themselves with the K7-Leetha Cloak, fire Necroplasm, open a Hell Rift, use Spiritual Manipulation and throw Agony through groups of enemies.

A timer eventually drags the player into another version of Hell to fight Heap before returning them to the main survival arena with a temporary buff.

Then there is The Eighth Circle, where groups can fight Malebolgia himself. Blizzard has built weekly time targets and rank-based rewards around the boss, while players who earn MVP four times in team battles with at least three people can unlock an additional cosmetic reward.

That is considerably more effort than “log in, see Spawn, open shop.”

The Reward Track Gives Away Ten Spawn Weapon Skins

Hellspawn's Vengeance provides the main event progression. Completing weekly objectives across activities such as Hellspawn's Bane and The Eighth Circle earns Vengeance Marks, which advance the reward track.

Blizzard lists the rewards as including:

• 10 Hellspawn's Guise weapon skins
• 6 Spawn-themed emojis
• Hellspawned Dominion Avatar Frame
• Necroplasmic Totem Legendary Gem
• Legendary Crests
• Legendary Gear
• Set Items

The weapon skins are explicitly described by Blizzard as free Spawn-inspired weapons earned by progressing through Hellspawn's Vengeance.

That is worth emphasizing because the collaboration is not withholding every recognizable piece of Spawn behind a purchase. A player can participate in the event, use his powers, fight his villains and walk away with visible crossover gear without buying the main cosmetic.

The problem begins when you look at the cape.

The Crimson Cloak Is in the Phantom Market

Spawn without the Crimson Cloak is a little like Diablo without horns. Technically possible, perhaps, but somebody has misunderstood the assignment.

Blizzard knows this.

Hellspawn's Guise, the full Spawn-themed cosmetic featuring the legendary Crimson Cloak, is being sold through a limited-time Phantom Market rather than the event reward track. Blizzard does not present the cloak as an earnable reward from Hellspawn's Vengeance. It sits on the premium side of the collaboration.

And this time there is another layer.

Players can purchase an Empowered upgrade offering classic Spawn colorways, enhanced weapon effects and additional finisher effects. The base cosmetic therefore is not necessarily the visual endpoint. The flashiest version has its own upgrade path.

Community reaction was predictable. Diablo Immortal players are already debating the value of another Phantom Market cosmetic with additional paid enhancements, with several comments specifically objecting to the idea of paying again to complete or improve an already premium appearance.

Lil’ Violator Lives in a Separate Bundle

The Crimson Cloak is not the only famous Spawn cosmetic outside the free reward track.

Lil' Violator turns a Familiar into Violator, one of Malebolgia's most recognizable servants. It is exactly the kind of wonderfully stupid companion Diablo Immortal players are likely to enjoy seeing run beside them through Westmarch.

It is also sold separately.

Blizzard says the Violator Familiar transmog comes from the limited-time Hellbound Leash Bundle, which also contains Eternal Orbs, Legendary Crests and Gem Fragments. The bundle is available from September 29 through November 1.

There is also a separate Boon of the Hellspawn Login Bundle containing Eternal Orbs, Necroplasmic Totem, a random 2-Star Legendary Gem Selection Chest and Legendary Crests.

So the collaboration does not have one premium door.

It has several.

Necroplasmic Totem Exists on Both Sides of the Economy

The new 2-Star Necroplasmic Totem Legendary Gem is an interesting example because it crosses the divide.

The Gem appears as a reward in Hellspawn's Vengeance, but Blizzard has also added it to Legendary Gem drop pools and includes another copy inside the paid Boon of the Hellspawn bundle. Its effect surrounds the player with Necroplasm after dealing damage, increases outgoing damage temporarily and can consume a harmful periodic effect to launch an explosive Necroplasmic Bolt.

That means the gameplay item itself is not simply locked behind payment. Players participating in the collaboration can obtain it through the event, while spenders have additional acquisition paths.

That distinction matters in Diablo Immortal, where the line between cosmetic monetization and character progression has never exactly been invisible.

This Is a Better Crossover Than the Monetization Makes It Look

We already covered the full Spawn event reveal, and mechanically this remains one of Diablo Immortal's more ambitious collaborations. Players are not simply wearing Spawn clothes while running ordinary Elder Rifts. Blizzard built themed powers, a special survival activity and an actual encounter with Malebolgia.

The collaboration even brings Heap into Hellspawn's Bane and gives Violator a presence beyond another player costume.

There is obvious affection for the source material here.

Which may be exactly why the premium cosmetics sting more for Spawn fans.

The people most excited about this crossover are also the people most likely to want the cape.

Diablo Immortal Knows Exactly Which Part of Spawn You Want

That is ultimately the clever part of the monetization structure.

Blizzard gives players enough free Spawn content that the crossover feels like a real event. You can use Hell Chains. You can fire Necroplasm. You can fight Malebolgia. You can earn ten weapon skins. You can obtain Necroplasmic Totem.

Then the game places Spawn's most recognizable visual feature somewhere else.

Not his axe.

Not one of the weapon skins.

The cloak.

The enormous, living, impossible-to-ignore red cape that has been part of the character's silhouette since 1992.

Diablo Immortal did not accidentally choose the least important cosmetic for the Phantom Market.

The Divide Is Clearer Than Ever

There is something almost refreshing about how obvious the arrangement is.

The free side says: come play the crossover.

The premium side says: now look like the crossover.

Players can decide for themselves whether the Crimson Cloak, Empowered effects or Lil' Violator are worth whatever the shop ultimately asks from their account. The important thing is that none of those purchases are required to fight Malebolgia or participate in Hellspawn's Bane.

That makes the Spawn event simultaneously easier to praise and easier to criticize.

Blizzard built real crossover content instead of disguising a shop refresh as an event.

It also looked at Spawn's most iconic visual feature and knew exactly where to put it.

Hell may be free to visit.

The cape shop is on the way in.

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Diablo 5’s World Is Telling Three Stories at the Same Time

Diablo games have always been good at putting skeletons in ruined buildings and trusting the player to understand that something unfortunate happened there. Diablo V wants to take environmental storytelling considerably further. Blizzard says Sanctuary is being designed to tell three stories at the same time: the past, showing the world Diablo destroyed; the present, where humanity is desperately trying to survive his rule; and the future, revealed through areas being physically transformed into something closer to Hell. The interesting part is that these stories are not simply delivered through dialogue. They are supposed to exist in the landscape itself.

That makes Diablo V's procedural world more than a way of rearranging caves and putting the treasure chest somewhere different on Tuesday. Blizzard wants the same region to communicate where Sanctuary came from, what Diablo is doing to it now and what will happen if nobody stops the monsters currently redecorating the neighborhood.

The Past Is Written in Sanctuary’s Ruins

Diablo V begins roughly a century after Diablo IV in a world where Diablo has already won. Westmarch has fallen, Sanctuary's greatest heroes are gone and humanity survives in scattered groups rather than comfortably waiting behind city walls for adventurers to arrive.

That means much of the Western Continent is effectively an archaeological site.

