Diablo 4: Announcements from Blizzcon 2026 and Related Stuff

I’m still trying to process what I saw on the various reveals for #Blizzcon2026. I can’t describe my feeling as shock nor surprise. It’s more muted. I’ve read various streamers’ chats and comments on reddit where people are just “whelmed” (as opposed to overwhelmed). Maybe the real emotion I’m experiencing is numbness. It’s like watching anesthesia being injected into your soul. But I supposed I should have expected it especially after my own write up about feeling excited (or not). But I think there’s enough material just on Diablo to devote a post to here. Also, because an article has the full patch notes and high level aspects for Season 15, I want to review the broadstrokes coming up as I do think there’s some decent meat on the bones that make returning worthwhile for me.

Probably, the most relevant announcement to me for the purpose of this blog is the revealing of the details for Season 15 for Diablo 4. I’m going to defer that portion to focus on the other Diablo related announcements thus far from Blizzcon 2026 so I can do more of a deep dive at least with regards to the PTR notes.

Diablo the Animated Series on Netflix

There had been rumblings about some creative collaborative project between Blizzard and Netflix recently. The keyword used during the keynote speech was describing Blizzard as an “entertainment” entity besides being focused on gaming (any call backs to the WWE?) Considering that Blizzard has been leaning more and more into crossovers lately, this collaboration isn’t necessarily a surprise. I know people who have wanted Blizzard’s studio side (the movie group) to produce something purely story driven. Heck, I’ve argued that getting an Overwatch animation series would actually be a decent idea. But Diablo?

I have to pause here and offer a great deal of hesitation. First, Diablo really doesn’t strike me as a good series to build an animation series around. Diablo has always been more about horror and the colors and themes just lend themselves as well. At least for American animation that I’ve seen. Obviously, this is going to be heavily dependent on who handles the series. But will is be something like a Dark Horse comic style?

The other reason I’m not overly fond of this idea is that the Warcraft movie just stunk. I think having in game cinematics with light story/dialog is fine when you have just the right amount. Thus far, I just don’t think the people within Blizzard have the capability of writing a good story beyond a game format. And even then it feels lame a lot of the time. Vessel of Hatred was just rotten to me when it came to story telling and I didn’t even give Lord of Hatred a chance.

At least from my experience, the style that Blizzard tries to project in their games does not serve anyone over the age of junior high well. I heavily dislike the mixed mode of a Disney gimped Ralph Bakshi mode. It comes off more like Dragon Lee’s Bruceploitation because you get a cheap copy that can’t live up to the original (i.e. Tolkien and to a lesser extent Dungeons and Dragons). The best way I can describe my fear is similar to what we ended up getting for Star Wars 8, especially that horrible Mary Poppins sequence with Princess Leia. So this new series doesn’t appeal to me especially when I have my own novel published that I think is far darker and better than anything Blizzard can put out.

Diablo V in Spring of 2029

This is one of the big two announcements so far at Blizzcon 2026. I know there’s World of Warcraft Forever but I honestly have no idea what that’s supposed to be. But let’s focus on the major that relates to this blog post more directly: the next Diablo V game. Not an expansion, a supposedly ground up game aimed for 2029. The announcement itself seemed to initially pop the room but I think the date killed off the excitement.

There was a discussion/panel led by Blizzard’s current CEO along with the main people involved with this new project. And I have to be honest here: they said almost nothing of value. Anyone with half a brain could deconstruct the vague wording used. The trailer itself was very brief (0:48 seconds total). You barely could make out anything. There were concept art shown but almost nothing really concrete. The panel themselves seemed to receive a rather cold reception from the audience, who after 2 years of no Blizzcon, were probably starved and hungering for something huge.

To me this was utter bullshit. I got super pissed at this announcement because that’s all it really was. The only things mentioned of note were some caravan your character travels with, the return of procedurally drawn zones, the end of the open world (how ironic too) and the Demon Hunter and Monk as returning classes. There was some hints for the gear, which looked as though the team just reverted everything back to Diablo 2. But what the flying fuck was this nonsense?

