Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast - Diablo IV Spiritborn Rod Fergusson Interview - Kinda Funny Gamescast

Episode Date: July 18, 2024

The general manager of Diablo is in the building to talk about Diablo IV's new class: Spiritborn! Run of Show - - Start - Housekeeping - Rod Fergusson Interview - Ads - The New Spiritborn Class, Greg’s Hands-On Thoughts, & Vessel of Hatred Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What's up everybody? Welcome to the kind of funny games cast for Thursday, July 18th, 2024. I'm one of your host, Greg Miller, alongside two amazing guests. First, from purediablo.com. The Diablo podcast, it's ZANF. Well, hello, everybody. I can actually see myself now and you're looking good. You're welcome.

When we were doing the reaction stream, people were on, what is your shirt? So this is just, it's the Wu-Tang logo. but it says with Skalson. One of my old rugby teammates had a company and made some shirts and it looks good. Zanth, of course, you're here because you know everything about Diablo. You're here because when I was so obsessed with Diablo before it came out, I, the person who makes video game podcasts,

needed podcasts about Diablo, and I found the Diablo podcast. So thank you for making that show. I listen to it regularly, and I love it. Wow. If you have not seen, Greg has actually been on my podcast. It's true. And it was an amazing experience. Right. For me. For all of us. And he was so complimentary. And like he's starting out. He's being so nice. He's complimenting me. He's bumping me up. And I sincerely appreciate it. Because this is surreal. This is Rod. It's Rod. It's everybody. General manager of all things Diablo. Hello Rod. Hey, how's it going? I don't know if I going to match your energy today, but I will attend to it. You're already doing it. I'm already doing it.

And look at your shirt, so spirit-borne. I mean, yeah, I thought I brought Naha-2 to life today with the Spirit-Bor and the jungle. I mean, if you're going to do it, do it real. Congratulations. Of course, we're coming off the Live Reacts to the Spirit-Born reveal. It just went over. We just watched an hour of it. Great presentation. Team was great. Thank you. Yeah. No. I mean, I tried to convince Adam not to do live. Like, like, he'll tell you. I, like, I think, three times I ran up that hill going like, dude, live is hard. You know live is hard because we do live all the time for campfires,

but I'm like, you got the big set, you're at Xbox Studio, like, just film it. And he was like, no, we need to do it live. I want that energy and want to be able to react to the questions. And so three times I said, don't do it, do it, record it. And he was like, no. And it turned out great. They made the right choice. Well, we have a lot of questions for you about Spiritborn, about Diablo four, about everything Diablo, so we want to get to that.

But first, I'll remind everybody that this is the kind of funny games cast. I'm sure a lot of you came over from the reveal stream. Thank you so much for the shout-out on it. Of course, we do the games cast each and every weekday live on YouTube.com slash kind of funny games and Twitch.com. slash kind of funny games. If you love what we do, of course, get the kind of funny membership on patreon.com slash kind of funny games or YouTube.com slash kind of funny games.

Of course, you would get all of our shows ad-free, the ability to watch the afternoon podcast, live as we record them, and you get the daily multimedia experience known as Greg Way. Today, if you're watching live, you can go to the YouTube.com slash kind of funny games. Super chat, super chat there with any amount, and you can get your questions read here. We'll talk to Rod. We'll put them under the old heat lamp, the interrogation. I could use some color.

Tell us everything. I know, you're one of the video game developers hunched in your darker them all the time. Like I said, we just did our live reacts to the stream. If you want to go watch that, Joey was on it with us. After this, we're going to go stream Diablo 4 with Rod Ferguson. I'm very excited. We're going to try to get you another trophy.

Ladies and gentlemen, there was a chat that went by earlier, and it was I-Rokster. who said, are they going to stream the new Diablo character after this? And I Rockster, the answer is no. Other outlets probably would have done that, but I'm Greg Miller. And I'm six trophies short of my Diablo Platinum. So these gentlemen are going to pull my level 10 hardcore character to 50.

Pop that. And then basically hit a level 100, take down Uber Lilith. It's done. It's done. We're over. We're out of it. Easy peasy. Yeah.

Have you killed five people yet? No, but that's easy. I mean, you want to do that today, too? We can do that thing. You know what I mean? That's easy. Not in hardcore, though. Not in hardcore.