Game Director Joe Shely describes the first of Diablo V's three stories as the story of the past: how Diablo conquered Sanctuary and what happened to the civilizations that lived there. Ruined castles, broken settlements and abandoned roads are supposed to tell that history before an NPC needs to explain it in a twelve-minute conversation.

Blizzard's own description puts it neatly: the ruins tell the story of what was lost.

That is important because Diablo V does not begin with the apocalypse approaching. The apocalypse already happened. You are walking through the evidence.

The Present Is About the People Still Living There

The second story belongs to the survivors. This is where Diablo V's caravan becomes more than a replacement for Kyovashad with wheels.

Traditional safe towns are largely gone. Instead, the player travels with a growing group of merchants, companions and refugees trying to survive in territory controlled by Diablo. Blizzard has already introduced examples including a former Sister of the Sightless Eye and, wonderfully, a Treasure Goblin attempting to discover what greed means when civilization has collapsed.

The caravan represents Sanctuary's present tense. These people are not legendary heroes from an ancient war. They are the ones currently living with the consequences.

That also fits Blizzard's ambition to give Diablo V what it internally calls its “best campaign ever”. The story is supposed to become more personal, with companions who travel alongside the player rather than existing as stationary quest dispensers beside a waypoint.

If the ruins tell us what Diablo destroyed, the caravan tells us what remains.

The Future Depends on Who Controls the Land

The third story is where things become considerably more Diablo.

Dread Commanders can physically reshape parts of Sanctuary through a system Blizzard calls terror-forming. These corrupted human champions serve Diablo but retain enough personality that their individual nature changes what happens to the regions they control.

A biome under one Dread Commander may not look or play exactly like the same biome under another. Terrain can change. Points of interest can move or transform. Monster populations and rewards can shift. Hell gradually pushes further into Sanctuary.

Narrative Director Jennifer Hepler says locations can therefore evolve over time, either because a Dread Commander takes control or because humanity manages to reclaim territory.

That is the future layer.

You are not only seeing the world Diablo created. You are watching what it may become next.

Procedural Generation Is Doing Narrative Work

This may be the most interesting difference between Diablo V and Diablo IV's open world. Diablo IV built an enormous Sanctuary, but once you learned the map, Scosglen remained Scosglen. The road was still there. The village was still there. The dungeon entrance had not moved because a demon woke up feeling architectural.

Diablo V wants to restore what Blizzard calls a sense of constant discovery. The overworld itself becomes more procedural, borrowing an idea from older Diablo games but applying it to a much larger space.

That means procedural generation is no longer just responsible for making two dungeon layouts slightly different. It can support the story. A changed landscape becomes evidence that something happened while you were away.

This also helps explain why Blizzard is taking a different approach to progression and level scaling. If the world keeps changing, revisiting old territory needs to feel useful without making every return trip feel identical.

Diablo Is Supposed to Be Everywhere Without Standing Everywhere

There is another clever part to the three-story idea. Blizzard has made Diablo the central villain from the beginning, but the Lord of Terror cannot physically stand behind every tree waiting to remind you that he won.

The landscape can do that instead.

A ruined fortress tells you what his victory cost.

A starving caravan tells you what his reign means today.

A Dread Commander twisting a region into something increasingly infernal tells you where the world is heading.

Diablo becomes present even when he is not on screen.

That may ultimately matter more than giving him another enormous boss entrance.

The World Has to Remember What Happened

Diablo V is still nearly three years away, and Blizzard has deliberately revealed the game early so these systems can change through testing and feedback. We covered that unusual strategy when Blizzard explained why it announced Diablo V so far ahead of launch.

So “three stories” is currently a design philosophy, not a guarantee that every ruined mill will contain a beautifully constructed historical narrative about the farmer who once owned it.

But the idea is strong.

Diablo has conquered Sanctuary.

The important question is not simply what the world looks like afterward.

It is whether the world remembers how it got there, shows what survival looks like now and makes you worry about what it will look like tomorrow.

Diablo V wants the answer written directly into the ground beneath your feet.

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Path of Exile’s Chris Wilson Calls Diablo 4 Season 15 “Pretty Distasteful”

Yesterday, Path of Exile co-creator Chris Wilson gave Diablo V something Blizzard has not always received from him: cautious optimism. The return of different inventory sizes, stronger randomization and several small visual callbacks to Diablo I and II gave him what he called a “glimmer of hope.” His reaction to Diablo IV's current season is considerably less charitable. Wilson calls Season of Hell's Legacy “pretty distasteful”, arguing that Blizzard's 30th anniversary celebration treats Diablo's story, its dead characters and even the Lord of Terror himself with less respect than they deserve.

It is a fascinating criticism because Wilson was surprisingly positive about Diablo V. His problem is not simply that modern Blizzard is incapable of making Diablo correctly. He appears to think Blizzard is moving the next game in a promising direction while simultaneously being far too casual with the mythology of the game players are currently playing.

Wilson Thinks the Prime Evils Should Have Meant More

The central problem for Wilson is how Season 15 handles Diablo, Baal and Mephisto. Diablo IV spent years keeping the Prime Evils largely outside direct confrontation. Mephisto gradually became more important through the campaign and Lord of Hatred, while Diablo himself remained conspicuously absent. That created the expectation that finally facing the Prime Evils would be a major narrative event.

Then Season of Hell's Legacy arrived and put all three on the anniversary menu at once.

“Diablo 4 was slowly building up to you eventually getting to fight the Prime Evils,” Wilson says in comments reported by GamesRadar, before criticizing Blizzard for introducing all three together in an event that is not really part of the main storyline.

That criticism becomes particularly understandable when looking at Season 15's Prime Evil system. Players fight Echoes of Diablo beneath Tristram Cathedral, Baal at Arreat Summit and Mephisto inside the Durance of Hate. Their defeated essence becomes Splinters that players can then carry around as seasonal powers.

Mechanically, it is fun.

Narratively, Wilson thinks these characters deserved something heavier.

Deckard Cain’s Return Bothers Him Even More

The same argument applies to Deckard Cain. Cain was killed during Diablo III, an event that remains one of the most controversial moments in the series. Season 15 brings his lost soul back as the player's guide through Diablo history.

Wilson thinks doing that too casually weakens the meaning of death in the story. If major characters can simply return for an anniversary event, he argues, players have less reason to take future consequences seriously.

There is an obvious counterargument, however, and Blizzard has actually built it directly into Season 15.

The company does not describe the season as Cain simply walking back into Sanctuary and announcing that his death has been reversed. Blizzard calls Season of Hell's Legacy a “living history of Diablo's past games”, filled with memories, Echoes and recreated moments from the franchise's history. Cain is specifically described as a lost soul, and Blizzard warns that “memories are fickle.”

That matters.

Season 15 is less Deckard Cain Returns From the Dead and more Diablo IV Lets You Walk Through Thirty Years of Haunted Memories With Deckard Cain as Your Tour Guide.

Whether that distinction solves Wilson's objection depends on how seriously you expect seasonal content to obey the main campaign's narrative rules.

Then Blizzard Called Diablo “The Birthday Boy”

This is the detail that appears to have pushed Wilson from disagreement into genuine irritation.

