Diablo 4 has introduced Season 8 along with a series of free updates that will gradually build toward the game's second expansion, scheduled to release sometime in 2026.
However, not everything is going smoothly within Diablo 4's dedicated core community. This player base is eager for substantial new features, gameplay reworks, and fresh ways to engage with the nearly two-year-old title — and they haven't been shy about letting Blizzard know how they feel. Of course, Diablo 4's audience extends beyond its hardcore fans, including many casual players who simply enjoy slaying monsters without overthinking the mechanics. Yet the heart of the community consists of longtime veterans who play week after week, analyze meta builds, and expect Blizzard to deliver deeper, more engaging content.
Given these expectations, it's not entirely surprising that Diablo 4's recently unveiled 2025 roadmap — the first of its kind for the game — has faced some backlash. After the roadmap’s release, many in the community raised concerns about what lies ahead in 2025, including Season 8, and questioned whether the upcoming content will be enough to keep them engaged over the long term.
The online discussion intensified to the point where a Diablo community manager stepped into the main thread on the Diablo 4 subreddit to address player concerns: “We included fewer details for the later parts of the roadmap to allow flexibility for features the team is still developing,” they explained. “This isn't everything coming in 2025 :)” Even Mike Ybarra, former president of Blizzard Entertainment and a corporate executive at its parent company, Microsoft, joined the conversation with his own perspective.
Season 8 launches amid this ongoing debate, as well as several controversial changes of its own. A major shift involves Diablo 4’s battle pass, which has been adjusted to align more closely with Call of Duty’s model, letting players unlock items non-linearly. However, the updated battle pass now rewards less in-game currency than before, meaning players will have fewer funds to put toward future battle passes.
In this extensive IGN interview, Diablo 4 lead live game designer Colin Finer and lead seasons designer Deric Nunez address the community’s reaction to the roadmap, confirm upcoming plans to update Diablo 4's skill tree — a highly requested feature — and break down the reasoning behind the battle pass adjustments.
