Diablo 5 Begins Filming Its Cinematics – Blizzard's Next Nightmare Takes Shape

Somewhere in a film studio, beneath a collection of lights, cameras and cables, work has begun on the next generation of Diablo cinematics. There are no demons in sight, no burning villages and certainly no towering Lord of Terror emerging from the darkness. Not yet, anyway. The first glimpse behind the scenes of Diablo V is considerably less dramatic: an empty soundstage, some production equipment and a short message from Blizzard's cinematic director.

But for a series that has spent nearly three decades producing some of gaming's most memorable cinematic sequences, even an empty studio is an interesting sight.

On October 14, 2026, Neil David Carter, cinematic director for the Diablo series, shared a photograph from the production stage with a remarkably brief announcement: "First shoot #Diablo5." The image shows that cinematic production has entered an active shooting phase, although Carter offered no additional information about the scenes being produced, the characters involved or whether the footage belongs to the game's campaign or promotional material.

It is a small announcement, but a meaningful one. Diablo V is still years away, and much of what Blizzard has shown so far concerns game systems, the world and its ambitious new campaign. Now another piece of that enormous production is beginning to take shape.

Diablo V's Cinematics Are Finally Moving Into Production

Filming a cinematic does not mean that the game itself is anywhere near completion. Modern video game cinematics can involve performance capture, camera reference work, actor recordings and complicated animation pipelines, all of which may take place long before the finished sequence appears on screen. Some scenes are rewritten, others are replaced entirely, and occasionally months of expensive work end up somewhere on the cutting-room floor.

Blizzard knows this process particularly well. During Diablo IV's development, the studio had already completed a major cinematic for the Dry Steppes storyline by June 2020, almost three years before the game launched. Beginning cinematic production now therefore fits comfortably within Diablo V's announced development schedule, which currently targets spring 2029.

The photograph itself reveals almost nothing about the finished game. There are no costumes, no recognizable actors and no visual clues pointing toward a particular moment in the story. Anyone hoping to identify Diablo's next unfortunate victim by examining the background will have to make do with lighting equipment.

Still, it is the first publicly shared glimpse of this particular stage of Diablo V's production, and that makes it worth paying attention to.

Blizzard Wants Diablo V to Have Its Best Campaign Yet

The timing is particularly interesting because Blizzard has already made some substantial promises about Diablo V's narrative direction. As we covered in our earlier look at the development team's ambition to create the best Diablo campaign ever, the sequel is being built around a rather unpleasant premise: Diablo has already won.

Instead of beginning with another threat slowly emerging from Hell, Diablo V places players inside a Sanctuary that has already suffered a catastrophic defeat. The Lord of Terror has conquered the world, and humanity is struggling to survive under his rule. It is a dramatic change in perspective, particularly for a series in which the player usually arrives just in time to prevent the apocalypse, even if the surrounding villages have already become rather short on living inhabitants.

That premise also offers Blizzard's cinematic team an opportunity to do something different. Diablo's earlier games often used their most spectacular sequences to introduce powerful villains, establish impending disasters or celebrate major victories. Diablo V can begin with the consequences of a disaster that has already happened.

Rather than building toward the arrival of Diablo, the story must explain what it means to live in a world where he is already in control.

Diablo IV Set a Difficult Standard to Follow

Blizzard has never struggled to make Hell look impressive. From the original Diablo's grim introduction to the spectacular angelic and demonic conflicts of Diablo III, the series has always treated its cinematics as something more substantial than elaborate loading screens.

Diablo IV raised the standard again, particularly through its extraordinary opening ritual involving Lilith and its later confrontation between Inarius and the Daughter of Hatred. The sequences were technically impressive, but their real strength came from the characters. Lilith was not merely another monster waiting at the end of a dungeon. She had ambitions, convictions and a particularly disturbing interpretation of what protecting humanity should involve.

That approach has already influenced the ambitions behind Diablo V. Blizzard wants its new campaign to place greater emphasis on character relationships, consequences and a world transformed by Diablo's victory. The studio is also reconsidering how players encounter smaller stories, with Diablo V's caravan companions taking over many traditional side-quest roles.

For the cinematic team, this creates a different challenge. Spectacle remains important, but the story must also make players care about the people trying to survive inside Diablo's conquered Sanctuary.

And when the villain has already won before the adventure begins, there should be no shortage of dramatic material.

A Different Sanctuary Needs a Different Visual Identity

Diablo V is also moving toward a more dynamic interpretation of Sanctuary. Blizzard has explained that the sequel's procedural world will allow familiar locations to change between visits, reflecting the instability of a continent devastated by the Lord of Terror.

That is an ambitious idea for the gameplay itself, but it also raises interesting questions about visual storytelling. A ruined settlement can communicate the consequences of Diablo's conquest without anybody delivering several minutes of exposition. A once-familiar landmark transformed by corruption may be more effective than another character explaining that the situation has become rather unpleasant.

Cinematics can establish that atmosphere, giving the player a clear understanding of the world's condition before the game hands over control. The challenge will be making those carefully directed scenes feel connected to a world that can change through procedural systems.

Blizzard has also confirmed that Diablo himself is central to the new game's identity. As senior art director John Mueller previously explained, the Lord of Terror was considered too important to introduce as another Diablo IV expansion villain. His return deserved a new game, with a story constructed around him from the beginning.

For the cinematic department, that means returning to one of the most recognizable villains in action RPG history while finding a way to make him feel genuinely threatening again.

Simply making his horns larger probably will not be enough.

Don't Expect Diablo V Gameplay Footage Just Yet

There is one important distinction worth making about Carter's announcement. The beginning of cinematic filming is not a gameplay reveal, a completed production milestone or evidence that Diablo V is approaching release.

The game currently has a spring 2029 release target, and Blizzard has already indicated that substantial development work remains. Many systems may change before launch, while the studio plans to share further development updates during 2027.

Some of those plans are ambitious enough to deserve a healthy degree of caution. Blizzard has said that Diablo V will feature more playable classes than any previous entry, alongside major changes to exploration, character progression and the structure of Sanctuary itself. Bringing all of those ideas together will require considerably more than a successful day in a recording studio.