During Blizzard's anniversary presentation, Diablo was referred to as “the birthday boy.”

Wilson argues that this is exactly the wrong tone for the central villain of a franchise built around the fear and anticipation of eventually confronting the Lord of Terror. If your entire series is called Diablo, he says, Diablo himself should be treated with maximum respect.

There is something wonderfully strange about the argument because both sides are understandable.

Blizzard is celebrating a videogame's 30th birthday. Somebody making a joke on stage is hardly unprecedented.

Wilson is looking at it from inside the fiction.

Diablo is not supposed to be your slightly difficult uncle arriving late with a cake.

He is the Lord of Terror.

Season 15’s Greatest Strength May Be the Thing Wilson Dislikes

The ironic part is that players appear to be enjoying Season 15 precisely because Blizzard has been so willing to raid its own museum.

We have spent the last two weeks covering hidden Diablo II Runewords, Uber Tristram and the Hellfire Torch, Ogden's Sign, Whimsyshire, Mefishto, cow secrets and the continuing Annihilus hunt. Yesterday we covered the growing community call to keep large parts of Season 15 permanently.

Players are not reacting as though Blizzard has accidentally ruined Diablo history.

A significant portion of the community appears delighted that thirty years of it has suddenly become playable again.

That does not make Wilson wrong. It simply exposes two very different ways of treating videogame history.

One says important fictional events should remain important. Death should matter. Villains should retain mystique. Narrative buildup should not be bypassed because an anniversary needs familiar faces.

The other says it is Diablo's 30th birthday. Let us fight everything.

Diablo V May Be Where Wilson Gets the Serious Diablo He Wants

This is where his reaction becomes especially interesting. Wilson dislikes Season 15's treatment of Diablo mythology, but he is cautiously optimistic about the sequel where Blizzard is apparently taking Diablo extremely seriously indeed.

Diablo V begins after the Lord of Terror has already won.

Sanctuary has fallen. Civilization survives in fragments. The landscape itself is being twisted by Diablo's servants. Blizzard has said the entire game is built around Diablo as the central threat, which is one reason he never simply became another Diablo IV expansion villain.

That sounds much closer to Wilson's preferred treatment of the character.

No birthday cake required.

Maybe Diablo Can Be Both Things

There is a larger question underneath Wilson's criticism. How seriously does Diablo need to take itself at all times?

This is a franchise where kings go mad, civilizations collapse and humanity repeatedly discovers that Heaven is not especially interested in customer service.

It is also a franchise where players have spent decades opening cow portals, arguing about Wirt's Leg and wearing ridiculous equipment because one particular numerical interaction is 4.7% better.

Diablo has always contained both darkness and absurdity.

Season 15 pushes unusually hard toward the anniversary theme park version of that history. Wilson clearly thinks Blizzard has crossed a line and turned important characters into attractions.

Plenty of players seem to think Blizzard has finally built the sort of anniversary season they actually wanted.

Perhaps both reactions reveal the same thing.

Thirty years later, people still care enough about Diablo to argue over whether the Lord of Terror is allowed to have a birthday.

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Diablo Immortal Just Made Every New Set Ring Versatile

Six months ago, Diablo Immortal players were asking Blizzard to stop treating Versatile Rings like a special event and simply make them part of the game. Blizzard listened surprisingly quickly. The feature became permanent in May, allowing newly acquired 3+2 and 3+3 quality Set Rings to use a Gem of any color. Now Blizzard has taken the obvious final step: every newly acquired green Set Ring will roll with a Versatile Socket.

No specific quality requirement. No hoping the ring lands in the correct configuration. No finding an otherwise excellent ring and discovering that its socket has already decided which color of Gem you are allowed to use.

From the latest Diablo Immortal update onward, newly dropped Set Rings simply understand the assignment.

This Started as a Temporary Experiment in March

The history makes the change more interesting. Back in March, Blizzard launched Versatile Rings as a temporary event running from March 19 to May 13. During that period, qualifying 3+2 and 3+3 Rings automatically received a Versatile Socket, allowing any color of Normal Gem to be inserted.

We wrote at the time that players immediately wanted Versatile Rings to become permanent. The reaction was not particularly difficult to understand. Ring socket color had become another layer of RNG sitting on top of item quality, stats, Magic Attributes and everything else Diablo Immortal already asks players to evaluate.

Finding the right ring and then discovering it could not support the Gem setup your build required rarely created an interesting decision.

It mostly created another trip back into the dungeon.

Blizzard Made Them Permanent in May

Blizzard's first response arrived when the temporary event ended. In May, the studio announced that Versatile Rings would become a permanent improvement to ring drops. The existing restriction remained, however: only newly acquired 3+2 and 3+3 quality Rings automatically received the flexible socket.

That was already a major quality-of-life improvement, but it left an odd gap. Lower-configuration Set Rings still followed the older socket rules even though Blizzard had effectively acknowledged that color restrictions on better rings were not making the game more interesting.

Today's update removes that final distinction.

Every New Green Set Ring Gets a Versatile Socket

Blizzard's new Diablo Immortal update notes could hardly be clearer:

All newly obtained green Set Rings will contain Versatile Sockets.

The important word is newly. Blizzard is changing future drops, not automatically converting every Set Ring already sitting in inventories and Armory loadouts.

If you have an old ring with the wrong socket color, it remains an old ring with the wrong socket color.

The solution remains the traditional Diablo solution.

Find another one.

This Removes RNG Without Removing the Item Hunt

That distinction is probably why the change works so well. Blizzard is not removing the hunt for good Set Rings. Players still care about attributes, Combat Rating, Magic Attributes and the Set itself. A terrible ring does not become wonderful because its socket is flexible.

What disappears is one additional failure condition after the useful item has already dropped.

That is the kind of RNG removal Diablo Immortal increasingly seems comfortable making. Patch 4.3 already ensured Set Items always roll with the maximum number of sockets, another change we covered in our breakdown of the March quality-of-life improvements.

Blizzard is not guaranteeing perfect equipment.

It is gradually removing ways for otherwise useful equipment to become pointless for reasons unrelated to the actual build.

Normal Gems Matter More Than They Did Six Months Ago

The timing is also better than it might initially appear because Normal Gems have become more important, not less.

Earlier this month, Blizzard introduced Progressive Upgrades for Normal Gems beginning at Rank 6. Instead of waiting until the entire next rank has been funded before receiving any improvement, high-rank Gems can now gain smaller incremental increases along the way.

That makes socket flexibility increasingly valuable. Serious characters are carrying years of Normal Gem investment. Being forced to reorganize that progression because a new ring happened to roll the wrong socket color becomes harder to justify when individual Gems represent such enormous long-term investment.

A Versatile Socket means the equipment adapts to the Gem collection rather than asking the Gem collection to adapt to the latest random ring.

It Also Makes Armory Loadouts Less Fragile

There is another practical advantage: builds become easier to move between loadouts.

Diablo Immortal players frequently maintain different setups for PvE, Battlegrounds, raids and specific classes. Socket colors can make those transitions unnecessarily awkward if two otherwise comparable Set Rings demand different Gem arrangements.