No, no, not in hardcore. We can scam that. That's easy. We'll figure it out. Like I said, that's after this. And then, of course, thank you to our Patreon producers for making our dreams of reality. Carl Jacobs and Delaney Twining. Today's Gregway is going to be all about how this Diablo stuff came together.

And today we're brought to you by Harry's and the Portillo merch line. But we'll tell you about that later. For now, let's start with topic of the show. Tats, Tots, Tots, Tats, Tats. He listens to the show, everybody. Zayin actually listens to the show. For the past three weeks, I've been just getting giddy to do tots. Yeah, I'll listen to the car.

I've been practicing. And I'm like, it's going to happen. I'm going to get to do it. A lot of other shows, they want to do it. Right. They'd say, oh, we got a guest of the caliber of Rod. Let's not do the bits. And I say, no, we still do the bits.

We still do what this all is. Rod Ferguson. Yes. Spirit-born, finally revealed. Yes. Is that a weight? off your shoulders or are you still so in the middle of a marathon?

You still have two months still vessel of hatred. We still don't even really know that much outside of the character of what vessel of hatred is. I was talking about this in the stream. We just did an hour long stream about just the class. Not about the world, not about the map, not about the side quest, not about the activities, nothing like that. Yeah, I mean, we have lots more to come.

I mean, it's a journey. We're not at the destination yet and, you know, that journey, that destination is October 8th when it comes out. But, you know, as we talked about, Adam talked about sending people to Gamescom. We're going to do hands-on with Spiritborn. Zath wants to go. Can you rig the contest so he wins?

He'd really like to go. If I did win, it would be back. I'm not going to enter just due to internet speculation. But we have lots more to reveal. That's the cool thing about doing something the size of an expansion. It's not just one thing. And so it's more than, you know, the Nairal story. It's more than the Spiritborn class.

We've got lots more things to talk about. We've alluded to the mercenaries. We'll go. really deep on that at Gamescom. There's the sort of co-op end game mode. That's going to be something we're going to talk about more later. So there's lots of, so today is Spiritborn Day,

but we have lots to talk about moving forward. You know, I referenced it being a marathon right now until October 8th. Yeah. However, of course, it's been a marathon since launch, maybe even beyond that. And I thought there was an interesting question that went by when we were live wrapping up the Spiritborn stream. And it came from Duba,

22, who in the chat said, I hope this is a banger of an expansion. Diablo has gained so much momentum back. Is that accurate, do you feel? Like, when you look at what you guys have done in your timeline here, this really, you know, this launch that was so well received, right? And then you're a game's of service.

You go on and it is people, I don't like this season, I don't like this change. What about this? Why'd they do that? How do you look so far at the journey of Diablo for? Yeah, I mean, it's kind of what we've been, that momentum is what we've been trying to achieve. You know, when you go back and you look at the history, especially in terms of main game releases you go, oh, from D2 to D3 was 10 years.

Yeah. Right? So for your players, that's obviously a very long time. And then from D3 main game to D4 main game, 10 years. And so this notion of having decades between the sequels is, you know, sucks as a player. And so we don't want to keep doing that. And so that's the notion about us having this momentum around, having the live service that we can keep evolving over time, having expansions so we can keep people playing and introducing new

classes, all the way to. trying to make sure that we're not doing these sort of decade-long beats between games. And then I feel like that's one of the interesting things I've had conversations with both last week when I went down to actually play Spearborn Class. And then even here talking to PR, right, of this idea that like, man, season four is so good, Zanth. We're having such a good time. We're leveling, da-da-da. And there's been these actual conversations I've had of like, yeah, we know it is. A lot of that we were thinking about putting into Vessel of Hatred, but then we said, why wait? Is that like the mantra right now?

just make the game as good as you can in the moment you can. Oh, yeah, absolutely. I mean, seasons are usually like three months. I mean, season five will be shorter, but like that notion of how long do you have to wait to get this change in. But also that it takes time to make those changes. And that's some of the, you know, we get feedback all the time. Like, oh, season four was amazing.

You know, why didn't you launch like that? And we're like, well, we kind of learned, you know. First off, jerk. I just go like, look, you know, you learn as you go. That's the thing I really love about a live service is that it's evolving and getting better at each time, hopefully. And so the notion of like, you don't have a season four without a season one, two, and three. We had to learn the lessons of one, two, and three to get to four.