But cinematic production is one visible part of that larger effort, and it is encouraging to see the next Diablo game's visual storytelling beginning to take shape.

The First Glimpse of Diablo V Is an Empty Studio

For now, Carter's photograph leaves us with more questions than answers. We do not know which characters are being filmed, whether the opening cinematic is involved or how closely the material will resemble the finished game. There are no actors to identify, no mysterious symbols to decipher and no hidden demons lurking behind a conveniently placed curtain.

What we do know is that Diablo V's cinematic team has begun shooting material for the next chapter of Sanctuary's history.

It is not the sort of announcement that will send players rushing to analyse new combat mechanics or argue about which class will dominate the endgame. But Diablo has always depended on more than its loot systems. Its atmosphere, characters and spectacular storytelling have helped define the series since the days when Tristram consisted of a handful of buildings and a cathedral nobody sensible should have entered.

Now Blizzard is preparing to bring that world back under the rule of its most famous villain.

The cameras are rolling. The lights are on.

Somewhere, somebody is preparing to make Hell look magnificent again.

Source: GamesRadar+ – Diablo 5 Begins Filming Cinematics, reporting on Neil David Carter's October 14, 2026 announcement.

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Diablo 5 Has Started Filming Its Cinematics, and Sanctuary Is Getting Ready for Another Disaster

There is something rather reassuring about knowing that, somewhere inside Blizzard, people are already preparing the next elaborate cinematic demonstration of why living in Sanctuary is a terrible idea. The Diablo series has spent thirty years turning demonic invasions into something approaching high art, and now the machinery behind its next great catastrophe is beginning to move. Diablo V has officially started shooting its cinematics, with Blizzard's cinematic director Neil David Carter offering our first glimpse behind the scenes. Admittedly, the glimpse consists mainly of an empty studio. But for Diablo fans, even an empty room can be interesting when you know what will eventually crawl out of it.

On October 14, Carter shared a photograph from a production stage on X with the wonderfully economical message: "First shoot #Diablo5." There were no actors, no recognizable characters, and certainly no enormous horned demon posing obligingly for the camera. Just the equipment and space where the performances behind Diablo V's cinematic sequences are beginning to take shape. After Blizzard's September announcement that Diablo V will arrive in Spring 2029, this is one of the first tangible signs of the work happening behind the curtain.

Diablo Has Always Known How to Make an Entrance

Blizzard's cinematics have been part of Diablo's identity almost as long as the games themselves. The original Diablo introduced players to a gloomy world of gothic architecture and miserable villagers, but Diablo II took the storytelling considerably further. Its cinematics followed Marius through a series of increasingly unfortunate decisions, culminating in the sort of revelation that would make most people reconsider their travelling companions. They remain some of the most memorable sequences Blizzard has ever produced.

Diablo III preferred grander gestures, with angels descending from the heavens, entire armies being reduced to glowing dust, and enough supernatural destruction to keep the High Heavens' rebuilding contractors employed indefinitely. Diablo IV returned to a more intimate kind of horror, particularly with Lilith's introduction and the extraordinary confrontation between Lilith and Inarius. The technology had changed, but the old trick remained the same. Blizzard knew how to make the end of the world look magnificent.

That tradition matters even more for Diablo V because Blizzard deliberately saved Diablo himself for the next chapter. The Lord of Terror is no longer merely threatening Sanctuary from somewhere beyond the next dungeon. This time, he has already won.

Filming Has Started, but Diablo V Is Still Years Away

It is worth keeping the excitement within reasonable limits. Beginning cinematic shoots does not mean the game is approaching completion. Blizzard was producing finished cinematic material for Diablo IV years before that game finally launched in June 2023. Large productions develop their storytelling, animation, environments and gameplay systems across overlapping schedules, and a camera appearing on a studio floor tells us remarkably little about the state of the inventory system.

We do know that Blizzard has ambitious plans. The developers have described their goal of creating the best Diablo campaign yet, which is a rather dangerous promise when your own back catalogue includes Diablo II. The new story takes place roughly a century after Diablo IV, in a ruined Sanctuary where the heroes have failed and civilization has largely collapsed. It is not exactly the sort of setting that calls for cheerful musical numbers.

And the changes go beyond the narrative. Blizzard is returning to a more procedural approach to Sanctuary's environments, while the developers are also looking back toward Diablo II's approach to loot and character progression. Even the class roster is becoming unusually ambitious, with more playable classes planned at launch than any previous Diablo game has offered.

That is an enormous amount of work to complete before Spring 2029, and plenty can change along the way. For now, Carter's photograph simply confirms that another important part of the production has begun. It does not reveal which characters are being filmed, whether the footage belongs to the opening cinematic or an in-game sequence, or how much of the script has been finalized.

Still, there is something charming about seeing the first physical traces of a game that currently exists mostly as promises, concept art and the knowledge that Diablo has finally managed to do his job properly.

Somewhere in that empty studio, Blizzard is preparing the next chapter of Sanctuary's history. We have no idea what the finished scenes will look like.

But judging by the previous thirty years, somebody is going to have a spectacularly unpleasant afternoon.

Sources: PureDiablo's report on the first cinematic shoot and Blizzard's official Diablo V announcement.

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Diablo 5 Says the Right Build Should Beat Any Challenge, Not Just Fast Reflexes

Diablo V is going to have dodging, positioning and all the other moment-to-moment decisions modern action RPGs have taught us to expect. But Blizzard has now drawn a surprisingly clear line around what it does not want the game to become. According to Senior Game Director Joe Shely, Diablo V should fundamentally be a game where planning your character, investing in the right systems and building intelligently matter more than possessing the reflexes of a caffeinated teenager.

Shely described Diablo V as having some “DEX” mechanics, meaning moment-to-moment execution, but said the game will ultimately be much more of an “INT/STR game” built around planning and investment. More importantly, he spelled out what Blizzard considers a core rule for the genre: any challenge should be beatable with the right build.

That is one sentence, but it tells us an awful lot about what Blizzard thinks Diablo V is supposed to be.