The community reaction to the new patch has already focused heavily on exactly that quality-of-life benefit. One of the more popular responses to the update essentially ignored the rest of the patch and declared this “THE RING PATCH.” Others pointed out that guaranteed maximum sockets combined with universal Versatile Rings finally removes much of the old socket RNG from green gear.

There are larger features in today's update.

Spawn is invading Sanctuary.

Malebolgia has a boss fight.

Inferno XV is being adjusted.

Some players are apparently more excited that their ring no longer tells them which colored rock they are allowed to put inside it.

Understandable.

The Change Arrives Beside More Progression Cleanup

Versatile Rings are part of a broader pattern in the update. Blizzard is also lowering several Combat Rating requirements in Inferno XIV and XV, adjusting Helliquary bosses and adding additional salvage protections so upgraded equipment or gear containing Gems is less likely to disappear through an accidental Blacksmith click.

The Helliquary Gauntlet is getting a permanent First Clear Leaderboard as well, giving teams another way to record accomplishments beyond simply having several people insist they definitely killed it first.

Individually, these are small changes compared with a new zone or class.

Together, they show Diablo Immortal continuing to polish systems players interact with every day.

Players Asked for Less Ring RNG. Blizzard Kept Going.

The nice thing about this particular story is that we can actually trace the progression.

In March, Versatile Rings were temporary.

Players immediately asked Blizzard to keep them.

In May, Blizzard made the system permanent for high-quality 3+2 and 3+3 Rings.

Now, in September, the quality restriction is disappearing entirely for newly acquired green Set Rings.

That is almost suspiciously logical.

Diablo Immortal still contains more than enough RNG to ensure nobody will mistake Sanctuary for a predictable place. The perfect Set Ring can still refuse to drop. The right Magic Attributes can still hide for weeks. The Dungeon Finder remains perfectly capable of introducing you to three strangers with completely different ideas about speed.

But once the ring finally appears, at least one question has been removed.

What color socket did it roll?

Whatever color you need.

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Diablo 4 Players Are Begging Blizzard Not to Delete Season 15

Diablo IV players have spent years becoming extremely good at saying goodbye. A new season arrives, everybody learns the mechanic, somebody discovers an interaction that melts a boss in 0.8 seconds, Blizzard applies several hotfixes, and three months later most of the interesting machinery disappears into the seasonal cupboard. Season 15 is beginning to create a different reaction. Players are not asking when Season of Hell's Legacy ends. They are increasingly asking Blizzard to make sure large parts of it never do.

A community post calling on Blizzard to make Season 15 content permanent has passed 1,100 upvotes, joining several other highly supported discussions praising the anniversary season and asking for its best additions to become part of the base game. The distinction is important. Players are not necessarily asking Blizzard to preserve every Prime Evil Splinter, every reputation track and every temporary seasonal power forever. The repeated request is much more targeted: keep the Runewords, dungeons, encounters and secrets.

That is a considerably more interesting proposal than simply freezing Season 15 in place.

Players Don’t Want the Good Content Thrown Away

The most popular recent discussion puts the problem rather simply: seasonal content is often temporary content, and Season 15 contains too much genuinely enjoyable material to discard after a few months. The player behind the thread specifically says Splinters and seasonal powers can disappear while arguing that the Runes, Runewords and dungeon encounters deserve to remain. A separate discussion earlier this month called Season 15 the best season yet, largely because of the returning Runewords, nostalgic dungeons and bosses, and made the same request for permanent integration.

That sentiment makes sense after the last two weeks.

Season 15 has hidden Diablo II-style Runewords inside the Horadric Cube, rebuilt Uber Tristram and the Hellfire Torch, returned Whimsyshire, created a secret Bovine Sanctum, brought back Ogden's Sign with a guaranteed Harlequin Crest and turned Annihilus into an ongoing community investigation.

Those are not simply temporary damage multipliers.

They are places, recipes, encounters and mysteries.

Runewords Are the Obvious Candidate

The hidden Runewords may be the easiest feature to argue for. Blizzard effectively created a second language for Runes. Diablo IV's normal Rune system remains intact, while players can also combine specific Runes with white base items to create familiar Diablo II equipment such as Stealth, Enigma, Spirit and Grief.

That system immediately changed how people look at loot. White items became interesting again. Old Rune names gained another purpose. Players started remembering twenty-five-year-old recipes or discovering them for the first time.

It also gave Season 15 something modern Diablo frequently struggles to manufacture artificially: discovery.

Blizzard did not announce every recipe in a developer stream. Players simply found one, tried another and collectively began dismantling the mystery.

Deleting the entire system at the season transition would mean throwing away both the items and that extra layer of Diablo's loot language.

Challenge Dungeons Already Look Like Permanent Endgame Material

The same argument applies to Challenge Dungeons. We actually made this case before Season 15 even launched when we wrote that Challenge Dungeons could finally give Diablo IV's open world a permanent endgame purpose.

The structure is reusable almost by definition. Portals appear while players travel through Sanctuary. Enter one, choose a harder version of the encounter and fight something unpleasant for better rewards. Blizzard can rotate bosses, add modifiers and update the reward pool without rebuilding the framework every season.

Blizzard itself emphasized during the PTR that the early Challenge Dungeon encounters were merely testing the underlying system and that Season 15 would use different content. That strongly suggests the technology was designed as something more flexible than one specific anniversary boss fight.

If Diablo IV is going to keep receiving seasons even after Diablo V launches, reusable systems like this become more valuable, not less.

The Secrets May Be Season 15’s Most Important Contribution

The community also seems to be responding to something less mechanical.

Season 15 has been unusually willing to let players not know things.

Modern live-service games normally explain everything before launch. Feature blogs, trailers, PTRs, build calculators and datamines can leave a season feeling solved before the servers even open. Blizzard deliberately withheld parts of Season 15, and the result has been several weeks where players are still discovering things together.

That approach is probably impossible to preserve literally. Once everyone knows where Whimsyshire is, Whimsyshire is no longer a secret.

But the philosophy can remain.

Future seasons can hide recipes, bosses and quest chains instead of presenting every feature in a bullet-point graphic three weeks before release. Season 15 has demonstrated that players will happily investigate absurd clues when the reward is worth finding.

Blizzard Has Not Promised to Keep Everything

There is an important reality check here. Game Director Brent Gibson was asked directly whether Season 15 content could remain after the season ends. His answer was deliberately noncommittal.

Some things will move forward, including items Blizzard has already designated as permanent. Other seasonal systems will be retired. Gibson also said Blizzard may revisit certain ideas later and potentially transform them into future capstone content, but there is currently no public roadmap showing exactly what survives Season 15.

That means community enthusiasm should not be mistaken for confirmation.

Runewords are not currently guaranteed to stay.

Old Tristram is not guaranteed to remain.

Challenge Dungeons are not guaranteed to become permanent.

Players are asking Blizzard to make that decision before some of the season's best work disappears.

Season 15 May Have Accidentally Shown Diablo IV What It Should Be

That may be the larger reason this conversation has gained traction.

