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Starym

Leaks Before the Diablo 4 Announcement: Amazon, Paladin and Release Date?

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Some 4 months ago there was a leak over on reddit detailing a lot of the announced features for Diablo 4, and we thought we'd take a look at what exactly the leak got right and not, so we can decide if the part about the other two classes being Amazon and Paladin, as well as the planned beta and release dates are correct.

First off, it was u/Gorelight that came out with the information, as he was apparently one of the first to see the game behind closed doors and that's about all we got in terms of credentials. As far as his info goes, a lot of it was confirmed on November 1st at BlizzCon and some of it turned out wrong but still plausible. The first big piece of info that we're interested in even after the announcements is the fact that the remaining two classes will be the Amazon and Paladin, meaning it's a full Diablo 2 roster minus the Assasin and Necromancer. The other big info remaining from the leak is the timing of the beta and game release, placing the beta in 2020 and the release in 2020-2021, but since that's very susceptible to change, the time frame mentioned is less relevant.

While obviously none of this is definitive or confirmed, we're going to go through his leaks individually and see just how correct they were. Let's start by separating the bullet points from the original post/leak into groups (and obviously there's discussion to be had where which one should be placed, this is just our thoughts on it).

Confirmed

  • Official Title - Diablo IV (No sub title)

  • Camera View and Genre - Isometric MMOARPG

  • No Load Times (except loading in the game for the first time or logging in and out)

  • Made for consoles in mind from the get go

  • Blizzard will be treating Diablo IV as a reboot of the franchise. Those who wanted a Diablo II Remake and a brand new Diablo game will be pleased. Basically, it's a combination of both made for the modern era. Best way to think of this is the latest God of War that was released in April for the PlayStation 4 in 2018.

  • The demo we've seen lasted about 20 to 30 minutes. I am not sure if this is the same demo they will be using for Blizzcon later this year or if they have a new one in the works specifically created for the fans and press too see.

  • The demo showcased core elements of Diablo IV such as the Loot, Barbarian Class (a bit of Druid as well), Combat and the most interesting (in my opinion) how it all comes together as an isometric MMO and blends in with a brand new eco-system and creates a next-generation Diablo experience

  • The world of Sanctuary is MUCH MUCH MUCH larger than before due to the game going the MMO route. The space is necessary to accommodate the players.

  • The class that was showcased in great detail to the employees was a Barbarian- signature moves such as whirlwind return and many other favorite skills. Druid was also part of the demo, but for extremely short time and only used as an example for their new combo combat system.

  • The demo showed how a druid player can use the combo system. In the clip the player was able to morph into different animal forms (including wolf and bear) during mid-combat flawlessly without any weird transitions or awkward attack animations using different sets of moves and skills from each of the forms in a matter of seconds. It looked very impressive.

  • Crafting will return in Diablo IV and will be a very important system and part of the entire game and its economy. If you enjoy crafting in MMOs or in games in general then you are in for a treat according to Blizzard.
     

Technically correct but very generic and easily guessable

  • New sophisticated Engine with a ton of improvements over Diablo III and new functionalities for new gameplay systems and visual design
  • Art Style is VERY dark, gory/bloody and gritty - think Diablo II days mixed with Dark Souls and Bloodborne but much more modernized obviously. The new engine is able to create atmospheric visuals and dark tones that immerse the players. Picture the world of Sanctuary as if it was in the Dark Souls or Bloodborne universe. Super dark and gothic.
  • Music is going to harken back to Diablo I and Diablo II. It will feel very very familiar to the old-school Diablo fans but also have it's own unique twist to it and sound that is catered specifically to Diablo IV
     

Not confirmed but probable

  • Blizzard are happy with the many systems and improvements they've made over the course of Diablo III: Reaper of Souls such as the Kunai Cube, Wardrobe loadouts, Seasonal Journeys, Rifts/G-Rifts and so on.
  • Diablo II Remake/Remaster was planned, but they later realized that it would be much better to give the franchise a complete reset and put majority of the fans requests into 1 giant package.
  • You can trade items in the game with other players such as gold, basic crafting materials (special crafting materials are soulbound and cannot be sold) and any kind of loot ranging from grey quality and all the way up to rare yellows. Blizzard is not sure yet what to do with Legendary items/weapons yet and if they should be tradeable or not as far as the game's economy goes due to competitive fairness and end-game systems that have a lot of functionalities with the legendary loot.