Here’s what I think really happened. I think Diablo 4’s design has proven to be problematic for the developers in managing to create a stable game. The open world simply made no sense, had various issues like rubberbanding, scaling, etc. Also, I think the initial design especially once seasons got incorporated conflicted with one another, giving them impossible problems to solve such as the art direction conflicting with the game’s increase in speed. Itemization looks to be going through yet another revamp, which may allude to how the original systems might just be too rotten to fix at this point. Usually, when you get into this state where a system becomes unmanageable, you just end up tossing it into the gutter and start from scratch.

Also, I think that in seeing yet another game director show up tells me that the vision for Diablo changed again and he probably evaluated the current version from top to bottom and decided that there’s not enough to really build off of because of how the core causes too many problems whenever it gets modified. This is the only explanation why they can’t balance the game well and have problems pushing out content without a ton of frustrating bugs spring out each patch/season.

But I read this Diablo 5 situation more as a PR move to buy them some time. They’ve given themselves to 2029 for this release, which to me looks like a death march. The talk itself was just too vague which makes me believe the bulk of this game was in discovery mode and that they were desperate to get anything to excite the fans since there honestly wasn’t a lot for the Diablo series. That’s probably why the CEO came out to host the talk herself since she probably knew what a clusterfuck this situation is. I mean most of the panel there looked as though there was a shotgun aimed at the back of their heads while they spoke. I think the audience realized this too especially as that Xbox CEO person recently just cut a ton of people in the division. The worst part is that if this was one of your biggest announcements but the crowd ain’t buying, something really is wrong.

My other comment is that a lot of these people looked super old and worn out. I know I’m not young either but holy crap did the panel look ancient. And think about this: if Blizzard manages to hit that 2029 mark by some miracle, it’s still 3 years out from now. 3 FUCKING YEARS. By that point, I’ll qualify for the Denny’s senior specials. Someone like me who has physical ills can’t wait another three years for this type of game. I can’t even tell if the planet is going to be around given that there’s been talk just of AI decimating things, climate change (see Nepal and even the recent SoCal heatwave we just are finishing up), the craziness of the various small wars and hostile fervor, not to mention the Anti-Christ himself and his legions of brainwashed minions (and you know just whom I’m talking about here) quite possibly turning the US in a wasteland. And I have to wait 4 years for a game that barely has any definition about what the hell it’s supposed to be? Fuck this.

Diablo 4 on the Nintendo Switch

I read how some people sounded excited for a Switch announcement (maybe all those backstabbed Sony PS people). But again this didn’t receive that huge of a reaction. The meme iterated in a few chats was, “Do you not have Switches?” I mean, if you’re not a Switch owner, why is this relevant?

Summoning Spawn into Diablo Immortal: Live Drawing with Todd McFarlane

I mentioned previously how Blizzcon and Blizzard have devolved into this self-indulgent, ego inflated, sycophantic entity. The fact that they’re bringing this comic book artist for Diablo Immortal more or less reinforces my view. I mean, really who is this convention for anymore? And what is it about? We’re seeing more crossover garbage than ever. What happened to just the games portion that players could excited over? It just feels like this whole entertainment world with their leech executives just enjoy masturbating each other in a giant circle jerk.

Diablo 4: Return of the Amazon

Announced for early 2027, we’ll see the return of the Amazon class from Diablo 2. More details are scheduled for Sunday’s “What’s Next” Panel. So far they described the Amazon as being split into four distinguished archtypes: Champion, Skirmisher, Ranger, and Commander where the two weapons of choice will be the Bow and a Javelin, which is going to be new for the Diablo 4 world.

I will admit that I am disappointed in not actually getting a playable class at this point. While the Warlock just got released for Lord of Hatred, the Paladin itself had been shadow dropped, which I think did Blizzard a major disservice in the long term because it simply setup high expectations for their own Blizzcon convention. But the real question I think plaguing people’s mind is whether this class will be part of an expansion or DLC.

They already mentioned that the Lord of Hatred is pretty much the finale in the series with the Hatred theme. In that sense, one would assume there ought to be no more expansions especially with Diablo V getting a hard deadline. If that’s the case, are we expected to see just a continuation of seasons mixed in with a DLC or two for the next three years?

I noticed that a lot of people have become skeptical especially because of the whole “10 year roadmap” for Diablo 4 (which honestly seemed more a lipservice thing from old Rod) as well as probably how many of us felt Diablo 3 ended up getting the shaft. Now, I will admit that once the season aspect really started to ramp up in Diablo 3, the game became kinda cool especially once more things went into the core of the game. But the only major release after Reaper of Souls was the Necromancer DLC, which is what I think most of us are expecting.