Season 15 feels unusually full. Not because it added another progression bar, but because Sanctuary contains more things worth stumbling into. A portal might matter. A white item might matter. A Rune might mean something completely different inside the Cube. A familiar name from Diablo I or II may be more than a reference.

One recent community post praising the season put the appeal down to the combination of nostalgia and sheer density of random content, saying the world simply feels fuller. Another discussion arguing for permanent Season 15 content says removing it now would feel like wasting the work Blizzard already did.

That is probably the strongest argument for keeping parts of Season of Hell's Legacy.

Not because nostalgia needs to last forever.

Because Diablo IV is better when Sanctuary contains more reasons to be curious.

Season 15 has spent two weeks teaching players to inspect strange portals, remember old recipes and distrust perfectly ordinary cows.

Blizzard may eventually remove the Splinters.

Players would very much like it to leave the fun behind.

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Path of Exile’s Chris Wilson Says Diablo 5 Gave Him a “Glimmer of Hope”

Few people outside Blizzard have more reason to examine Diablo V suspiciously than Chris Wilson. Path of Exile exists partly because Wilson and his friends loved Diablo II enough to eventually decide they should build another action RPG themselves. He never connected with Diablo III in the same way, and Diablo IV's open world, level scaling and streamlined itemization did little to change his mind. Diablo V, however, has managed something Blizzard's previous two games apparently could not. It gave him what he calls a “glimmer of hope.”

In a new video discussing Blizzard's reveal, the Path of Exile co-creator says he is “tentatively hopeful” that Diablo V may be moving back toward some of the ideas that made the original games so compelling to him. And the interesting part is that his optimism is not based on Blizzard simply saying the words “back to our roots.” Wilson is looking at the small things Blizzard deliberately chose to show.

The Inventory Immediately Got His Attention

One of those details is Diablo V's inventory. Blizzard has already confirmed that Diablo V is bringing back different item sizes, meaning a large weapon once again physically occupies more space than something tiny like a ring.

To modern players, that may sound like Diablo rediscovering inconvenience.

To Wilson, it is a signal.

Diablo III and Diablo IV moved toward standardized inventory slots, where almost every object consumes the same amount of space. Diablo and Diablo II treated equipment like actual objects. A giant polearm was inconvenient because giant polearms are inconvenient.

Wilson says choices like that suggest Blizzard may be looking seriously at what made the first two games distinct instead of simply applying their visual style over another modern loot system. He even points toward the flaming Diablo V logo, which resembles the visual identity of Diablo I and II more closely than the cleaner logos of III and IV.

Diablo II Literally Changed Wilson’s Life

There is a reason he notices these things.

Wilson says he spent his teenage years obsessing over Diablo and played Diablo II so extensively that it changed the direction of his life. Six years after Diablo II launched without a sequel in sight, he and several friends began building the project that eventually became Path of Exile.

His disappointment with later Diablo games is therefore less “competitor complains about competitor” and more somebody watching the series that created his career move in a direction he personally stopped enjoying.

Wilson says Diablo III felt too different from Diablo II when it finally arrived. Diablo IV raised different warning signs for him during its 2019 reveal, including its open-world structure and monster level scaling. Interestingly, Blizzard has already confirmed that Diablo V intends to rethink level scaling so players can feel character progression more clearly.

For somebody with Wilson's preferences, several of Blizzard's current decisions therefore appear to be pointing in the correct direction.

He Still Has Plenty of Questions

This is not a Chris Wilson endorsement sticker for the Diablo V box.

He remains cautious. Diablo V's inventory may bring back different item sizes, but Blizzard's early concept contains significantly more inventory space than Diablo II. Its world still needs to explain how procedural generation, caravan progression and endgame systems fit together. And many of the design decisions Blizzard showed at BlizzCon remain prototypes rather than finished mechanics.

That caution fits Diablo V's unusual development strategy. Blizzard revealed the game almost three years ahead of release specifically because, as we covered in our look at Diablo V's early announcement, the team wants more time for outside testing and iteration.

Spring 2029 is a long way away.

There is plenty of time for both hope and terrible decisions.

Wilson Wants Diablo V to Succeed Even Though Path of Exile Competes With It

The most interesting part of Wilson's comments may actually have nothing to do with inventory grids.

He says he “desperately” wants Diablo V to be a good game, arguing that a major Diablo release succeeding helps the entire action RPG genre. A successful Diablo brings mainstream players into ARPGs. Some of those players eventually try other games, including Path of Exile.

Wilson describes it through the old phrase that a rising tide lifts all ships.

That is a healthier interpretation of the Diablo-versus-Path-of-Exile rivalry than internet discussions normally produce. Path of Exile did not become successful because Diablo disappeared. It became successful partly because Diablo created millions of people interested in killing monsters until interesting objects fell out.

Diablo V Is Sending Signals to Old Diablo Players

We have seen those signals repeatedly since BlizzCon. Itemization is looking back toward Diablo II. Runewords and Sets return. Equipment has physical inventory size again. Blizzard is experimenting with stat requirements. The overworld becomes less predictable. Dread Commanders can reshape regions, while dungeons return to stronger procedural generation.

None of that guarantees Diablo V will feel like Diablo II.

It probably should not.

Diablo II already exists, and somehow Blizzard is still updating that too.

But when the man who helped create Path of Exile looks at Diablo V and sees enough of the old DNA to become cautiously hopeful, that says something about the direction Blizzard is signaling.

Chris Wilson is not convinced yet.

For Diablo V, getting him interested again may already be a surprisingly good start.

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Diablo 4 Will Keep Getting Seasons Even After Diablo 5 Launches

Diablo V arrives in Spring 2029, but apparently nobody has told Diablo IV that sequels are supposed to kill their predecessors. Blizzard has now made its long-term plan considerably clearer: Diablo IV seasons are expected to continue even after Diablo V launches, provided players keep showing up. Game Director Brent Gibson says Blizzard views Diablo less as a sequence of games replacing one another and more as a collection of active Diablo communities, pointing directly at Diablo II and Diablo III as examples of older games that continue to exist long after their successors arrived.

That is an important clarification because Diablo V's announcement created an obvious question for anyone currently investing hundreds of hours into Diablo IV. Blizzard has already confirmed that no additional traditional Diablo IV expansions are currently planned, and the franchise is now moving toward an entirely new numbered game. It would have been easy to assume Diablo IV had therefore entered a three-year farewell tour. Gibson says that is not the plan.

Diablo V Is Not Diablo IV’s Expiration Date

Speaking during a BlizzCon interview, Gibson was asked directly whether Diablo IV would continue receiving new seasons once Diablo V was actually available. His answer was unusually straightforward: Blizzard plans to support seasons for as long as the Diablo IV community continues to play them. He compared that philosophy with Diablo II and Diablo III, both of which still maintain active communities years after newer games entered the franchise.

That does not mean Blizzard has promised Season 37, another decade of major systems overhauls or an infinite supply of new classes. The scale of Diablo IV support after 2029 will presumably depend on how many people are still playing and what development resources make sense at the time. But the important distinction is now clear.