And that's what the nice thing about a live service, you go like, oh, I see what worked and what didn't work, and then we can kind of build on it. And so that's really how four became four. And, you know, it's just, we're trying to continue that momentum as we go. Now, like, season four was huge because it was loot 2.0. It was the, you know, we completely redid an entire system. Like, season five will be shorter. won't have that. We're doing the whole thing. But then season six brings with it the expansion.

I think people are going to be really excited about, you know, season five is going to be great. People are playing the PTR right now and having a good time playing with the hoard mode that we have introduced there. But I think when season six lands with the vessel of hatred and with the spirit board, I think people are going to be really excited. So you mentioned season four and Greg, you were talking about it. It is phenomenal. I'm having a great time. Oh, thanks. It's amazing how many hours I've put in already. Well, like, it's our biggest.

We've had over 300 million hours. Oh, there's your hand to you're not close enough to the mic. Hey, it was the one shot of you. Nobody saw it. It was perfect. It was perfect sleight of hand. I have a tendency to gesticulate and I don't want to like knock on it. You're not, you're doing, well, I'm making, you're turning the rods.

You're fine. Just ignore me. I'm not here. You have to rotate around the mics, Sam. I thought I had it. So, yeah. So, no, but I mean, that's one of the things that when we look at that the season four were the most successful for us, and one in terms of win back.

like then no season brought back as many players as season four did and then the amount of play that's happening with 300 million hours being played just in season four you know i have six level 100s in season four and all soft core mr hardcore zance but like yes dude's a psycho dude's a psycho i'm also old so the idea of losing all my progress and start again it doesn't work on an old person like me no have you even heard the full thing though did you tell you the full thing because he's talking to me about this before where he'll like kill them when the season's over he'll kill them oh you'll sacrifice it I don't want to be tempted.

It makes the season a lot easier to go back and do it. We were talking today about what to play because we're going to play for a couple hours afterwards. And we were like, oh, we can do this. And then Zanz just goes like, I don't have any softcore characters to play with you guys. And we're like, okay, humble brag. And then I'm like, well, I don't have any hardcore characters. I got my hardcore 50 in season one. And I was like, got that achievement, not trophy.

But I got that achievement. Their knockoffs. You know what I mean? Phil decided to copy trophies. a long time. You know, wait, blah,

blah, we're not going to get into it right now. We said we, the console wars would be laid aside. Sorry. Sorry.

Anyway, so I got that achievement and I was like, hardcore is watching the die and then come up with the character creates screen. It's like, no,

I don't have that, you know, that time to watch. It's a rush. Oh, no, I get the energy. Like,

to get to 50, I ran for my life a number of times. And so I get the energy. And so I'm looking forward to doing hardcore with hardcore and getting Greg his much needed

trophy. Thank you. So I'm looking forward to that. We'll get them. We'll get them. So you may mention of season four again to kind of bring it back up. There was a delay, right? How hard was that like to push the season a month?

Because I gained a lot of respect for you guys to say like, we can get this out, but it's not going to be as good. We want to take the time to do it right. Right. And that's why we have a truncated season five now. But like how hard was that to do? It's really hard. And it's hard to weather the time.

storm honestly because we know why we made that decision we know what we could or couldn't get done in time to be part of that season because the thing is that we have like season you know the way that we think about our developments we think about it as swim lanes and so there's these stacked swim lanes like oh we have a live team and we have the expansion team and we have the shop team and they're all and actually have multiple season teams who have to leapfrog each other and so as we're learning and trying to get changes in sometimes you go wow like you know you have a fixed period of time of development because your your season runs for three months and then there's the next one. And so knowing what we can push, saying like, hey, if we delay by a few weeks, we can get this thing that players are really going to love. But the moment you say, hey, we're pushing, a lot of people are like, what's going on? Like, this is too long and da-da-da-da.

