The long awaited Diablo IV beta is here
By Josh Foreman
Lilith, Mother of Sanctuary and the main antagonist of act I, Taken from Blizzard.com
It’s been three years since the Blizzard Entertainment studio announced “Diablo IV”. Between the remaster of “Diablo II” and the release of the mobile port for “Diablo Immortal,” Blizzard (the creator of “Diablo”) has had a lot on its plate; luckily for fans, they rarely disappoint.
The playable regions alone already have all other “Diablo” titles beaten. Five regions spanning the entirety of Sanctuary allow for future story-building, side quests and new world events for players all around the region to take part in together. This map is massive, and the shelf life of this game won’t be anything to scoff at. Players can take part in group events, conquering waves of enemies and slaying high-level bosses for unique loot and important materials. As long as updates continue for as long as they have in past games, players will have new and interesting content for years to come.
In addition to the new world events, the map features side quests and small, random events meant to give players something to do while traveling to main quests. With the massive boundaries of the map, players would have a lot of downtime if it weren’t for the carefully placed dungeons, wave-clearing objectives and hordes of enemies waiting around every corner. These miniature objectives give players something to do in their downtime
Rather than the beta giving players access to the entire game at once, Blizzard has limited them to the first act of the story and the character levels to 25. Upon the full release, levels will continue up to 100, giving players plenty of skill points for the brand new skill tree system. For each of the first 100 levels, players are awarded skill points to spend on a progression system centered around some of the most memorable abilities from past “Diablo” games. Players can then assign each active skill to any key or button they want, creating a mix-and-match experience for individualized player builds. Area-of-effect, thorns and damage-over-time builds are just a few of the many options players have already started experimenting with – and that’s just one class of opportunities.
“Diablo IV” features classes from the previous games, continuing to build on their skill trees while still holding continuity with certain aspects of the classes’ playstyles of the past. So far, players have seen the barbarian, sorceress, druid, rogue and necromancer classes. The barbarian is a heavy-hitting damage class, the rogue and sorceress are resource-dependent “glass cannon” types and the druid and necromancer are summon-based, raising the dead and attacking with pets. Games that heavily rely on team composition add a certain aspect to teamwork that many other games don’t often have. “Diablo IV” got an edge on their competition by giving players an edge on the demons.
The last major addition to the game that we know about are mounts. Aside from the crusader’s Steed Charge ability from “Diablo III,” this is the first time that rideable mounts have been featured in the franchise. Not much is known about mounts yet because they aren’t available in the beta, but players get the quest to unlock them right around level fifteen, despite the quest being out of bounds. Players speculate horses are the main type of mount while other beasts are also possibilities – some maybe even capable of flight. Mounts will give players the tools they need to traverse the enormous map both quickly and in style.
Overall, this game has an extremely promising future. Bountiful opportunities and hundreds of hours of demon-slaying brutality await us as we anticipate the full release. Lead the way to glory!