Diablo V launching does not automatically put Diablo IV into maintenance mode.

Blizzard Says Diablo Is a Universe, Not a Replacement Cycle

Gibson's broader explanation may be more interesting than the season confirmation itself. He says Blizzard does not really think of Diablo as a collection of games where each new release replaces the previous one. Instead, different parts of the franchise can continue serving different communities.

That is increasingly visible already. Diablo II: Resurrected is five years old and recently received the Warlock, its first completely new class in decades. Diablo Immortal continues receiving major updates and collaborations. Diablo IV is currently running its enormous 30th anniversary season while preparing the Amazon class for 2027. Diablo V is being developed alongside all of them.

The old model was comparatively simple. Diablo II existed until Diablo III arrived. Diablo III dominated until Diablo IV became the current game. Blizzard's modern approach looks messier, but also more interesting: several different versions of Diablo may remain alive simultaneously because they appeal to different kinds of players.

Diablo IV Still Has More Than Two Years Before Diablo V

There is also a practical reason Blizzard cannot treat Diablo IV like a game waiting for retirement. Diablo V is still roughly two and a half years away. That is an eternity in live-service development, particularly when Blizzard has already stopped planning additional traditional expansions for the current game.

The seasons therefore have to carry considerably more weight. We already know future Diablo IV seasons are becoming part of a continuing storyline rather than completely isolated three-month adventures. Blizzard has around a century of fictional history separating Diablo IV from Diablo V, where Diablo has already conquered Sanctuary.

Somewhere between those two points, things need to become dramatically worse.

That gives Diablo IV's seasonal team an unusually large narrative playground. The current game does not need another $40 expansion to show kingdoms falling, cults growing, characters disappearing or the world gradually moving toward the disaster waiting in Diablo V.

The Amazon Is Proof Diablo IV Still Has Large Updates Coming

The Amazon is probably the clearest evidence that Blizzard is not quietly winding development down. She arrives during the first half of 2027 as a dedicated class pack, bringing javelins and four gameplay archetypes into the game. That is major production work for something Blizzard supposedly intends to abandon eighteen months later.

Gibson has been equally dismissive of the idea that Diablo V means the current game is stopping. His message to worried Diablo IV players is essentially not to panic. Blizzard still has a considerable amount coming, and the “train isn't stopping.”

The interesting question is what happens once both games are running simultaneously.

Diablo IV and Diablo V May Serve Different Players

Diablo V already looks mechanically different enough that it may not simply become Diablo IV with larger numbers. Blizzard is rebuilding itemization around stronger Diablo II influences, bringing different item sizes back into the inventory, experimenting with attribute requirements, changing monster scaling and creating a procedurally shifting overworld.

Some Diablo IV players may prefer that.

Others may not.

That is precisely why keeping Diablo IV alive makes sense. Players who enjoy its build systems, open world and seasonal structure do not necessarily need to migrate simply because the box number increased by one.

Diablo II players have spent twenty-six years demonstrating this concept with considerable determination.

Seasonal Content Could Also Return Later in Different Forms

Gibson also addressed what happens to seasonal mechanics after their original season ends. Blizzard does not plan to preserve everything permanently. Some systems will disappear, some items will survive and other ideas may be revisited later in completely different forms.

That is particularly relevant right now because Season of Hell's Legacy contains an absurd amount of content players already want to keep. Hidden Runewords, Challenge Dungeons, Old Tristram, anniversary encounters and other discoveries have made Season 15 feel considerably more substantial than a temporary gimmick.

Gibson says Blizzard may eventually revisit seasonal systems and turn them into something like future capstone content even if the original season disappears. In other words, “seasonal” does not necessarily mean “deleted from history forever.”

Diablo V Is the Future, but Diablo IV Is Not Finished

That leaves Blizzard in an unusual position heading toward 2029. Diablo IV is no longer the franchise's final destination. We know exactly what comes next. We know when it is supposed to arrive. We even know that Diablo himself became too large a story for another Diablo IV expansion and helped push Blizzard toward a full sequel instead.

But knowing the next game exists does not make the current one obsolete.

If Blizzard follows through on Gibson's plan, 2029 will not be the moment everyone leaves Diablo IV and shuts the door behind them. It will be the first time players can choose between an actively supported Diablo IV and an actively supported Diablo V.

Diablo II already proved that Diablo players can spend decades refusing to move out of their favorite game.

Blizzard has apparently decided to stop arguing with them.

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Diablo 4 Players Can Get Trapped in a War Plan With No Way to Reset It

Diablo IV's War Plans are supposed to turn the endgame into a neat playlist. Pick your activities, complete one, travel directly to the next and gradually build a personalized route through Nightmare Dungeons, Helltides, The Pit, Infernal Hordes and everything else Sanctuary uses to prevent you from going to bed. Season 15 even made War Plans progression account-wide within matching character partitions, fixing one of the system's most annoying problems. Unfortunately, a new player report suggests War Plans can still produce a considerably less useful kind of playlist: one containing an activity that refuses to progress and no currency left to escape it.

A Season 15 player has reported becoming soft-locked by Growing Conquest. According to the report, the relevant Growing Nightmare Dungeon can be completed, but the expected progression into the next stage does not happen correctly. The player's War Plan remains stuck, and because they no longer have enough Marks of El'Druin to generate another plan, the normal escape route is unavailable.

In other words, the War Plan knows what you are supposed to do.

You do it.

The War Plan disagrees.

War Plans Depend on Activities Passing the Baton

The entire War Plans system is built around chaining activities together. Blizzard describes it as an endgame playlist: finish the first activity and the system should move you seamlessly into the next one, generating the required access item when necessary. A plan can include Nightmare Dungeons, Helltides, Kurast Undercity, Lair Bosses, Infernal Hordes and The Pit.

That structure makes progression failures particularly painful. A normal bugged dungeon can usually be abandoned. A War Plan activity is part of a chain. If the system fails to recognize that one stage has been completed, everything behind it effectively waits in line.

We have already written extensively about how Season 15 finally made War Plans progression shared across compatible characters. It was one of the best quality-of-life changes Blizzard made to the system. Your fifth character no longer needs to repeat the same administrative career simply because your first four already completed it.

Shared progression, however, does not help much when the actual plan cannot move forward.

Running Out of Marks Makes the Problem Much Worse

Marks of El'Druin are the reset currency behind War Plans. Players can use them to generate a new plan rather than completing the current board, and party synchronization also consumes Marks when a new shared plan is created. Blizzard's Season 14 documentation confirms that generating a new party plan costs two Marks of El'Druin.

Normally, that provides a safety valve. Get a plan you dislike or cannot complete and reroll it.

The trouble begins when a player is both stuck and out of Marks.

That combination has already caused problems before Season 15. During Season 14, players became trapped when Infernal Hordes appeared in War Plans they could not progress. Several affected players reported that once their Marks of El'Druin were exhausted, they could neither finish the activity nor reset the board.

The current Growing Conquest report therefore does not represent an entirely new category of War Plan failure.

It appears to be a new way of reaching an old destination.

