I sure hope you’re ready for a huge influx of Diablo IV info because Blizzard absolutely dumped a ton of previews and details for Vessel of Hatred ahead of next week’s launch.
For starters, Blizzard released a massive preview with the launch schedule and campaign plan. We’ve been saying the game will launch on October 8th, but here in the Americas, it’s actually October 7th at 7 p.m. EDT. That’s noon in New Zealand on the 8th, so organize your gametime accordingly. Preloading is already live through Battlenet as we type this.
Last night, the studio also posted a full preview of the cheerfully named Season of Hatred, which launches alongside the expansion.
The patch notes are up too. And then we’ve got the new videos: the new cinematic as well as the dev diary on the planned progression changes – including the tweaks for levels, paragon points, torment difficulty, and glyph upgrades.
“Our original vision for character progression was that you would have a grand journey traversing through World Tiers and swapping out gear, gaining incremental strength through the Paragon system,” Blizzard says. “While that is fun the first time, on repeated play throughs, World Tier III and Sacred items can add a lot of stat bloat that takes away from the experience. Since launch we’ve added endgame features like Infernal Hordes and The Pit of the Artificer. Vessel of Hatred will expand the endgame line up even further, adding Dark Citadel and Undercity to the mix. Our hope is that these new systemic changes allow for new characters to reach the endgame faster through an enriched leveling system.”