Diablo V Is Not Supposed to Be a Reflex Test

The timing is particularly interesting because Path of Exile co-creator Chris Wilson recently raised almost exactly this concern. Wilson said he was cautiously optimistic about Diablo V, but worried that the series had increasingly moved toward a more arcade-like style where player dexterity mattered more than the RPG machinery underneath. We covered Wilson's surprisingly hopeful reaction to Diablo V, including his enthusiasm for the game's darker presentation and more traditional inventory ideas.

Shely did not directly name Wilson in his statement, so this should not be treated as an official back-and-forth between the two developers. But the design philosophy he described addresses the same question almost perfectly.

You should still need to move out of the fire.

You just should not need to become Elden Lord before Diablo lets you finish the campaign.

The Build Is Supposed to Be the Answer

The important part is not that Diablo V will contain less action. It is that Blizzard apparently wants character construction to remain the primary way players solve problems. If a boss is destroying you, the answer might be better resistances, different skill interactions, another weapon, a redesigned passive setup or simply more investment into the character.

That fits remarkably well with what Blizzard has already revealed about Diablo V's attempt to make loot feel more like Diablo II. Items are supposed to have stronger visual and mechanical identities, Sets and Runewords are returning, and Blizzard has even experimented with old-fashioned stat requirements. None of those systems matter very much if every difficult encounter ultimately boils down to whether the player can press dodge at precisely the correct millisecond.

The RPG needs to be allowed to win occasionally.

That Does Not Mean Standing Still and Holding One Button

There is an obvious opposite danger here. Diablo II fans sometimes romanticize older combat to the point where one could imagine Diablo V consisting entirely of spreadsheet preparation followed by a character standing in one spot while Hell politely explodes around them.

That is not what Shely said either.

Diablo V will still contain those DEX elements. Positioning, reacting to enemy attacks and making decisions during combat remain part of the formula. The difference appears to be one of balance. Execution can improve how well you perform, but Blizzard does not want execution to replace the character-building game underneath it.

That distinction could become particularly important if Diablo V really does succeed in making character progression feel meaningful again. A world only feels dangerous if your decisions about equipment, skills and preparation visibly change how dangerous it is.

This Is Starting to Look Like a Pattern

Individually, Blizzard's Diablo V comments can look like disconnected design notes. Put them together, however, and a fairly coherent picture is beginning to appear.

We have a game where the world itself is supposed to tell stories through its ruins and survivors. We have loot moving back toward stronger identities. We have progression being reconsidered. We have more playable classes planned than any previous Diablo game. And now Blizzard is saying that the correct build should be capable of overcoming every challenge.

None of this guarantees Diablo V will suddenly become Diablo II wearing a very expensive 2029 coat. The game is still years away, and design philosophies have a habit of encountering production schedules, balance patches and millions of players doing things developers never anticipated.

But the language matters.

Blizzard is not describing Diablo V as an action game with some RPG systems attached. It is describing an ARPG where the build remains the machine at the center of everything.

You can still dodge the demon.

But apparently, the real victory

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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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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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Why Diablo Himself Never Became Diablo 4 DLC

There is something slightly strange about Diablo IV. The game is called Diablo, it has now spent several years expanding Sanctuary, introduced Lilith, brought Mephisto back to the centre of the story and even reached its final traditional expansion without ever doing the most obvious thing imaginable: making Diablo himself the main villain. Blizzard has now explained why. According to Diablo V Senior Art Director John Mueller, the Lord of Terror was simply too important to squeeze into another Diablo IV expansion. Or, as Mueller put it rather more efficiently: “Diablo’s very demanding.”

Speaking to Kotaku at BlizzCon 2026, Mueller explained that Diablo changes the scale of the story. Diablo IV began with Lilith and gradually developed a much more personal relationship between the player character, Lilith and Mephisto. Bringing Diablo into that framework later as another expansion villain would have meant attaching the franchise's defining antagonist to a story that had originally been built around somebody else.

Blizzard decided that was not enough.

Diablo Needed to Be the Centre, Not the Next Boss

Mueller's explanation is unusually revealing because the problem was apparently not that Blizzard lacked room for another expansion. The studio had freedom to decide whether the next big idea should become DLC, an expansion or an entirely new game. What changed the equation was Diablo himself.

Once Diablo became the character the developers wanted to build around, Mueller says the story needed to become bigger, bolder and more ambitious. He could not simply arrive after Lilith and Mephisto as the next name on Sanctuary's increasingly unfortunate appointment calendar.

That distinction helps explain why Blizzard decided to stop making traditional Diablo IV expansions after Lord of Hatred even though Diablo IV itself is not being abandoned. Seasonal content continues, new classes such as the Amazon are coming, and Blizzard has repeatedly said the live game will remain active. The numbered sequel exists because the next story required a different foundation.

Diablo V Begins After Diablo Has Already Won

The result is considerably more dramatic than simply putting Diablo at the end of another campaign.

As Blizzard revealed when Diablo V was announced for Spring 2029, the game begins roughly a century after Diablo IV in a Sanctuary where the Lord of Terror has already won. Humanity's heroes failed. Westmarch has fallen. Civilization survives in fragments, and the player begins the game inside a world that Diablo has already reshaped rather than one waiting for him to eventually emerge from a portal during Act VI.

Blizzard's official description is almost aggressively simple: Sanctuary has fallen. Diablo won.

That premise immediately gives the villain something Diablo has surprisingly rarely received across the series: time.

We normally meet Diablo while trying to stop a plan. Diablo V starts after the plan worked.

A Sequel Let Blizzard Change the Framework

Mueller also points to a more practical reason for making a sequel. The team wanted to change the actual framework of the game rather than continue extending Diablo IV's structure. That freedom is visible in almost everything Blizzard has shown so far.

Traditional towns and safe hubs are largely gone. Instead, players travel with a caravan of survivors. Dungeons remain procedurally generated, but now the overworld itself can change as well. Dread Commanders reshape regions through “terror-forming”, affecting terrain, monsters and landmarks. Blizzard is rethinking level scaling, itemization, inventory and progression while simultaneously promising more classes than any previous Diablo launch.