Players Previously Found an Alt-Character Workaround

The older Infernal Horde softlock eventually produced a wonderfully Diablo solution. Players discovered that Marks of El'Druin were shared across characters. Completing War Plans on another compatible seasonal character could restore the Marks available to the account, allowing the trapped character to finally reroll its board.

That workaround may be worth remembering if somebody encounters the current Growing Conquest problem, but there is an important caveat: we have not seen the workaround reproduced specifically for this Season 15 report.

Season 15 also changed War Plans significantly by making reputation and earned progression account-wide within matching partitions. Blizzard says Seasonal, Hardcore and Solo Self Found states determine which characters share that progress, while each character still keeps its own individual planner.

So an alt may provide an escape route again.

It should not yet be treated as a guaranteed fix.

This Is Why Reset Currency Should Never Be the Only Emergency Exit

The larger design problem is not Growing Conquest specifically. It is what happens whenever a War Plan activity becomes impossible to complete.

If a reroll is simply a convenience, charging currency makes sense. Players are paying to replace a perfectly functional plan because they prefer another activity.

A softlock is different.

The player is not rerolling because they dislike Nightmare Dungeons today. They are rerolling because the current plan has stopped functioning.

Those two situations probably should not use the same emergency exit.

An obvious solution would be a free reset after the game detects an abandoned or failed War Plan activity. Another would be allowing players to delete the entire plan without rewards and start again. Even a cooldown-based emergency reset would be preferable to discovering that the only button capable of freeing your character requires currency you can no longer earn through the broken plan.

War Plans Have Improved Enormously, but Progression Bugs Keep Following Them

It is worth emphasizing that War Plans are considerably better than they were when Lord of Hatred launched. Blizzard added party synchronization, increased Activity XP at higher Torment levels and finally delivered the account-wide progression players had been requesting for months. Season 15 also increased their experience value further, particularly at Torment X and above.

The basic idea remains strong. Diablo IV contains enough endgame activities that a system organizing them into personalized chains genuinely solves a problem.

But War Plans have repeatedly suffered from progression states failing to register correctly. We have previously covered activities completing without advancing objectives, characters getting stuck near the end of progression and the old Infernal Horde softlock.

A planner that occasionally refuses to acknowledge completed plans is an unfortunate occupational hazard.

This Is Still a Small Number of Reports

There is an important limitation to the current story. The Growing Conquest report itself is currently a small technical-support thread, not a huge community-wide outbreak. Blizzard's forum index also shows a separate September 27 report titled “War Plan Stuck and have no currency”, but the available public summary does not establish that both players encountered exactly the same underlying bug.

So we should not write that Growing Conquest is universally broken.

Most players may never encounter this.

But the combination is worth watching precisely because War Plans have a documented history of similar failure states.

For Now, Keep at Least One Reset Available

Until Blizzard comments or more players reproduce the issue, there is one sensible precaution: avoid spending your final War Plan reset casually if your current board contains unfamiliar or potentially troublesome activities.

If Growing Conquest stops progressing, repeatedly completing the same activity may not fix the underlying state. And if your Marks are already gone, your options become considerably narrower.

War Plans were designed to answer a simple question:

What do you want to do next?

Season 15 has apparently discovered another possible answer.

Nothing.

You live here now.

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Diablo 4’s Tower Champions Say Their Permanent Season 14 Rewards Never Arrived

Diablo IV spent Season 14 asking players to take The Tower seriously. Blizzard moved the mode out of Beta, attached exclusive rewards to leaderboard positions and gave the most dedicated players a reason to spend hundreds of hours shaving seconds from runs while arguing about Transfiguration RNG. The promise at the end was simple: when Season 15 began, players would receive a permanent Emblem showing the highest leaderboard rank they achieved during Season 14. Some of the people who actually climbed those leaderboards are now asking a fairly reasonable question.

Where is it?

Multiple players have reported logging into Season 15 without receiving the promised Tower Emblem. One of the clearest reports comes from a player who says they finished #1 on the Spiritborn Hardcore Non-SSF leaderboard. Their permanent Emblem never appeared. Stranger still, the temporary Halo and Prestige Title that were supposed to disappear at the season transition are apparently still sitting on the character transferred to Eternal.

Blizzard Was Very Clear About the Season Reward

This is not a case of players inventing a reward they thought Blizzard might provide. When Tower and Leaderboards left Beta for Season 14, Blizzard explicitly laid out how the system would work. Weekly leaderboard performance could earn a Halo Cosmetic, Prestige Title and Gear Cache, with reward brackets for participation, Tower Tier 100, Top 1,000, Top 500, Top 100, Top 10 and rank #1.

Those weekly Halos and Titles were temporary. Blizzard said they would remain throughout the season and then reset when the next season began.

The permanent reward was different. At the start of the next season, players were supposed to receive an Emblem showing their highest rank from any weekly leaderboard during the previous season. Blizzard specifically said it would be granted on the player's first login after the new season started.

Season 15 started almost two weeks ago.

For some players, the first login apparently forgot the important part.

Some Players Still Have the Rewards That Were Supposed to Disappear

The strangest part is that the transition appears to have failed in both directions.

Several players say the permanent Emblem never arrived, while the Season 14 Halo remains attached to their Eternal character. Others report that their old leaderboard Title is still available too. That is essentially the opposite of the system Blizzard described: the temporary reward survived while the permanent one vanished.

One player even reports retaining the Halo after rebirthing the character.

Diablo IV has therefore managed to create a reward system where the temporary cosmetic may be more permanent than the permanent cosmetic.

There is a certain elegance to it.

This Matters More When Players Spent Hundreds of Hours Competing

The missing Emblem would be easier to dismiss if The Tower were simply another activity players visited twice for a seasonal objective. It was not.

We already covered a Season 14 player who spent roughly 400 hours chasing a Top 100 Tower position, rebuilding gear and optimizing specifically for the leaderboard. We also looked at the wider debate over whether Tower ranking measured skill or simply better Transfiguration RNG.

Those arguments mattered precisely because Blizzard had turned rankings into something tangible.

Rank 101 and rank 100 were no longer simply adjacent numbers on a website. Leaderboard brackets came with recognition. The permanent Emblem was supposed to become the lasting proof after the seasonal Halo disappeared.

For players who actually pushed those rankings, “maybe the reward did not get distributed correctly” is not a particularly satisfying finale.

The Reports Are Not Limited to One Account

The original missing-reward reports appeared almost immediately after Season 15 launched. Players on September 17 were already asking whether anyone had actually received the permanent Season 14 Emblem, with several replies saying theirs was missing too. More reports followed on September 19, September 23 and September 25.

There is at least one important counterexample. One player reported successfully receiving their Emblem after logging into the Eternal character they had ranked with, with the reward apparently arriving through the mailbox.

So this does not appear to mean every ranked player lost the reward.

It does mean the distribution looks inconsistent enough that multiple players across different ranking brackets are still filing bug reports almost two weeks into Season 15.

Logging Into the Ranked Character May Be Worth Trying

Because at least one player says logging into the specific Eternal character used for the leaderboard caused the reward to arrive, anyone still missing an Emblem may want to try that before assuming it is permanently lost.

