In the current Season 15 of Diablo 4, many players feel nostalgic again and are reminded of the earlier Diablo titles by the content. Of course, Diablo 2 is also back in the conversation, especially with an eye on the upcoming Diablo 5 – something that MeinMMO editor Benedict Grothaus can understand, but only to a limited extent.
That Blizzard is finally bringing Diablo into the game with Season 15 and also introducing Baal and (another version of) Mephisto along with it is clearly an invitation for all veterans to check back in.
In the community, and especially on Reddit, you consistently hear how much players are enjoying the new content and feeling reminiscent of Diablo 2. Sure, that was somehow the goal.
What annoys me about the whole thing is the demand that the Diablo series should return to being more like Diablo 2. Sure, the game was phenomenal back then, but none of you can seriously wish for everything to be like it was. The current nostalgia works because the significantly polished Diablo 4 serves as the foundation for the gameplay.
Even during the development of Diablo 4, there was a discussion about the game needing to take cues from the older titles. The same demands have now resurfaced for Diablo 5. Only the predecessors had their own problems that many seem to forget today.
Diablo 2 was not the holy grail many think it was
In all this nostalgia, many fans seem to forget that Diablo 2 was far from perfect back then. Two aspects come to mind that would be completely torn apart today if Blizzard were to repeat them:
- the endgame and the way the grind works
- and above all, the technical problems and bugs.
If you don’t (any longer) remember how things were back then, let me jog your memory a bit. Diablo 2 had no real endgame. There was only the campaign, and here only a limited amount of difficulties: Normal, Nightmare, and Hell.
The endgame then consisted of farming the bosses, over and over and over again. Baal and Uber-Diablo were pretty much the only runs that promised decent loot, and at times players would run the same routes for several hours every night.
On the technical side, it was even worse. Due to bugs, there were severe exploits for many months that severely damaged the game’s economy. Blizzard even had to introduce an item just to regain some control, but with limited success.
Today, such circumstances would be grounds for outcry, boycott, and pitchforks. Back then, those were problems that people turned a blind eye to – not just in Diablo. Games were often buggy back then, but it hardly bothered anyone; people just played. The exchange about it was simply less.
Diablo 4 does (almost) everything right, but that’s not true for everyone
I don’t want to speak badly of Diablo 2. It was a good game, but it wasn’t so “perfect” as it is often viewed through rose-colored glasses. Why do I mention this? Because this perspective causes Diablo 4 to be compared to a game that never actually existed. Such expectations cannot be met, and they make the current installment of the series look worse than it really is.
Apart from obvious missteps like the limit on crafted Mythics or hiding loot in activities that hardly anyone wants to participate in, Blizzard has hit precisely what makes Diablo so enjoyable and entertaining with Diablo 4.
Despite earlier criticism of the endgame, there is at least now a wide variety of content that you can either do exclusively or in alternation to improve your character. The “ideal” route still requires completing activities you may not enjoy, but if you don’t want to do that, you can find just about everything everywhere. It just takes longer – no significant difference from Baal runs.
While this is all my personal opinion, it seems many other players share a similar view. After all, Diablo 4 set a new record on Steam with Lord of Hatred, and here you would expect a rather smaller segment of the player base. The game was released on Steam later and had previously only been playable via Battle.net and consoles.
A Diablo 5 that’s like Diablo 2 – Would that be bad?
No, not necessarily. Diablo 2 was certainly not awful; it is regarded as a milestone, and rightly so. Blizzard’s action RPG revolutionized loot for all video games. It is simply a “different” game than what you know from Diablo today:
- The entire loot system in Diablo 2 functioned differently; there were no class-bound loot, items could roll anything.
- Correspondingly, the grind behaved differently; instead of farming for specific items and item types, there were (the same) boss runs for the best loot pool in the game.
- In the endgame, different activities were not necessary, for which you sometimes had to earn access; there were just optimized farm routes.
Whether a such Diablo today would be better or worse is something everyone must decide for themselves. However, Diablo 5 would have significantly more competition if it were to take cues from the very old systems. Alone Diablo 2: Resurrected, but also Path of Exile attract exactly the players looking for such features.
Since Diablo 3, however, the series has been more geared towards casuals and is functioning brilliantly as a result. I would even go so far as to say that Lord of Hatred has the best campaign that Diablo has ever had, especially considering that the technical and graphical implementation meets much higher standards than back then.
Diablo 5 is not expected until 2029, and Diablo 4 will not receive any further expansions until then. Blizzard has emphasized that they want to listen to player feedback during development, but in the community, there are already discussions about whether that is really a good idea. I say: conditionally. The feel of Diablo 2 would be great. Its features certainly not.
The discussion about which Diablo is the best and how the series should continue is always immense and shows how passionate the community of the game is – also a certain achievement. However, this often leads to conflicts between players: Diablo 5 divides the community, players swing between joy and frustration
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