Those are not small additions to an existing expansion framework.

They are the sort of changes that become much easier when the development team is allowed to call the project Diablo V and rebuild around them.

The Story Is Supposed to Be More Personal Too

There is another part of Mueller's explanation that is easy to overlook. He is proud of the way Diablo IV's storytelling became increasingly personal, particularly the relationship between the player character and major figures such as Lilith and Mephisto. Diablo V intends to take that idea considerably further.

Mueller says the characters should matter like the cast of a favourite television show. The caravan is central to that philosophy because its inhabitants travel with you instead of waiting permanently in town with punctuation floating above their heads.

That fits Blizzard's slightly terrifying internal ambition of creating the “best campaign ever” with Diablo V. It is not a claim that the unfinished game has already achieved that. It is the target the team has set for itself.

And again, Diablo is the centre of it.

Diablo IV Was Never Really His Story

Looking backward, the decision makes more sense than it initially appears.

Diablo IV belonged to Lilith from its opening cinematic. Even when Mephisto moved into the foreground, the story remained rooted in decisions, relationships and consequences established around Lilith's return. Dropping Diablo into the final expansion simply because the title says Diablo would have risked making the franchise's biggest villain feel like post-launch content.

Instead, Blizzard has given him an entire game whose opening situation exists because of him.

That may also explain why the sequel is willing to jump so far forward in time. A century gives Blizzard room to let Diablo's victory become history rather than a temporary cliffhanger. Towns disappear. Cultures change. The landscape itself bears the consequences. Players do not merely hear that Diablo is powerful because an NPC tells them so.

They begin inside the world he broke.

Diablo Was Apparently Too Big for DLC

There is something wonderfully appropriate about all of this.

Diablo IV could have ended by opening another portal, introducing the Lord of Terror and giving players a new raid-sized problem to solve. It would have been easy to understand and probably easy to market.

Blizzard instead decided the character demanded a new game, a different world structure and another multi-year development cycle.

Whether that ambition produces a better Diablo will not be clear until 2029. Diablo V is still early enough that Blizzard is openly showing systems it expects to change, and the game was revealed this early specifically so more player feedback can shape development.

But at least we now know why Diablo never arrived as Diablo IV's final expansion boss.

Apparently the Lord of Terror does not do supporting roles.

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Diablo 5 Wants Loot to Feel Like Diablo 2 Again

There is a particular kind of Diablo II player who can remember the exact name of a sword they found twenty years ago but cannot remember why they walked into the kitchen. That is not entirely nostalgia. Diablo II was unusually good at making items feel like objects rather than collections of statistical obligations, and Blizzard is now openly looking back at that philosophy for Diablo V. Sets are returning. Runes and Runewords are returning. Larger equipment will once again occupy more inventory space. The team is experimenting with attribute requirements on gear, and items are expected to develop through recognizable tiers as the character progresses. Blizzard's stated goal is straightforward: loot should have depth, clarity and identity.

That sounds almost suspiciously sensible for a franchise that has spent several years rebuilding itemization systems while millions of players debate whether an orange number should be 14% larger. But the interesting part is not simply that Diablo V contains familiar Diablo II features. Blizzard appears to be asking a more fundamental question: why did Diablo II's loot remain memorable in the first place?

Diablo II Is Explicitly Inspiring Diablo V’s Items

During Blizzard's Diablo V: Forging the Next Era presentation, the development team directly named Diablo II as an inspiration for the new game's itemization. That is unusually specific language. Blizzard is not merely promising better loot or more exciting rewards. The team is examining systems that made equipment feel different during different stages of a character's life.

We already touched on this when Diablo V was first revealed, but the item philosophy deserves a closer look because several seemingly small design decisions point in the same direction.

Items should not all behave like containers waiting to be filled with increasingly large percentages. Their type, size, requirements, rarity and place in progression should help define what they are.

That is a very Diablo II idea.

Stat Requirements May Actually Matter Again

One of the more surprising experiments involves attribute requirements. Diablo V's developers have shown prototype items requiring particular amounts of character stats before they can be equipped. Blizzard has been careful to describe this as something it is currently experimenting with rather than a finalized release system.

Anyone who played Diablo II understands the implications immediately.

Strength was not simply a passive number increasing somewhere behind the damage calculation. A Monarch required enough Strength to wear it. Certain weapons demanded Dexterity. Character planning sometimes involved investing attributes specifically because a future piece of equipment demanded it.

That creates decisions modern item systems often remove. An exceptional item can appear before the character is technically ready to use it. Suddenly the drop is not merely an upgrade. It becomes a small future project.

Of course, Diablo II also demonstrated the less romantic side of this system. Players learned exact breakpoints, minimized unnecessary investment and occasionally constructed characters according to an equipment spreadsheet created before the character had killed its first Fallen.

Blizzard therefore has plenty of room to modernize the concept.

Items Will Take Up Different Amounts of Inventory Space Again

Diablo V is also experimenting with another gloriously old-fashioned idea: large equipment physically taking up more inventory slots.

A polearm is larger than a ring.

Diablo II's inventory actually cared.

Modern ARPG inventories increasingly treat every object as an identical square because it is clean, practical and considerably easier to manage. A two-handed axe, tiny jewel and pair of boots can all occupy exactly the same abstract slot.

Diablo V appears interested in restoring some physical identity to equipment. Blizzard says the inventory will again play a meaningful role in how players manage their arsenal, with larger items taking more space.

There is an obvious danger here. Inventory Tetris is charming until the fifteenth time you move a spear around because a valuable helmet refuses to fit beside it. Convenience disappeared from these systems for a reason.

But item size also communicates something that an icon alone cannot. A huge weapon actually feels huge before you even equip it.

Item Tiers Should Make Progression Easier to Read

Blizzard has also shown equipment divided across item tiers, allowing loot to evolve as the character moves deeper into the game. The precise implementation remains early, but the philosophy lines up with what Senior Game Director Joe Shely has been saying about Diablo V's progression generally.

