Diablo 4 launch demons discussed by its developers

And not just Lilith!

It’s been a hell of a rollercoaster few months for Blizzard’s Diablo dev team – from riding high as Blizzard’s biggest ever game launch to feeling the pain that can often accompanies such huge attention and success.

The sweeping nerfs of the first big patch and the lack of a tangible end game hit hard, but now several months later a clearer picture for the game’s future is forming.

Stevivor sat down with Diablo developers Adam Jackson and Tiffany Wat at Blizzcon to chat about what the journey has been like for them and why they think so many people want to side with Lilith to overthrow Sanctuary.

Hamish Lindsay, Stevivor: Let’s kick it off by taking us on a journey with you, from Season 0, the launch, through to Season 2 today. How that’s been for you both?

Adam Jackson, Diablo 4 Lead Live Class Designer: Going back in time, we launched the game to millions of people, it was a really, really big event and was really awesome. The team was very excited. I’d say it was tumultuous, you know Diablo is a huge game and a huge franchise. I say this to my team a lot nowadays, but you know, we’re never gonna, well fingers crossed, who knows, but we’re never gonna launch as much game as we did when we launched. It’s the entire game, right?

And that size is just massive and huge. All the classes at once, all the systems, all the mechanics. Then just seeing it, of course we played it tested a lot internally but to see how it all comes together when you run it against millions of players. There’s nothing quite like that. Really, really exciting time. We definitely found that a lot of our systems and things, a lot of things worked and were really, really good. I remember being very happy specifically with the campaign.

That early experience, the side quests and one of our big goals the game was to introduce the world of Sanctuary to players. I think we did a good job there of just like making it feel like a real living breathing place that’s scary also, and bad things can happen.

Then we go into Season 1 and we found that we gave people new content, we had all this cool stuff with the Malignant Hearts and things, but we did find that people were absorbing our game very quickly. They were ravenous to just get to the end and get through everything as fast as possible and get all the end stuff. Then they were like what do we do now?

We also found a lot of our itemization and other things didn’t hold up as well as we wanted, so we looked at that but between launch and Season 1 we didn’t really have the time to react to the launch feedback. Season 1 was right around the corner, but Season 2 we had that chance to really see what the players are actually thinking, what are their pain points and what can we do to alleviate it? So, then Season 2 was kind of our big answer to kind of like, “hey, these are all the things that we saw, and we can to react now that we have the time, that you wanted to see with the launch game.”

So far I would say that at least my feeling and the feeling around the team is that it was a really big success. Season 2 answered a lot of the issues players had. Of course, there’s still always things we’re going to want to work on and make better, but overall, I think I’m really happy with where we’re at right now. We had a lot of difficult problems to solve like all the underlying math and a whole bunch of other things, a bunch of quality-of-life things and you we threw a lot of darts at the board and I think a lot of them hit.

Tiffany Wat, Diablo 4 Production Director: My answer is a little bit more emotional than his. It was super exciting to launch Diablo 4, it’s a game we’ve been working on for a long time. I’ve actually been on the Diablo team for 12 years, so I worked on Diablo 3 and then Diablo 4. It was a long, really fun road to get there and to finally launch it and, like Adam was saying, to bring the world of Sanctuary to life has been incredible.

I’m a lifelong fan of Diablo myself, I’m a developer myself, but also a huge player and fan of the game and the franchise. It’s the biggest launch that Blizzard has had, and I was actually working on the Engineering Live Operation side, so this smooth launch is something I’m particularly proud of.

Adam obviously is very focused on “how can we respond to all the player feedback and all the things that we might have been slightly off mark on” but I think about all the successes as well. Like he was saying, the campaign, I think, was a huge success. It’s a beautiful game. I think Diablo, it’s an ever-evolving living game. I think that’s what’s great about live service. It’s what’s great about having a team that is so passionate, dedicated to getting it right.

Then there’s such a passionate community that really wants to tell us all the things we did right, as well as the things that maybe they have thoughts on. Which is really, really helpful though because it gives us a little bit of clarity and purpose and we get to blend that in with ideas that we have of our own on how to continue evolving and changing.

Stevivor: The campaign was a massive success. What do you guys think of a large part of the player base wanting to side with Lilith which was, definitely from my reading at least, not really the intention?

Wat: I mean I don’t think I was surprised by it. That’s what I think makes her such a compelling character – you want to think that she’s the villain, right? I guess in the announcement cinematic that might be how it’s painted, but I think that’s what’s so awesome about Diablo. A lot of people may think that demons are evil and the high heavens are good, but that’s not what it’s about. I mean, the world of Sanctuary is morally grey all over the place, and so I think us putting together story where you can kind of form your own narrative of “what side do you like?”

It is complicated, there is no clear right or wrong answer and the ending of how the main campaign ended may not sit well with people. You know, obviously in the first couple of Diablo games primary Prime Evil equals bad. But, I think bringing complex feelings to the table makes it a conversation, which is what makes it such a compelling story.

Jackson: Yeah, I totally agree. I think it’s just the exhibits the success that we made a compelling character in a narrative. I think of our other titles like Starcraft, and one of the things I love about that is that you see these three factions and races, and even inside of the Zerg, which is traditionally probably the most evil… They would be like the big antagonist, right?

Everybody’s scared of them and they want to kill everybody, but there was there was still grey area all over the place with the way the alliances are constantly change. The fact that people have different teams that they’re rooting for, I think it is just a sign of a strong narrative. I think that’s really cool.

Stevivor: It’s interesting too, Starcraft has strong female characters. Warcraft does as well. Do you think Lilith is the strong female character Diablo has needed?

Wat: I think Lilith is a very, very strong female character. I was very excited about that you know, the prime evils you know they’re three old dudes now so being able to bring in a different form of evil, even though I know we just discussed could be more really grey, has been really exciting. I love that all of the franchises at our company have a broad range of characters, again good or evil, and it’s great to see.

We have a few strong female characters, and I’m particularly excited about Neyrelle. She’s a character that was in the first game. She’s a child, which I think is what’s so fascinating about her character, because I think we’ll be able to see her growth over time. She’s carrying the soul stone. It does have Mephisto in it and historically it’s always the Horadrim that challenge, the Prime Evils and they’ve always failed.

We have this strong, incredible female character now and that’s what excites me is. Where is she going to take the story? How is she going to fight against Mephisto? So far, she’s been successful, although you can tell from our teaser, he’s challenging her every step of the way.

Jackson: It’s really cool that we can also have that representation. Have them be both good or evil and have people love or hate them and have all the combinations there and kind of delivers successfully on. I think Lilith in particular is a huge success. Like she’s definitely a bad demon but also still has a point…

Wat: You kind of understand why she’s doing what she’s doing!

Jackson: It’s a hard thing to nail I think, it’s a very easy to miss that mark and I think the team that did her character did really well. Her voice acting at the end scene, it was phenomenal to me, if you talk about like you’re paying a price that you don’t know you’re willing to pay like. Just really good. I don’t know, I love the character and Neyrelle too. I think she has a lot of growth and potential.

Diablo 4 is now on Windows PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series S, Xbox Series X, PS4 and PS5; a special 35% XP boost event takes place between 21-27 November.

Diablo 4 6 June 2023 PC PS4 PS5 Xbox One Xbox Series S & X   Buy on Windows PC via Battle.net Buy on the Microsoft Store Buy on Amazon: PS4, PS5, Xbox