The other problem is that Vessel of Hatred and Lord of Hatred were a little on the pricier side. Even if they were expansions, they honestly didn’t feel as though much thought nor effort were put into both, especially in comparison the ever growing Path of Exile 2 (and it’s impossible not to compare both games at this stage). Lord of Hatred for me was particularly obnoxious in that it wasn’t just expensive but anyone not owning it really had no reason to play Diablo 4 anymore. And for those people who have money issues, that expansion felt like a slap in the face. As a result, I’m not hyped up for this new class right now in the current context.

Diablo 4: Season of Hell’s Legacy

Once again leaning into that nostalgia factor, Diablo 4 Season 15 is centered around the return of Deckard Cain as a zombie j/k, he’s a “lost soul” where you track down three dark wanderers and enter their memories/nightmares to fight the big baddies of the past in Baal, Mephisto (didn’t we just defeat him too?????) and Diablo (whoa! A Diablo in Diablo 4 finally!) to gain a special kind of soul shard/splinter.

From what I’ve seen from some of the machines at Blizzcon (Datmodz gave a demo), these fights were mostly an updated version of their Diablo 2 counterpart. Also, there was this cow lord boss that I think is active now. But I’m not sure if he’ll be around for the next season. The boss fights themselves don’t look that bad especially in comparison to the horrible Lilith and current Mephisto fights and will at least be part of the season story quest.

These splinters will modify certain activities that are associated with War Plans as well as the Tree of Whispers. Also, they will be used for the reputation aspect usually associated to the season journey system and allow the user to erupt with a power corresponding to their owner. I do think this modified version of War Plans with regard to the activity trees will be interesting. So this part alone might be worth checking out since it does change up how the game will play. In addition, I think having these splinters will cause the player to be hunted partly because they too become a dark wanderer and they make the player more vulnerable to the boss associated to the splinter. However, only one splinter can be used at a time but can be changed out.

In addition, there will be three new dungeon types called Waking Nightmares. Effectively, these are another nostalgia play where the largest resembles old encounters and their layouts but are treated as set level Capstone type of dungeons until T10+ where they get upgraded to a more challenging version with appropriate rewards. The middle sized one are set in locations around the world and have set ups similar to famous spots like the Den of the Fallen. Finally, the smallest ones are single encounter/event rooms that may have a boss or some older encounter like fetishes from act 3 in Diablo 2.

Now, there are gem-like Soul Splinters that were in the PTR. I didn’t care for the downside effects. However, you can put one in each jewelry slot to replace your normal gems. They have quite a bit of resistance in addition to the power which varying levels of bonuses and penalties. But you’ll have to optimize which ones to pick so you don’t gimp yourself too badly (e.g. losing all of your critical hit). Effectively, these are the “new” seasonal powers here and remind me a little of the ones introduced during Season 11. They will be upgradeable too in the Horadric Cube with the Amalgamation craft and you find these mostly from bosses.

Streamlined War Plans

This is the feature that most people have asked for in terms of the “shared account” form of War Plans. This is mostly a quality of life feature where characters on a partition (e.g. season HC vs season SC and SSF versions of each) will have the same amount of experience for activity trees and can spend points per character. So this is a major plus overall and it is something that will go into the core of the game.

Updated Mythic Uniques

There seems to be some rollback here. The classic or Iconic Mythics are returning and becoming a chase item again, which sounds good while crafted uniques are going to be treated like Primal Ancients in the Horadric Cube where you can do a direct upgrade in a deterministic mode. Once again, uniques crafted in this manner like crafted Primal Ancients, will only get a single slot for being equipped and cannot be done to an Unmodifiable item (which kinda makes sense).

Also, they are adding a new crafting option to the Blacksmith so players can semi-target farm Iconic Mythics. But Mythics crafted with the Jeweler’s Rune Crafting mechanism or Blacksmith’s Mythic Unique cache won’ have the crafted tag and thus can be equipped beyond a single slot.

I’m still not a fan of Mythic becoming a quality because I think what they ended up doing is transferring the ideas from Chaos Armor onto Uniques via Mythic crafting rather than keeping Mythics as a pure chase item. I would’ve preferred if Uniques were just a low drop rate aspect that could be crafted onto a piece of gear and given a new name since the static affixes make these things less special feeling. But I guess this is still better than what S14 presented so we’ll see how this goes.