We recently looked at how Diablo V wants level-ups and equipment upgrades to feel more noticeable. If monster scaling becomes less aggressive while equipment progresses through more recognizable stages, the two systems can reinforce each other.

You do not simply know that the sword has a higher item power number.

You know that you have moved into another phase of the character's development.

Diablo II did this naturally through Normal, Exceptional and Elite item bases. A Cap, War Hat and Shako are technically members of the same equipment family, but each belongs to a different point in progression. Players gradually learned that vocabulary until seeing a particular base item hit the ground already communicated something useful.

Diablo V seems interested in rebuilding some of that language.

Sets Are Coming Back

Gear-based Sets are also returning.

That immediately raises several interesting questions because Diablo has experienced almost every possible relationship with Set items.

Diablo II used them as recognizable collections, often useful during progression and occasionally powerful at high levels. Diablo III eventually allowed Sets to become enormous build-defining engines that could multiply skill damage by numbers requiring scientific notation. Diablo IV largely moved away from traditional armor Sets altogether.

Blizzard has not yet explained where Diablo V will land between those extremes.

That is probably healthy.

Sets work best when completing one feels exciting without making every item outside the collection irrelevant. They should create possibilities rather than issue uniforms.

That challenge becomes even larger because Diablo V plans to launch with more classes than any previous Diablo game. A huge class roster combined with class Sets, general-purpose items and Runewords could create an enormous build ecosystem.

Or an enormous wardrobe problem.

Possibly both.

Runes and Runewords Are Returning Too

Blizzard has also confirmed Diablo II-style Runes and Runewords as part of Diablo V's crafting direction.

The wording matters because Diablo IV already has Runes and Runewords, but they function quite differently from Diablo II's famous recipes. Diablo V appears interested in moving closer to the older concept as part of a much deeper crafting system inspired partly by Lord of Hatred.

Diablo II's Runewords were memorable because ordinary equipment could suddenly become extraordinary if the player understood the recipe. A plain grey armor was not necessarily trash. It might be the exact base needed for Enigma, Fortitude or another build-defining item.

That changed how players looked at loot.

The ground was not divided neatly into valuable colors and irrelevant colors. Sometimes the boring item was secretly the important one.

We have seen a tiny version of that psychology return in Diablo IV Season 15's hidden Diablo II Runewords. Players immediately began collecting bases, testing combinations and breaking interactions because old recipes suddenly mattered again.

Diablo V wants that idea built into the foundation rather than appearing as an anniversary secret.

Blizzard Keeps Using the Word “Identity”

The most important part may not be any individual feature.

It is the language Blizzard keeps using.

Depth. Clarity. Identity.

Loot games need enormous numbers of items, but enormous numbers create a strange problem. If everything is potentially valuable because any item can roll any combination of useful statistics, individual objects start becoming difficult to remember.

Diablo II often did the opposite. Some equipment was terrible. Some was useful for very specific reasons. Certain bases mattered before the modifiers were even visible. Unique items had recognizable silhouettes and names. Runewords created another hierarchy layered on top.

Not every design decision aged gracefully, but items developed personalities.

That appears to be the quality Diablo V is chasing.

This Is Still an Experiment, Not the Final Loot System

There is a large warning label attached to all of this.

Diablo V is targeting Spring 2029 and remains early in development. Blizzard specifically describes stat requirements as experimental. Prototype inventory layouts can change. Item tiers can change. Sets can change. Runewords can change.

That uncertainty is partly the point of announcing the game this early. As we covered in our look at why Blizzard revealed Diablo V almost three years before launch, the development team wants more time for external playtesting and iteration before release.

Itemization is probably the system most likely to benefit from that approach.

You cannot discover whether loot remains exciting after 500 hours by looking at a presentation slide.

You have to let people become unhealthy around it.

Diablo V Does Not Need to Become Diablo II Again

The interesting thing about all these returning ideas is that Blizzard does not appear to be simply rebuilding Diablo II with better lighting.

Diablo V has a procedural overworld, a travelling caravan, Dread Commanders capable of reshaping regions and a progression structure designed around modern endgame expectations. The game is doing plenty Diablo II never attempted.

But loot is the language every Diablo game eventually has to speak.

Diablo II happened to speak it unusually well.

Twenty-six years later, Blizzard seems interested in borrowing some of the vocabulary.

Not because every old system was better.

Because when a Shako dropped in Diablo II, players knew exactly what they were looking at.

Diablo V wants its loot to be remembered too.

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Blizzard Revealed Diablo 5 Almost Three Years Early Because It Wants Players to Help Shape It

Blizzard has traditionally enjoyed announcing games when there is at least some chance the people watching the trailer will still remember it by release day. Diablo V is doing things differently. The game was revealed at BlizzCon 2026 with a Spring 2029 launch window, meaning Blizzard has deliberately shown us its next major Diablo while there are still roughly two and a half years of development left. That is not an accident. According to Executive Producer Matt Zitterman, Diablo V is being built around a development philosophy where the game remains playable throughout production, allowing Blizzard to test it earlier, iterate more often and bring actual players into the process long before Sanctuary is ready for release.

That changes how we should look at everything Blizzard has shown so far. The caravan, procedural overworld, enormous class roster, Diablo II-inspired itemization and even the way level scaling works are not finished promises being unveiled shortly before launch. They are systems Blizzard wants to discuss while there is still enough development time left to change them.

For a company whose development philosophy once produced the phrase “Soon™,” this is quite a shift.

Blizzard Wants Diablo V Playable Throughout Development

Zitterman explained the thinking during a BlizzCon group interview. Rather than building isolated systems for years and only assembling them into something outsiders can properly play near the end of development, Blizzard wants Diablo V to remain playable throughout the process. That means bringing players onto the Blizzard campus for real playtests earlier and getting usable feedback while major systems are still being shaped.

The reason is particularly important for Diablo.

Some game systems can be evaluated reasonably well on paper. Endgame progression is not one of them. Neither is itemization. You can design an elegant chart explaining how quickly characters should gain power over 100 hours, but the chart does not tell you whether hour 47 feels like somebody has replaced adventure with paperwork.