That should not be treated as a confirmed universal fix. Other players have logged into their characters repeatedly and still report no Emblem. Restarting, checking profile customization and revisiting older leaderboard information have also failed in some cases.

At the moment, there does not appear to be a Blizzard-published workaround.

Season 15 Has Inherited Another Season 14 Problem

The irony is that Season 14 spent months turning The Tower into a more serious competitive system, and we repeatedly argued that doing so meant the administrative details had to become more reliable too.

When the Tower closed before one player's expected final push, the complaint was ultimately about communication. Competitive systems need visible finish lines.

The same principle applies to rewards.

If Blizzard asks players to care about Top 1,000, Top 100, Top 10 and rank #1, the permanent proof of achieving those positions cannot become the least reliable part of the system.

Season 14's Tower competition is over.

The leaderboard has stopped moving.

The winners have been decided.

Some of them are apparently still waiting for Diablo IV to remember that they won.

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Diablo 4’s Steam Players Are Still Here After the Sale Ended

Two weeks ago, Diablo IV's Steam population looked like somebody had accidentally opened the gates of Sanctuary during rush hour. Season 15 launched, Blizzard made the game temporarily free, the Standard Edition dropped to $12.49 and tens of thousands of players suddenly appeared. That was interesting, but it was also easy to explain. Free games tend to attract people. Games discounted by 75% tend to attract people. The real test was always what happened after Blizzard removed both incentives. We now have that answer, and Diablo IV's Steam audience is still dramatically larger than it was before Season of Hell's Legacy began.

At the time of writing on September 28, SteamDB shows roughly 22,800 players currently in Diablo IV, with a 24-hour peak of 49,734. The exact live number naturally moves throughout the day, but the important comparison is much harder to dismiss: when we checked Diablo IV on September 2, Steam was hovering around only 2,400 to 2,500 concurrent players.

The free weekend is gone.

The 75% discount is gone.

The players, apparently, are not.

This Was the Test We Were Waiting For

When we checked the numbers again on September 22, Diablo IV still had roughly 26,700 concurrent Steam players after free access ended. That looked promising, but there was one enormous asterisk attached to the number. Blizzard was still selling the Standard Edition for $12.49, down from $49.99, and anyone who had just spent the free weekend enjoying Season 15 had until September 24 to convert into a paying player at an unusually low price.

We therefore ended that article with a very specific prediction: the next meaningful checkpoint would arrive after September 24.

It has arrived.

Steam's weekend deal is over, and Diablo IV has not returned anywhere close to the quiet levels we saw at the beginning of the month.

The 24-Hour Peak Is Still Close to 50,000

The most surprising number may actually be the daily peak. SteamDB currently records 49,734 concurrent players during the last 24 hours. That is remarkably close to the peaks we were watching while the game was still free.

Back on September 19, during the promotion, the 24-hour peak sat at 48,865. Three days later, while the sale was still active but free access had ended, SteamDB showed another peak close to 50,000.

Now the discount is gone too, and the latest daily peak remains in roughly the same territory.

That does not mean the exact same 50,000 people have remained continuously since the free weekend. Concurrent-player figures cannot tell us that. Some players will be new buyers, some returning veterans, some long-term Steam owners and some people who spent $12.49 after trying the game for free.

But the trend tells us something useful.

Whatever brought people back to Diablo IV has survived the end of the promotion considerably better than a temporary free-weekend spike normally would.

Season 15 Has Given Players an Unusual Amount to Chase

The obvious candidate is Season of Hell's Legacy itself.

Season 15 has problems. We have spent much of the last two weeks documenting them. Prime Evil Powers can remain locked at Rank 24. Moophisto occasionally forgets that bosses traditionally drop items. Grief's headline Weapon Damage appears suspicious. Wirt's Lucky Coin has required multiple rounds of repair. Blizzard has now reached the point where even the apology gift for the messy launch has generated its own missing-reward reports.

And yet the season has also been unusually good at giving players reasons to log in tomorrow.

Our Season 15 secret checklist keeps expanding. Players have found hidden Diablo II Runewords, Uber Tristram, the Hellfire Torch, Whimsyshire, Mefishto, Bovine armor, a guaranteed Harlequin Crest and increasingly suspicious clues surrounding Annihilus and Uber Diablo.

Even when the game is malfunctioning, there is often something new to investigate while waiting for the hotfix.

BlizzCon Probably Helped Too

Season 15 also arrived immediately after Blizzard put Diablo back in the spotlight at BlizzCon.

Diablo V was announced. Blizzard revealed a new long-term direction for Diablo IV. The Amazon is coming in 2027. Diablo II: Resurrected continues receiving substantial development. Diablo Immortal is about to launch its Spawn collaboration.

That makes September unusually difficult to interpret as a simple seasonal comparison.

The Steam rebound is almost certainly not caused by one thing.

Season 15 arrived at exactly the same moment Blizzard gave former players several reasons to think about Diablo again. Then Steam removed the financial barrier for a few days and followed it with an aggressive discount.

The interesting part is that the promotional machinery has now stopped while the Steam population remains elevated.

This Still Does Not Tell Us Diablo 4’s Total Player Count

The usual warning remains necessary.

Steam is only one part of Diablo IV's audience. Battle.net players are not included. Xbox players are not included. PlayStation players are not included. Blizzard does not publish a live cross-platform population total that lets us convert SteamDB into a percentage of Sanctuary.

We therefore cannot say Diablo IV currently has 22,800 players.

We can say it has approximately 22,800 people playing simultaneously through Steam at this particular moment, and that Steam's daily peak remains near 50,000.

That makes Steam useful as a trend line rather than a census.

And the trend line has changed dramatically since September 2.

We Still Need to See Where the New Baseline Settles

There is another reason not to declare victory after one weekend.

Season 15 is still new. Anniversary discoveries are still being solved. Blizzard is still issuing patches. Gift of the Tree is currently providing additional rewards. Players who bought the game during the sale have barely had time to decide whether Diablo IV becomes part of their regular rotation or something they played enthusiastically for ten days before remembering they also own 412 other Steam games.

The more interesting number may therefore be the one we see in mid-October.

If Diablo IV eventually settles at 5,000 concurrent Steam players, then much of September's surge was temporary.

If it settles at 15,000, 20,000 or higher, Blizzard will have established a significantly larger Steam baseline than it had before Season 15.

We are not there yet.

But the first major retention test has now happened.

The Doors Cost Full Price Again

That is what makes today's number different from the ones we reported earlier.

On September 19, Diablo IV was free.

On September 22, free access had ended, but the game still cost $12.49.

Today, neither explanation applies.

SteamDB still shows more than twenty thousand people playing in the morning and almost fifty thousand at the latest daily peak.

At the beginning of September, we were wondering whether Diablo IV's Steam population had fallen into an end-of-season hole it might struggle to escape.

Four weeks later, Sanctuary is considerably louder.

The free weekend got people through the door.

The sale gave them a cheap reason to stay.

Now Diablo IV has to prove the game itself can keep them there.

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