“As much as we can, we’re trying to chase a more open ended design in a way where the players can choose how they want to get to their destinations,” Jackson says. “When it comes to sets [...] we give you an endpoint, but then there’s only one road to get there, which is to acquire these two or three or six very specific items. And our north star in Diablo 4 is that we don’t want to be that prescriptive
Diablo IV Items.”
All of which raises the question of Runewords, the extremely powerful and flexible gear customization system from Diablo 2 that would seem to fit right in with the Diablo 4 team’s design goals. When I mentioned them, Jackson laughed coyly.
“We like Runewords,” he said. “They’re very cool. We don’t have anything to announce as far as if they’re gonna be in the game in the immediate future. We do think they’re still a really cool idea.
“And that’s all I’m gonna say right now,” he added, pointedly.
Diablo 4 will be released on June 6 for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X. Without Runewords — for now.
Something to note is developer Blizzard said players can expect “lengthy queue times,” particularly on the first day of the open beta launching.
As frustrating as this might sound, this is the cut and thrust of beta tests. For the developers, having a huge influx of players allows them to stress test servers, in all aid of seeing the full launch go a little more smoothly. As part of that
buy Diablo 4 Gold, Blizzard said it may “take the game offline temporarily to deploy infrastructure adjustments or fixes” as the weekend goes on.
