Diablo 4’s onslaught of MMO features hints at a questionable live-service future

First time I see another player wandering in Estuar Diablo 4, even before their friendly green name tag registers in my brain, I reflexively open fire with the righteous fury of a mindless exterminator sent to rid the land of evil. Sorry, other person, for mistaking you for an abnormally large Fallen; my first reflex is to machine gun anything that moves, because I grew up running away from the original Butcher. Finally, after a few more violent knee strikes, I start waving at fellow Wanderers instead of trying to kill them. I didn’t realize adapting old Diablo instincts for an open world format would be a thing, but here we are.

In previous Diablo games, the presence of other players was a series of announced raids. Sometimes the visitor turned out to be a serial killer, or a quiet goofball who just wanted to do his own thing (which would sometimes mess things up). your thing). Anyway, in that finite expanse you were always aware of what the other players were doing (or clearly not doing); for example, it was obvious when someone joined a rift game to quietly get a cow portal.

Intimacy made sense within the context of the earlier Diablo games, which were one-way descents into Hell – a small, steadfast party had extremely poor odds against the Lord of Terror, which made things even more fun; in Diablo 4But in the open world, that claustrophobic, hair-raising bite is gone. By contrast, traversing this new incarnation of Diablo often feels generic and lonely, save for some strong moment-to-moment warmth from the NPCs that accompany you in the campaign. In Diablo 2which had a much smaller scope and player base than modern MMOs, I often logged in solo, but became familiar with the environment as I scrolled through the lobby to see regulars doing regular cow walks, swap stuff, act crazy or offer help. It felt better with the essential Diablo multiplayer experience of a ragged community in peril, stubbornly banding together against the threat of destruction.

In a series so driven by momentum and inevitability, the average endgame experience in older Diablo games (to some extent even Diablo 3) being involved with each other; never really alone. Diablo 4‘s long and at times boring campaign (which certainly appeals to single-player traditionalists) has little incentive for others to team up with you until the endgame, and it’s easy to miss the old days when Sanctuary was a much smaller place used to be.

Things are different in Estuar these days. There are plenty of people around, but for now I really feel alone. When I finally get to the endgame, where the “real” Diablo 4 work begins, knocking down world bosses, and rushing to other timed events evoke the same camaraderie as waiting with a throng of consumers for a Black Friday sale to open. Trade chat is quiet, which I initially attributed to people playing for the first time, but then I realize there is no Trade chat (there was in the review build). Part of my Battle.net friends list has already progressed to World Tier III, which isn’t surprising given the grind-and-find mentality that Diablo 3 drilled into us so stubbornly. Translating that pipeline to an open world is difficult at best.

The reality is that after a certain point, one of Diablo’s many joys – and this has nothing to do with narrative quality – is about finding glitches and shortcuts to the endgame, which followed a predictably capitalist evolution into a broken cottage industry full of with gold peddlers and level boosters. I’m mentally pouring one out for an era when we usually only had the kindness of strangers to rely on – like a devoted man who does non-stop uber runs for one and all.

Image: Blizzard Entertainment

Diablo 4 is necessarily different. It has more overt literary ambitions that lend themselves well to the new open-world structure. In this vast patchwork of areas, the game’s designers had no choice but to abandon the strict cosmic duality of the series, which was much better suited to a slimmer world. There’s more breathing room with a longer campaign and a more holistic view of the impact of the eternal conflict on retired heroes and forgotten comrades and, most importantly, the nobodies of Sanctuary. This isn’t just some desolate piece of doomed land stretched over by other terrain in five acts — it’s one now to live piece of doomed land, and it makes a difference.

Donan the retired Horadrim, for instance, thrives in a fiefdom of his own making, in a stark version of medieval Scotland where the Druidic way of life has been displaced by the cathedral; his fellow townsmen either love him or hate him. There are Knights Penitent who serve in godforsaken backwaters where everyone hates them, including themselves (and probably the exiled angel Father Inarius, Lilith’s baby daddy). Diablo 4 makes it clear that the threat of the Prime Evils will never end, that Sanctuary still has its own issues between these cycles, and the Dickensian desperation and misery of tiny lives are an essential part of this living, breathing world. Farm drama is the kind of thing I live for in MMOs, and in this, Diablo 4 does not disappoint.

