Diablo 4 has recently launched Season 8, marking the beginning of a series of free updates that will eventually lead into the game's second expansion, expected to be released sometime in 2026. However, despite these updates, not all is well within Diablo 4's passionate core community. This group of dedicated players is eager for substantial new features, reworks, and innovative ways to engage with the almost two-year-old action role-playing game. They are vocal about their expectations and frequently share their feedback with Blizzard.
While Diablo 4 boasts a broad player base that includes casual gamers who enjoy straightforward monster-slaying, its core community consists of veteran fans. These players are deeply invested, regularly fine-tuning their meta builds and seeking more depth and complexity from the game.
The release of Diablo 4's 2025 roadmap, the first such roadmap Blizzard has published for the game, sparked significant backlash. Following its release, the community voiced concerns about the upcoming content, including Season 8, and debated whether the planned updates were sufficient to keep them engaged.
The online discussion reached a point where a Diablo community manager felt compelled to respond on the Diablo 4 subreddit, addressing the criticisms directly: "We added fewer details to the later parts of the roadmap to accommodate for things the team is still working on," they explained. "This isn't all that's coming in 2025 :)" Even Mike Ybarra, the former president of Blizzard Entertainment and a corporate executive at its parent company Microsoft, joined the conversation with his insights.
Season 8 arrives amidst these discussions and introduces several contentious changes. A notable alteration is to the game's battle pass, which now mirrors the structure of Call of Duty's battle pass, allowing players to unlock items non-linearly. However, this change also means that the battle pass now offers less virtual currency than before, which impacts players' ability to purchase future battle passes.
In an extensive interview with IGN, Diablo 4's lead live game designer Colin Finer and lead seasons designer Deric Nunez addressed the community's reaction to the roadmap. They confirmed plans to update Diablo 4's skill tree, a long-requested feature by players, and elaborated on the rationale behind the changes to the battle pass.