Zitterman specifically pointed toward progression and endgame as systems that improve through repetition. Blizzard wants more opportunities to play them, adjust them, play them again and discover the unpleasant things players will inevitably do with mechanics nobody on the development team thought could be combined.

In Diablo, that last part is less a possibility than a law of nature.

Diablo IV Is Clearly Part of the Lesson

Blizzard has not framed the strategy as an apology for Diablo IV, and it would be unfair to turn it into one. But the current game demonstrates why early iteration matters.

Diablo IV launched in 2023 and then changed enormously. Itemization was rebuilt. Endgame activities expanded. leveling changed. Difficulty structures changed. Loot changed. Systems disappeared, returned or were redesigned. Three years later, the game playing Season 15 and its increasingly strange collection of anniversary systems is substantially different from the version people installed on launch day.

That does not mean Diablo IV's launch was a failure. It means millions of hours of real-world play exposed things no internal testing environment could reproduce at the same scale.

Diablo V appears to be trying to move more of that learning process to the years before release.

We Are Seeing Systems Before Blizzard Has Finished Them

That context is particularly important because Diablo V already has a surprisingly long list of announced ideas. Blizzard has confirmed that Diablo V will launch with more classes than any previous Diablo game. The Demon Hunter and Monk return alongside the new Plague Knight. Runewords and Sets are part of an item system looking deliberately back toward Diablo II. The open world becomes procedural again. Dread Commanders can alter regions through what Blizzard calls terror-forming.

We have also learned that Diablo V intends to approach monster level scaling differently so character growth feels more noticeable. Blizzard has described a philosophy of deferred complexity, keeping the campaign easier to understand before deeper customization and build mastery expand in the endgame.

Those are substantial design decisions for a game still years away.

They are also exactly the sort of decisions that can change.

Blizzard revealing them early gives players more information, but it also requires players to resist treating every sentence from BlizzCon like carved stone tablets retrieved from Mount Arreat.

Feedback Is Part of Why Diablo V Was Announced Now

During the Diablo V panel, the development team was unusually explicit about this. Blizzard wants feedback from different kinds of Diablo players, including people who started with Diablo IV and veterans who remember when identifying an item required carrying actual scrolls around.

The team says understanding those different audiences is critical because Diablo V is attempting to serve several of them simultaneously. Some players want campaign, atmosphere and exploration. Others want bosses, builds, loot and an endgame capable of consuming unhealthy portions of the calendar.

That tension is already visible in what Blizzard has shown. The developers have set themselves the slightly dangerous internal ambition of building the “best campaign ever”, while also promising enormous class depth and a serious endgame. Blizzard therefore needs feedback from people who play Diablo for completely different reasons.

The developers have said that getting that feedback early is precisely why Diablo V was announced now.

Regular Development Updates Begin in 2027

This also means BlizzCon was only the beginning. Blizzard says it intends to bring players along during development through regular updates, with more communication beginning in 2027. The team specifically mentioned developer posts, videos and other ways of showing what is being built while gathering reactions from the community.

Exactly how much of Diablo V will become publicly playable remains unclear.

Blizzard has talked about bringing players onto campus for early playtests, but that is not the same thing as announcing an open beta, public alpha or Early Access program. None of those things has been confirmed. We should therefore resist turning “playable throughout development” into “everybody gets Diablo V next year.”

What Blizzard has promised is a more visible development process.

The Biggest Advantage Is More Chances to Be Wrong

That may sound like an odd benefit, but one of the most valuable things a development team can discover three years before release is that an excellent idea is terrible.

Maybe the new scaling system sounds brilliant but becomes irritating after fifty hours.

Maybe one of Diablo V's many classes feels wonderful during the campaign and completely collapses at endgame.

Maybe a Runeword becomes mandatory for every build.

Maybe procedural Sanctuary produces exciting journeys for ten hours and then reveals that it has been rearranging the same ruined church since Tuesday.

Those problems are considerably cheaper when discovered early.

Diablo players are also uniquely talented at finding them. Give the community a new damage formula and somebody will have found the decimal point Blizzard misplaced before lunch.

The Risk Is Showing Too Much Too Soon

An open development process creates its own problems. The earlier Blizzard talks about Diablo V, the more unfinished ideas will inevitably be mistaken for promises. Systems will change. Classes may be redesigned. Numbers shown in demonstrations will become obsolete. Features Blizzard genuinely intends to ship today may disappear before 2029.

There is also the simple problem of waiting.

Diablo V is targeting Spring 2029. We already know that Diablo has conquered Sanctuary, the player becomes the Heir to Westmarch and civilization survives largely through a travelling caravan. We know enough to become interested and nowhere near enough to actually play the thing.

Blizzard has essentially opened the restaurant, shown us the menu and explained that dinner will be served in a couple of years.

That requires patience from everyone involved.

Diablo V Is Being Built in Public Earlier Than Usual

Still, there is something appealing about the approach. Diablo V is not being presented as a mysterious logo Blizzard will hide for two years before returning with a polished marketing campaign. The development team appears willing to let players see some of the awkward middle period where ideas are tested, changed and occasionally thrown into the Horadric Cube to see whether something better comes out.

That does not guarantee a better game.

Player feedback can be contradictory. Communities disagree constantly about what Diablo should be. Diablo II veterans, Diablo III speed demons and Diablo IV players do not necessarily want the same thing, and designing by referendum would produce a game assembled by committee and held together with Runewords.

The useful part is not giving players control of development.

It is giving Blizzard more chances to watch them play.

Diablo V is almost three years away.

For once, Blizzard seems to think that is exactly why we should be hearing about it now.

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Diablo 5 Is Changing Level Scaling So Getting Stronger Actually Feels Stronger

There is a peculiar moment in modern Diablo where your character gains a level, a dramatic burst of light announces the occasion, several skill points or bonuses become available and the game proudly informs you that you are now stronger. Then you hit the monster standing beside you and discover that it has apparently attended the same training course. Diablo V wants to do something about that.