New Horadric Cube Crafting Recipes

• Affix Value Reroll – Allows you to reroll all base affixes on both equipment and Talisman items (Charms and Seals) — while protecting desirable traits like Greater Affixes, any Enchanted affixes, Tempers, and Transfigurations (as long as that Transfigured item is not Unmodifiable).This sounds like a really good recipe. My complaint with the current implementation is wasting an item that has a greater affix role that you wanted. My argument has been that you should minimize RNG on crafting once you’ve received the desired material since the RNG should be the hunt, not the craft. You don’t really want to spend that much time just slaving away and hurting your hands on some project because a crappy RNG generator isn’t in your favor. So I’m very happy with how this sounds.
• Horadric Reroll – A second option for rerolling Charms and Seals, with a few differences. Available for Legendary+ Charms and Seals, Horadric Reroll fully randomizes all base Affixes on Charms and Seals, without touching Set Bonuses or Unique/Mythic charm powers. Unlike Affix Value Reroll, Horadric Reroll will not change the Charm Set Bonus Affixes on Seals – just base Affix.So another really good recipe because you don’t have to do that weird craft where you waste a ton of set Charm in the hope of getting an upgrade. It kinda reminds me of recipe #4 from the old Kanai’s Cube where if you had the materials, you could reroll certain set items except here you’re rerolling just the affixes. I assume you can be able to get greater affixes too with this method.

I think the real story here is that there’s more opportunities for growth in the Horadric Cube. Right now, it just seems to be used for quality of life advancement but I’m hoping more recipes will continue to evolve, even though Diablo V now is on the horizon.

Legacy Uniques

These are familiar items from Diablo 2 and 3 like the Stone of Jordan and are permanent additions to the game. In addition, quite a few are marked such that you can convert them into a Unique Seal. The main issue I see with these is that they simply bulk up the limited room for aspects and unique seals. Since we’re not going to see any more updates to the actual main core engine for Diablo 4 (which sucks), these feel wasteful as we won’t get more gear slots and be forced to continuously shuffle around pieces to figure out how to fit stuff like this in.

One comment I have focuses on Nemesis Bracers. I’m sure that the power is to summon elites at Shrines. But unlike Nemesis Bracers from Diablo 3, these take the glove slot rather than a bracers slot, which we don’t have in Diablo 4. On top of that, I think not having Emanate continues to hurt since Mercenaries remain as buffs rather than something we can do more to customize.

Horadric Post

This is another touted quality of life thing. Basically, it’s a way for Blizzard to send you mail one way. I imagine things like gear, transmog and rewards can find themselves towards you as well as be accompanied by a nice (system) message for additional context.

Rebirth

This is one of the last real major quality of life type of features players had requested as a carry-over from Diablo 3. Effectively, you’ll convert an Eternal character to become a seasonal character, which is an interesting way of looking at the situation. But the bullet points for how this feature will resolve itself goes:

• Class, name, appearance, and state (Normal or Hardcore)
• When saved as part of an ensemble, cosmetic preferences including transmogs and pigments, mounts and accessories, pets, portals, and headstones can also transfer.

I like this a lot personally because I would constantly create new characters each season and lose their name or be forced to come up with a new name like “RudeRickSix” (for my Druid) and figure out how their original portrait would look during the character creation process. I wasn’t a huge fan of going through all of that just to redo someone every few months. So it’s a nice time saver that is overdue.

Other Season Features

I’m not going to go into the season rewards and reliquaries themselves nor a deep dive into the patch notes. Anyone can just scroll to the bottom of that link and see for themselves all the adjustments. But the main things I’ve read is that Warlock is going to be the main star for the season while other classes like Barbarian got the shaft pretty badly. For myself, I might give Companion Druid another try just because I really liked the build and would consider giving it another shot.

Other Blizzcon 2026 Comments

For non-Diablo related comments, the big thing to me was the announcement of a new Starcraft game that’s set for 2030. By then I’m definitely going to be qualifying for the IHOP senior special so I probably won’t play it. As far as I’ve read as rumors go and by the hints from the video, it looks like it’ll be a shooter game where you play a marine. I’m going to guess that they’ll use some of the foundational first person shooter game play from Overwatch with heavily updated graphics. But for me it’s 40 years way overdue and my interest in anything Starcraft or RTS related is dead at this stage because I simply can’t physically play that type of game at my age with my ailments.

