Tag: blizzard

Diablo IV Is Headed to Steam This Month, Just in Time for the Vampire-Themed Season 2

Diablo IV is coming to Steam, merely four months after its multi-platform launch. The devilish loot RPG is headed to Valve’s game storefront on October 17, keeping with creator Blizzard’s promise to bring more of its PC catalogue to the commonly preferred choice of platform. You see, all PC games from Blizzard are restricted to its proprietary Battle.net launcher, making it a nuisance for players to jump between and log into different accounts. It’s a hot topic among the community, who’d much rather have their entire library on Steam, for easy access. The free-to-play shooter Overwatch 2 was the first to break this tradition in August, albeit that ended poorly.

The Steam version is now available for wishlisting, and owners will be required to link/ connect Diablo 4 to a Battle.net account, enabling cross-platform play and cross-progression. That said, the game can be launched natively and there’s no need for you to keep Blizzard’s app installed on your PC. The arrival also brings the niceties of unlockable achievements, alongside smooth access to the Steam friend list, so you can invite others for co-op demon-killing sessions. For now, there is no word on whether existing owners of the game will be getting a discount on their Steam purchase, but the store page listing does feature three editions — Standard, Deluxe, and Ultimate — same as the initial launch. During the developer update live stream, held late Wednesday, the team noted that the dungeon-crawler is playable on the Steam Deck, though they never went into the specifics of graphical settings.

Diablo 4’s arrival on Steam coincides with the upcoming season 2 content, titled ‘Season of Blood,’ granting you vampiric powers to storm through the lands of Sanctuary. The update will introduce a new questline, pairing you with the crossbow-wielding vampire hunter Erys, voiced by Gemma Chan (The Eternals), as you investigate a string of bloodied murders and the Dark Master responsible for it. More importantly, players can access the season 2 content right after completing the Missing Pieces prologue quest, essentially skipping the campaign to fulfil their blood-sucking desires. The update also vastly improves the endgame progression by increasing XP gains after level 50, faster by up to 40 percent. Expect five new endgame bosses, a general balance of skills, and faster mounts for traversal.

As mentioned before, Overwatch 2 was the first Blizzard PC game to make a jump to Steam, with the publisher promising that it plans on bringing over more titles. The shooter’s arrival was instantly blasted with negative reviews, making it the worst-reviewed game on the platform. At the time of writing, it’s got an ‘Overwhelmingly Negative’ review score, due to players’ dissatisfaction with the battle pass system and the cancellation of its long-promised PvE mode. Diablo IV, on the other hand, was received well at launch but slowly fell off with season 1’s release that made the game incredibly unfun to grind. Hopefully, fate doesn’t repeat itself this time.

Diablo IV is headed to Steam on October 17. It is already available to play on PC via Battle.net, in addition to console through PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series S/X.

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Diablo IV Gets Hefty Pre-Season Patch, Upsetting the Community; Blizzard to Address Concerns in Live Stream

Diablo IV’s much-awaited season 1 update is almost upon us and ahead of that, Blizzard has rolled out a new patch for preparation. The hefty 8GB patch 1.1.0a brings a range of balance changes, fixes some bugs, and adds unique items, in addition to making permanent upgrades such as Altars of Lilith unlocks available account-wide when starting as a new character. For the uninitiated, ‘Season of the Malignant’ is set after the events of the main campaign, once you’ve defeated Lilith and unravelled the Tree of Whispers. Diablo 4 season 1 goes live tonight at 10:30pm IST in India/ July 20 at 10am PT in the US, across PC and consoles.

The Sorcerer class — spell-based — has been hit with the biggest nerf in Diablo IV season 1, with the Devouring Blaze ability’s bonus critical damage getting reduced from 10/20/30 percent to 7/14/21 percent. A unique characteristic of this ability is that the damage bonus is increased when enemies are immobilised, though it seems like Blizzard has delivered a blow to it as well. The damage numbers have now been reduced from 25/50/75 percent to 10/20/30 percent. Essentially, all classes have been nerfed, causing the Diablo IV community to be furious, one of whom expressed their frustration on the official subreddit, which at the time of writing stands at 23,600 upvotes. You can check out the entire list of Diablo IV’s latest patch notes on the official website.

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The new season was supposed to kickstart a side saga in Sanctuary — a plague that slowly spreads around, turning all living beings into bloodthirsty fiends. When the new content was announced, the developers claimed that by collecting Malignant Hearts from these beings, players would be able to create overpowered “stupid, new broken” builds that let them storm through the map, in a quest that serves the new character Cormand. However, every decision listed in the pre-season patch seems to slow down your character’s progression significantly. The Barbarian class’ Hamstring (bleed) skill now only slows down Healthy enemies, while the Necromancer’s Splintering Aspect Bone Shard damage has been reduced from the original 50–100 percent to 30–60 percent.