Vague and pretty obvious

  • Blizzard learned a lot from their Diablo III and Reaper of Souls mistakes/lessons and used the feedback to create and design new and improved systems for Diablo IV
  • Blizzard is well aware of games such as Path of Exile, Grim Dawn and Wolcen and their current skill systems. As a matter of fact, they have a whole special team dedicated to playing those games extensively for research and game development purposes. Blizzard are creating something new unique of their own for Diablo IV as far as character progression goes and yes stat allocations are back as well.
     

Wasn't at BlizzCon but possible

  • Tristram will be one of the Hub cities in the game. (This was one the one we saw in the demo) Blizzard has stated there are more hub-cities, but did not show or told us what they are.
  • A server will hold around 100 or so people at a time as of now.
     

Incorrect but very possible it was changed before the BlizzCon demo/wasn't ready to be shown

  • Combat system will have combos. You will be able to use a combination of skills in succession to do more damage or create larger area of effect attacks. As a Barbarian you can chain pull into an enemy and then jump over them and then you have a choice of either throwing them into another demon or grabbing them and then pummeling them into the ground with your bare hands or simply stunning the target and then use an execution move to chop their head off. You can ONLY do execution moves when the enemy is near death.
  • The combo system was created to evolve combat for the Diablo franchise. Blizzard wanted to make sure that if they're going dark and gritty, the combat had to be dark and gritty as well.
  • No word on PvP yet or anything of that sort. However, Blizzard did say that since they're going the MMO route, the PvP factor is kind of important to a lot of players. Although, right now they're strongly focusing on creating a fantastic PvE Diablo experience. They do not want to promise anything in regards to PvP ever since with what happened to PvP in Diablo III only to later disappoint the fans. PvP is something that will be looked at in the future once the game is in a stable place and the playerbase is happy.
  • Diablo IV will be the new era for Diablo and will be a game as a service. New free content patches will come out that will add quality of life changes, new additions, items and so on. Paid expansions are also possible, but right now its still undecided and Blizzard won't know until the game is launched and until they see if its successful or not. They do not want to announce anything that's regarding to paid content until they are 100% sure of their plans and what they will be adding next post-launch.
     

And finally, the big ones which we're all very interested in but have no idea if they're real or not:

  • Paladin, Barbarian, Sorcerer, Amazon and Druid are planned for launch with more coming later. Blizzard wants people to feel like this is Diablo II all over again but in a completely new era of the franchise. Blizzard were also debating whether to include the Druid or Necromancer class at launch of Diablo IV. Blizzard decided put the Druid for launch of Diablo IV and Necromancer for later, since the Necromancer was released already for Diablo III.
  • Right now the goal is to get the game ready playable demo for Blizzcon's 2019 and of course all the marketing material as well. After that, it will be preparing for the beta in 2020 and then the release.
  • Release is being debated between late 2020 or early 2021 depending on how things go, but as of now it seems early 2021 is more likely. Will be coming to PC PlayStation 5 and Project Scarlett.

 

And that's the complete overview of the leaks from 4 months ago. It's up to you to decide how much weight you want to put on them based on what was proven to be correct and not, but it seems the leaker may indeed have been legit. The various things he got wrong can be attributed to changes between then and BlizzCon or systems Blizzard weren't ready to announce this early, the only major discrepancy being the beta and release timings. Those are very flimsy, as the devs' "not even Blizzard soon" comments seem to indicate it taking significantly longer than 1-2 years for release (hell, that's even faster than Blizzard soon). On the other hand, they could have been managing expectations and the leaked dates are still their target, but we won't know more about that for a while still. As for the Amazon and Paladin, they seem a little on the nose, to go with the entire D4 roster ported over from D2, but again, the leaks seem solid and it might be something Blizzard decide to go for.

So what do you think? Is the leak credible considering all the info we now know? Could we really see Diablo 4 in as little as a year, with an Amazon and Paladin class in tow?

 

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Aside from scummy microtransactions (also known as horse armor 2.0), I'm looking forward to the game

 

Hope the Amazon leak, is true. Javazon for life

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21 minutes ago, Hypersonic said:

Oh Assassin, I miss you. 