A lot of the other things like Warcraft III re-reforged or whatever was released but still being paid for which to me is silly. But it merely emphasized the nostalgia plays Blizzard are doing as they grasp for straws in trying to retain whatever audience still clings onto their every word. Same thing with WoW Forever, which makes Blizzard sound like a heroin dealer.

Quite frankly, what I’ve seen so far from Blizzcon 2026 was pretty much a letdown even though my expectations are really low. I just read that there won’t be anymore expansions for Diablo 4 as well, which is disheartening and makes me wonder just how they’re going to handle the Amazon class. I mean, at this stage, is the Amazon class just going to be like the Diablo 3 Necromancer DLC? I know they said they’ll continue to work on seasons at least up until Diablo V gets released but it really feels like a letdown because in all likelihood we won’t see any real major feature updates.

I feel kinda bad for anyone who was stupid enough to buy a ticket this year. I mean you want to talk snake oil, well this was it. The opening speeches were really hard to watch and the audience just seemed dead most of the time whenever a speaker made a proclamation. But this was bad. I mean, Diablo Immortal was bad but at least they had something people could play on the floor. Diablo V was mostly just concept art at this point and a trailer that was less than a minute. Anyone can do all of that with AI these days. They didn’t even have a single thing working that they could show. Why even announce Diablo V this far in advance?

I realize that Blizzard is notorious for the “Soon TM” meme, which in reality is just these long stretches of what feels like inactivity or lack of communication to the point where players lose interest. But now they’ve basically said well fuck Diablo IV because the player base shat all over all the bad design decisions so let’s give up and start from scratch YET AGAIN. Why not fix the core problems or make an attempt? Was Diablo IV just so badly written and conceived that some person managed to sneak in and convince management that it’s better to start from scratch?

I guess I’m mad because of how Diablo 3 ended up getting treated. Diablo 2 with Blizzard North was a different scenario for me because there was a team that was successful that ended up splitting but put out a culturally defining game (at least the genre). So we heard about the fights and problems which gave us the initial version of Diablo 3. But Diablo 3 though being treated like the red headed stepchild probably was more like the abused child from an adopted family where some stork just dropped him off. I think the fact that we not only have to wait 3 whole years to get a completely new game with an unknown, vaguely defined situation, we also are aware that Diablo 4 is going to slowly be put out to pasture. The thing I read was that they will continue to keep support for Diablo 4 via seasons (because Transmog and Battle Passes) but these seasons aren’t going to really lead anywhere anymore. There’s not going to be an expansion where the lessons and features from seasons will get reincorporated. At least, Lord of Hatred managed to demonstrate bits of that.

Then there’s the problem that you know they aren’t going to devote resources into fixing the real core problems of the game. Whatever is around right now just will end up staying in that manner. So the broken Dark Citadel, the half baked Mercenaries, the unwanted PVP zone, etc. are all useless at this stage. I mean why not just toss the adopted child in a trash bin and run off like some early 80s made-for-TV movie.

I guess the real problem for me is that I’m just about through with believing in Blizzard. I’ll continue to play Diablo 4 when there’s something that interest me but Blizzard is just full of shit to me these days. The old gaming spirit that I loved from the mid to late 90s is long dead especially since a good chunk of the original group have moved on. Corporate M$, Activision and their CFOs killed that spirit and now it’s just KPIs that make no sense, a revolving door set of leadership, no visionaries, etc.

Maybe for me once Diablo V comes out, it’ll mark my retirement from contemporary gaming. I keep mentioning how my age and physical ailments are slowly preventing me from doing anything remotely stressful. Gaming can be very stressful and I can’t see this modern version of Blizzard satisfying that old itch I used to have for games. Instead, if I see an encounter and it’s frustrating or that the path to get what I want is hampered by moronic decisions, I’m just not going to bite. I’ve spent a lot of money and tried to have some faith but I’m just too discouraged to really continue. It is sad though that these large companies aren’t fostering a positive future but being driven financially more than ever. The only bright points I’ve seen in recent years is the independents but nothing really has caught my attention beyond small mobile games.