Senior Game Director Joe Shely has confirmed that Blizzard intends to take a “somewhat different approach” to monster level scaling in Diablo V. The exact system has not been finalized, and Blizzard is not promising a return to Diablo II's fixed area levels. What Shely is talking about is the underlying feeling: when your character levels up or finds a genuinely powerful item, the game should allow you to notice.

Speaking during a recent group interview about Diablo V's level scaling, Shely acknowledged that automatic enemy scaling can interfere with one of Diablo's most fundamental pleasures. You fill the experience bar. You become more powerful. Something nearby should probably regret being a goatman.

Diablo IV Solved One Problem and Created Another

There is a perfectly sensible reason games use level scaling. Diablo IV has a large open world that players can explore in different orders. If Scosglen contained level 35 monsters forever, returning there with a level 70 character would turn half the continent into decorative scenery. Scaling lets regions remain relevant, allows players of different levels to adventure together and keeps activities usable long after the campaign has moved elsewhere.

The problem is psychological rather than mathematical.

If the enemies grow whenever you grow, character progression can occasionally feel like running upward on an escalator that is moving downward. Your damage number increases, your equipment improves and another point goes into the skill tree, but the monster you killed yesterday has quietly received a promotion too.

That is very different from Diablo II. Its areas exist within more defined difficulty ranges, which means characters can enter somewhere too early and get flattened, then return later and discover that the creatures responsible have become considerably less impressive. It is crude, but extremely effective at communicating progress.

Finding a Great Item Should Change the Next Fight

Shely's comments are particularly interesting because he connects scaling directly to items. Finding an exceptional weapon should not merely improve a number on the character sheet. It should change the next combat encounter.

That sounds obvious in a loot-driven action RPG, but automatic scaling can soften exactly those moments. If every increase in player power is immediately answered by an increase somewhere on the enemy side of the equation, upgrades become relative rather than dramatic.

Diablo V already seems unusually interested in making items feel physical and important again. As we covered in our first detailed look at Diablo V, Blizzard is borrowing several ideas from older Diablo games, including a return to more recognizable item shapes, Runewords, Sets and a world built around procedural uncertainty rather than a completely fixed overworld.

The scaling discussion fits neatly beside that philosophy. A legendary sword becomes considerably more exciting when the game allows it to make yesterday's difficult monster today's unfortunate demonstration target.

This Does Not Mean Diablo V Is Returning to Diablo II Scaling

That distinction is worth keeping clear because Blizzard has not announced the replacement system.

Shely explicitly said the team has not fully discussed all the details publicly yet. “Somewhat different” could mean partial scaling, level brackets, regional ranges, player-controlled difficulty, delayed scaling thresholds or something Blizzard has not shown at all.

Diablo V also creates design problems that Diablo II never had to solve. Blizzard is building a large Western Continent with areas that can change when revisited. We recently looked at how Dread Commanders can reshape parts of Sanctuary, changing terrain, monsters and landmarks through the system Blizzard calls terror-forming. A world designed around returning to old regions cannot simply make most of those regions permanently irrelevant once the player outlevels them.

The trick will be preserving relevance without making every enemy feel permanently attached to the player's power level by an invisible rubber band.

Diablo V Wants Progression to Have More Distinct Stages

The scaling comments also make more sense when placed beside Blizzard's broader approach to progression.

The development team has already talked about deferred complexity, where the campaign remains relatively understandable while more elaborate item customization and build mastery emerge later in the endgame. Blizzard has also confirmed that Diablo V will launch with more classes than any previous Diablo game, creating far more room for different progression curves and character identities.

In other words, Blizzard appears to want progression to feel like progression again, rather than a single continuous difficulty line stretching from character creation to endgame.

Early on, gaining levels should matter.

Finding better equipment should matter.

Eventually, deeper systems should begin appearing and the game can start demanding considerably more from anyone determined to turn their character into a mathematical crime scene.

Feeling Powerful Does Not Mean Everything Has to Be Easy

There is an obvious danger in this discussion. Removing or weakening scaling does not automatically improve a game. Diablo still needs places where players are underpowered. Without that resistance, getting stronger means very little because nothing was threatening in the first place.

The memorable version of progression is not entering an area and instantly deleting everything.

It is entering an area, getting humbled, returning several upgrades later and realizing the balance has changed.

That is why Diablo II players remember stepping into a new difficulty and discovering that yesterday's comfortable build has suddenly developed structural problems. The friction gives later power meaning.

Diablo V's challenge is therefore not simply making monsters weaker relative to the player. It is creating enough fixed resistance that players can actually measure themselves against something.

Blizzard Has Three Years to Work Out What “Different” Means

Diablo V is targeting Spring 2029, so this is still design philosophy rather than a finished mechanic. Blizzard has not shown gameplay, published level ranges or explained how difficulty settings will interact with scaling. Anyone claiming Diablo V has already returned to Diablo II's system is several announcements ahead of the development team.

But the philosophy itself is significant.

Blizzard has identified that the feeling of becoming stronger matters just as much as the numbers proving that you became stronger. That is particularly important for a game whose developers have set themselves the modest little target of building the “best campaign ever”.

A level-up should not merely make the experience bar empty again.

A great weapon should not merely increase the number beside Damage.

Sometimes you should be able to walk back to the demon that ruined your afternoon twenty minutes earlier and demonstrate that circumstances have changed.

Diablo has always been about becoming absurdly powerful.

Diablo V apparently wants the monsters to notice too.

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Diablo 5’s Dread Commanders Will Literally Reshape Sanctuary Around Them

Diablo has traditionally employed a fairly straightforward management structure. Demons invade somewhere unpleasant, several larger demons supervise the smaller demons, and eventually the player arrives carrying enough enchanted weaponry to make the entire organizational chart irrelevant. Diablo V is trying something more ambitious. The Lord of Terror has already conquered Sanctuary, and some of the humans who surrendered to him have been corrupted into Dread Commanders, powerful regional enemies whose influence does not merely fill an area with monsters. It changes the world itself.

During Blizzard's Diablo V: Forging the Next Era presentation, Senior Production Director Tiffany Wat explained that Diablo and his Dread Commanders have spent years reshaping Westmarch after humanity's defeat. The development team has an appropriately terrible name for the process: terror-forming.