“We have observed that the experience bonus rewarded for killing higher level monsters escalates too fast when compared to the relative challenge involved,” a developer note from the patch note reads, essentially slowing down the progression system. During pre-season, besting a monster that’s one level higher grants a +15 percent bonus, going up to +25 percent upon killing enemies that are three levels or more above you. For those playing Diablo 4 on Nightmare difficulty (World Tier III), Helltide events have been made slower, starting with an increase in monster difficulty. The spawning demons would now be three levels higher than your character instead of two, while the Tortured Gift of Mysteries chest’s cost has increased from 175 to 250 Aberrant Cinders. In a hotfix, the studio fixed the reduced drop rate of Abberant Cinders in Helltide, which it claims was originally ‘lower than intended.’

Seeing the community backlash, Blizzard has decided to address it all in a Campfire Chat live stream session, set for Friday, July 21 at 11:30pm IST/ 11am PT in the US. The session will be streamed on the official Diablo YouTube channel, though I wouldn’t expect to see any immediate changes to the new features that make Diablo IV gameplay a ‘slog.’ Elsewhere, Adam Fletcher, community director, confirmed that Blizzard will be removing the level requirement for World Tier 3 (40) and World Tier 4 (60) that were introduced in the pre-season patch.

Diablo IV is out on PC (via Battle.net), PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series S/X.

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Diablo IV Open Beta Begins in March, Blizzard Confirms: Details

Diablo IV is getting a pair of beta test sessions next month. As per developer Blizzard, those who pre-ordered the title gain early access from March 17–19, granting a deeper look into the early game, which includes the Prologue and Act 1. In the following week, from March 24–26, all players can participate in the open beta period and experience the might of the Burning Hells, albeit levelling will be capped off at 25. The upcoming Diablo 4 also bears a battle pass system focused on cosmetics and is slated to release June 6 on PC and consoles.

Both beta periods will offer a first taste of the Diablo IV campaign, as players will get to explore the snowy tundras of the Fractured Peaks and face numerous demons prowling in the dark. While there is no specific mention of how long this region will take to clear, Blizzard claims that Act 1 content will be present in its entirety. Though, since it’s a beta, better expect minor performance issues and outages. All feedback collected from the open beta periods will be evaluated to make final tweaks for when the game launches. During IGN’s Fan Fest event, the studio also dropped a cinematic that served as a peek into the secluded, icy ranges, on which a custom-created weary traveller stumbles onto a mysterious, bloodthirsty foe. Blizzard also iterated that any progress made during the beta will not be carried over to the full purchase.

According to IGN, any custom character you create will be featured in multiple cinematics in exact likeness, depending on what cosmetics and appearance you set in the character creator screen. As stated before, Diablo 4 includes a battle pass system, covering a variety of clothing choices, tattoos, weapons, hairstyles, and emotes. However, it is divided into two parts: Free and Premium. The former is open to all and provides gameplay boosts to all players, depending on what challenges you complete. The Premium version costs $10 (about Rs. 827) worth of in-game currency and is solely focused on aesthetics. That said, Blizzard hasn’t revealed if one could use any gameplay-unlocked currency to purchase further versions of the battle pass.

These items can be unlocked within three months since they first show up on the battle pass, after which Diablo IV begins its new season. This implies that each season will run for three months — a fairly common practice. The latest instalment in the Diablo franchise also adds a new Necromancer class, wherein players can summon and command corpses to perform evil deeds on its vast, semi-open-world map and face demons such as Lilith, the Queen of the Succubi.

Diablo IV releases June 6 on PC (via Battle.net), PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series S/X. The beta will be accessible across all platforms.

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Diablo Immortal Released on Android, iOS Before Official Launch Date; PC Beta Still on Its Way

Diablo Immortal is a massively multiplayer action roleplaying game (MMOARPG) that was released for Android and iOS on Wednesday, a day before its official release date. Blizzard has teamed up with Chinese developer NetEase to bring the latest addition to the Diablo series. General Manager of the Diablo franchise at Blizzard, Rod Fergusson, confirmed the early release stating that it was done to “give time to propagate through all the global stores.” The PC beta will arrive as announced on Thursday, June 2 at 10am PST / 10:30pm IST.

Diablo Immortal is a free-to-play MMOARPG with Player vs Enemy (PvE) and Player vs Player (PvP) modes. The game reportedly leans heavily towards the pay-to-win meta as such its release has been supposedly blocked in Belgium and the Netherlands. Both of these countries have strict laws against loot box mechanics in games. On the other hand, Diablo fans should breathe a sigh of relief as the PvE segment of the game is not restricted by a microtransaction wall. However, the PvP modes promote players to spend money to gain an in-game advantage against opponents.

Blizzard has included six character classes in the game — Barbarian, Crusader, Demon Hunter, Monk, Necromancer, and Wizard who have their unique sets of armours, weapons, and skills. During this adventure that is spread across eight zones, players take on The Skeleton King, Haunted Carriage, Countess, Fahir, Baal, and Glacial Colossus. There are challenges and live events as well. Blizzard has also promised free content updates every month. Diablo Immortal also features in-depth graphics settings that are usually not available in games intended for handheld devices. Apart from limiting the framerate, players can adjust, fog anti-aliasing, bloom and many more settings to get the best performance out of their devices.

Diablo Immortal is available to download on Google Play and App Store. The PC beta will arrive on Thursday, June 2 at 10am PST / 10:30pm IST. However, the Asia-Pacific region will not get the PC version until June 22.

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