That would be my pick too. I didn't much like the demon hunter since it's a ranged only class, but loves assassin and the combo skills.

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1 hour ago, Starym said:

That would be my pick too. I didn't much like the demon hunter since it's a ranged only class, but loves assassin and the combo skills.

Amazon fits the mold too, although it would have been the only class without gender selection. However, if they are going full "Diablo 2-like", any of these is possible for an expansion.

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Not very surprising if Amazon or Paladin comes back. Though I wouldn't mind having Monk or Assassin, especially considering they might do well with the new combat system they are implementing.

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7 hours ago, Dejo93 said:

Aside from scummy microtransactions (also known as horse armor 2.0), I'm looking forward to the game

 

Hope the Amazon leak, is true. Javazon for life

There won't be an Amazon in D4 as all character will have a Male/female version and there's no Male amazon..all amazons are females..Most likely we're going to have the Hunter in her place..

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30 minutes ago, pepe1 said:

There won't be an Amazon in D4 as all character will have a Male/female version and there's no Male amazon..all amazons are females..Most likely we're going to have the Hunter in her place..

Are all amazons females in the Diablo setting?

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I hope the druid will be able to have a pack of beasts rolling with him like in D2, that was super fun. I didn't care if it was optimal or not but I loved charging into battle as a giant werebear with my pack of wolves, sage spirit, and crazy tunneling vines. Truly felt like this sweeping force of nature come to cleanse the land. It was awesome! I wasn't a fan of how they handled summoning in D3 where it was more primarily cooldown orientated.

Assassin returning would be neat if only just to fill that ninja craving so many people possess ?

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10 hours ago, TyZone said:

It was awesome! I wasn't a fan of how they handled summoning in D3 where it was more primarily cooldown orientated.

In a sense I can understand why because of how they backed themselves into a corner with summoning, but some spells (like skeletal mage) were up only for a few seconds or so which was rather disappointing. Much like yourself where you enjoyed packs of wolves, I enjoyed having an undead army comprised of warriors, mages, and a few golems here and there! But that fantasy is pretty tedious and rather annoying in D3. Hopefully with the new skill system and the talent tree they won't limit the design on these classes.

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20 hours ago, Rhondis said:

In a sense I can understand why because of how they backed themselves into a corner with summoning, but some spells (like skeletal mage) were up only for a few seconds or so which was rather disappointing. Much like yourself where you enjoyed packs of wolves, I enjoyed having an undead army comprised of warriors, mages, and a few golems here and there! But that fantasy is pretty tedious and rather annoying in D3. Hopefully with the new skill system and the talent tree they won't limit the design on these classes.

Oh hell yeah, I remember trying to find the right tomb at the end of Act II, running under the hot scorched sun with my swarm of clattering skeletons and cracking sun-dried golem ?

I was also disappointed with the Necro's skills in D3.

In one of the earlier clips for D4 it looked like the werebear was a short duration lunge style cooldown, so I'm crossing my fingers we get some permanent stuff. But I'm thinking they're going the cooldown way to support everyone's console and PC rigs. *shrugs*

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21 minutes ago, TyZone said:

In one of the earlier clips for D4 it looked like the werebear was a short duration lunge style cooldown, so I'm crossing my fingers we get some permanent stuff. But I'm thinking they're going the cooldown way to support everyone's console and PC rigs. *shrugs*

Yea, might be the case. You ever heard of MrLlamaSc? He's an avid D2 speed runner who created some videos for feedback on D4. He's thinks that they shouldn't go deep into cooldown territory in this installment because it just feels like you are hitting buttons for the sake of hitting them to get them on cooldown. 

22 minutes ago, TyZone said:

I was also disappointed with the Necro's skills in D3.

Some of the skills weren't too bad, I actually thought they did a fantastic job of the bone/curse spells the Necro had. I think if the Necro was implemented again, that it would be really sick to have bone spear, bone spikes, or bone lance in the game. Imagine how gorey it would look to have bones ripping out of corpses and piercing demons, or having a bone spear leave a massive hole in a demon as it passes through. With the grim and gorey setting they are achieving Necro would be pretty gruesome!

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