It sounds like a joke somebody successfully smuggled into a design meeting. It is also one of Diablo V's more important systems.

Dread Commanders Are Humans Diablo Has Remade

The Dread Commanders are not simply another category of elite demon. Blizzard says they began as powerful humans who were corrupted after Diablo conquered Sanctuary and then elevated until they possessed power comparable to the great forces of Hell. They now operate throughout the Western Continent as extensions of Diablo's rule.

That immediately gives Diablo V's enemy hierarchy a slightly different flavor. Diablo is not invading from somewhere else. He already owns the place. These commanders are what occupation looks like after seven years of Hell being allowed to redecorate.

We touched on them when Diablo V was first revealed, but Blizzard's world presentation makes their function considerably more interesting than simply providing another row of bosses between the player and Diablo. Their corruption becomes part of the procedural system governing Sanctuary itself.

Blizzard Calls It “Terror-Forming”

The basic idea is that returning to a familiar region should not necessarily mean returning to the same map you memorized yesterday. Wat explained that landmarks can move or change, terrain can be different and the monsters inhabiting an area can change as the Dread Commanders twist the land around them.

Diablo V is bringing procedural generation back to both dungeons and the overworld. That is a significant difference from Diablo IV's largely fixed open world, where discovering Sanctuary eventually means learning its roads so thoroughly that crossing fractured mountain ranges begins to feel suspiciously like commuting.

Diablo V wants to remove some of that certainty.

You may know the region. You may recognize the general landscape. You may even remember where you went last time. Blizzard's current goal is that none of that guarantees the same journey when you return.

The fiction behind that instability is the Dread Commanders. Sanctuary is not randomly rearranging itself because somebody checked a procedural-generation box in an editor. Hell is actively corrupting it.

Each Dread Commander Can Leave a Different Scar

Art Director John Mueller added another interesting detail during the BlizzCon panel: individual Dread Commanders have their own visual identities, and those themes can influence the parts of Sanctuary they have corrupted.

That gives Blizzard an opportunity to make procedural variation more recognizable than simply moving a ruined cart twenty metres to the left. A region dominated by one commander can potentially tell a different visual story from one touched by another. The environment becomes evidence of whoever controls it.

The art team describes Diablo V's world through three broad layers. There is the past, represented by the remains of the Sanctuary humanity lost. There is the present, where the Dread Commanders have already passed through and corrupted what remains. Then there is the future, represented by Hell itself breaking further into the world if nobody stops it.

That is a useful structure because procedural worlds have one recurring problem: randomness is very good at producing variety and considerably less reliable at producing meaning.

A village being different because an algorithm selected Ruined Village B instead of Ruined Village A is technically variety.

A village being different because a particular Dread Commander has infected the region with their own form of Hell is storytelling.

This Could Fix One of Diablo 4’s Open World Problems

Diablo IV proved that an enormous connected Sanctuary could work. It also demonstrated what happens once players have lived in that world for several hundred hours. Roads become known. Town layouts become muscle memory. World events appear in familiar places. The mysterious wilderness gradually becomes a map with efficient routes between activities.

There is nothing inherently wrong with that. Familiarity is useful in a live game. But Diablo originally built much of its atmosphere around uncertainty. You descended another floor because you did not know precisely what was below it.

Diablo V appears to be trying to combine those ideas. It still wants a large explorable world, but one whose geography does not become completely solved after the first month.

That philosophy also fits neatly beside the game's unusual approach to civilization. As we recently covered, Diablo V is replacing traditional quest hubs with a travelling caravan. There are no dependable towns spread across the map because Diablo has already destroyed or conquered them. Your caravan travels with you and becomes the moving pocket of safety while the landscape beyond it remains unstable.

The caravan is the thing you know.

The world outside it is the thing you do not.

Fog of War Is Coming Back for the Same Reason

Blizzard is also bringing back fog of war, another system designed to prevent exploration from becoming completely comfortable. Wat explained that the team wants players looking beyond the visible map and asking questions rather than simply following a route they memorized weeks earlier.

That gives the returning procedural world a practical purpose. Moving terrain matters considerably less if the map immediately tells you exactly where everything moved. Fog of war forces players to rediscover the landscape instead.

It is an unusually old Diablo idea being applied to a much larger world.

Diablo II never needed an enormous seamless continent to create uncertainty. A map reset was enough to make the path through the Blood Moor, Spider Forest or Durance of Hate unfamiliar again. Diablo V is attempting a similar trick at a different scale.

Diablo Himself Is Finally Affecting More Than the Final Act

The Dread Commanders also support Diablo V's larger attempt to make its title character present throughout the entire game. Blizzard has said repeatedly that Diablo is not supposed to sit somewhere at the end of the campaign waiting for the player to eventually remember which game they bought.

He has won before the opening cinematic.

He rules from Westmarch.

His servants control regions.

His corruption changes the places you travel through.

That world design is part of Blizzard's much larger ambition to create what the development team internally calls its “best campaign ever”. That phrase is an internal goal rather than a verdict on a game still years from release, but systems like terror-forming explain how the studio intends to make the campaign premise visible outside cinematics.

If Diablo has truly conquered Sanctuary, the map should look conquered.

The Big Question Is How Much Actually Changes

There are still important unknowns. Blizzard has not explained precisely how often regions regenerate, how much geography can move between visits or whether defeating a Dread Commander permanently changes an area. We also do not yet know how strongly their individual themes influence enemies, activities and rewards.

Those details matter enormously.

Procedural generation can create the feeling that anything might be around the next corner. It can also create the feeling that somebody shuffled the same twelve pieces of scenery before breakfast.

Diablo V is targeting Spring 2029, so everything Blizzard showed at BlizzCon should still be treated as an early design direction rather than a finished system. There is plenty of time for terror-forming to change before release.

But the underlying idea is one of the more interesting things Blizzard has revealed about the sequel.

Diablo has spent thirty years threatening Sanctuary.

This time he actually got the keys.

Apparently he immediately started moving the furniture.

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