In Hawezar, the “last” contiguous region on the map, depending on whether you’ve followed the “intended” campaign search order, there’s a hint of a bigger picture than the neat divisions of “civilization” we’ve seen so far. Hawezar, according to the residents, is not part of Sanctuary, but exists separately in the service of the all-consuming swamp. The region falls into the weary stereotype of the unfathomable Other – a land of unknown unknowns and baffling superstitions in contrast to the rest of the continent’s love of bureaucracy, routine and hierarchies. There is also the suggestion that Hawezar’s magic is somehow more natural and authentic than the Light and sorcery known to Estuar, which teeters near some kind of wild romanticization of Black swamp culture. It’s much better than the horrifying caricature of the witch doctor Diablo 3though, so I can’t complain too much.

Image: Blizzard Entertainment via Polygon

Diablo 4 shines most when the writing shifts from the opaque machinations of immortal entities. Some of the most effective scenes divert the player’s eye from heaven and hell and to the literal flesh of Estuar; when the Horadrim Lorath cuts open a disfigured demon to examine its innards for clues, his brief examination of a “gentle noble’s hand” is such a sharp moment that I have a whole string of CSI: Horadrim where the Wanderer helps Lorath solve murders in Estuar. I am beyond elated when I have to pick up a disembodied finger or read guts in the dirt with a Scosglen seer. Where so much of the high-level story is about existential threats and mind games, I love this return to fat and cartilage.

Estuar now has a permanent overworld map showing how people are really supposed to live here, tracking how the campaign’s conflicts, for better or worse, have shifted from major existential strife to Succession: The Roys go to hell. Much of the drama is interpersonal and generational, dealing with inherited power or knowledge. Honestly, I didn’t struggle my way through hell expecting to negotiate with a demon. Compared to the hungry, senseless evil that can’t be reasoned with, these changes feel right for the focus on the material endgame. But I can’t help feeling homesick for the gut-level terror of the early Diablo games. Lilith’s desire to “empower” people wades right into the kind of milquetoast girlboss feminism I thought we’d finally killed in a post-Daenerys Targaryen world.

Blizzard wants us here for a good and long time, but judging by the flat monotony of it Diablo 3 and the tendency to rush players into seasonal content at the expense of narrative quality can only be true for one. While the writing has certainly improved Diablo 4, the gameplay is inconsistent throughout the campaign, and I only felt an adrenaline rush when I first got to Hell – it’s honestly the most fun I’ve had in the entire campaign. To be fair, starting fresh in Diablo is never “nice”, and it only really gets fun when you get the start of a good synergistic build. And with the onslaught of MMO features and systems diluting the core concept of a menacing, viral evil, this new open world is a reminder of the long-term future that seems to be in store for us: microtransactions, boosts, and an eternal grind.

Image: Blizzard Entertainment via Polygon

Diablo has always been transaction-oriented, but in the best of times those transactions were made between players without Blizzard rushing in like a companion nun. These days, most interactions are dictated by pre-set emotes, and the feeling that I’m closest to being “together but alone” is lurking in someone else’s mind for a little experience buff. It’s easy for me to miss the cozy universe of Diablo 2 because there was a palpable sense of fear that drove us to seek solidarity in parties (I admit Diablo 4‘s Nightmare Dungeons have become a recurring attraction for me with friends – perhaps because they are so clearly borrowed from World of Warcraft‘s Mythic+ dungeons, where each instance has different conditions and additions, and I really was a Mythic+ junkie at one point).

Now that organic tension and forced collaboration has leveled off into a very different space where MMO hustle doesn’t naturally invite involvement or community; I expect Clans to become useful here, albeit part of the excitement of it Diablo 2 was meeting new people and doing stupid things to them. We will find a way to make things fun, even if it means learning how to move through a much lonelier world.