And so the weathering the storm of like, we believe in our choices, but a lot of people don't understand why we're doing it, that's the hard part. It's like we can't necessarily be fully transparent on what's going on because, you know, it's a push. but I think at the end of the day the success of season four tells us we made the right call

and I think season five is a kind of a bridge into season six in the expansion I think is going to be great and you know the two months a lot of people as we watch the sort of participation in the season two months is actually a pretty decent amount of time for players especially with the how fast season four is now that you can get you know a hundred pretty quickly and so yeah I think I think it's going to work out

I think it'll work out and then when people go in season six, like I said, we've been talking about the expansion, but the fact that season six lands at the same time as the expansion, we haven't even really started talking about season six. And because there is going to be a season six that's going to have features that if you didn't buy the expansion, you're still going to get to go play a cool season. So there's, but we haven't, we're not talking about that yet. So there's still last, there's a PR person offstage, like, glaring at me. So no. But yeah, so that I think there's me, anyways, very long answer to a very,

could be short, which is, it's very hard to delay, but I think we made the right call. I think we're seeing it in season four. 100%. I think, and I think that's why you've seen this reaction to it. As someone who never left, right, who has been there and played at, started a character for every season and been through it,

it was shocking to me. I forget when season four launched what reviews I was on. And I was getting the people like, oh, man, are you back? Are you doing it? I'm like, no, are you back? You haven't played at all since lunch. Why are you telling me about it?

But it was that idea that season four was that good that it brought that many people back to it. Yeah, it was really kind of, we really landed into that philosophy of find the fun fast. You know, that was some of the things that I think that's part of the issue with a progression-based game is that, you know, you start small and you have to build up and build up and build up.

And so that idea of like, what does it feel like to be at level 80 when all the systems are firing, you know, then you go like, oh, this is amazing, but it took me, you know, tens of hours to get there. And now with season four, he had the Iron Wolves who were able to, you know, through the board give you a cool, unique.

I had a, it was really funny. I don't mind the story, but like, fired up season four. I'm in my office because it launched the, you know, on a weekday. So I'm in there. And my, Gavin Wishaw, who's our executive producer for D4,

he's next door. And I started yelling at him and I was, it was a joke. I was mocking, but I'm a necro main. I play necro all the time. But I was like, oh, Gavin, what's going on?

I have, you mean I have to explode my own corpses? now like I have to do my own corpse tendrils because there's a ring that would do that for you you but traditionally that ring falls at Varshan which is a level 75 boss and so you're like oh I have to play you know close to that 70 levels before I get this cool ring ability but then when you go to the iron wolves I was like level 40 the ring fell and I was like or I can get this ability right now and have a lot of fun right away and so that's the big thing about the philosophy of season four is getting to that build faster that you know a lot of times people's builds came online at level 80 and then you're like only have 20 levels left to enjoy it.

And now with season four, you can feel it before you've even left world tier two. And so it was amazing. Yeah, I think I knew season four was something special when you got my wife back. Because that was Jen's big problem. We played, you know, launch, we're babies asleep. We're downstairs. We're playing, we're playing, we're playing. And then as soon as season one dropped and I was like, all right, come on.

we've got a role new character. She was like, wait, what? No, I don't want to. Every time I've gone back for a season, I'll get her maybe for a night. She's like, no, I'm not going to do this. I'm not going to do this. But season four, when I went down there and re-rolled, it was like, she came with me and, oh, I'm way more competitive, way quicker. I'm back to this. Like, I found the fun faster. Yeah, and also is like, it's super straightforward now. Like, once you get that one character, watching people get, like, I've been

playing with my sons and my son would be like, oh, he's playing a druid, which you're happy about, but he would go like, oh, he's very fickle. He's like, he saw something cool he wants to play it. And so He was just like, hey, you're gonna hate me, but I really wanna start over as a rogue. And I'm like, oh, no, I don't hate you. That sounds cool. He goes like, can you help me? And I'm like, sure.

And then 45 minutes later, he's got a level 60 rogue. And you're like, no other season did we have that ability to be able to take an alt and have someone like help you get there quickly so that, like, again, finding the fun fast. And so that's, I only did that on my, like, I did that on my second necro. I did one necrow. And then I went, I want a different build,

but I don't want to erase this one. And so I was like, went to my oldest son and said like, Hey, turn the favor. I want a second necro and we boosted that necro, but the other ones I played straight. But it's there for you, whether it's like doubling potions and putting three incense on

or like we're getting pulled through the caps. Like there's ways to really accelerate your play, which is awesome. And I think it's only going to get, you know, we're going to continue to lean in on find the fun fast. Yeah, I think that's been an interesting conversation

with people who are casually, like, oh man, I'm having so much fun. People who are like dreading season five. And I'm like, well, I doubt they're going to, remove the thing you like right now. It's going to just keep piling on, right? Yeah, it'll be a different idea of what's going on narratively, but yeah, it's be doing it. Yeah, it's the one challenge is I think is just around balance is just like you're trying to find, make, you want, we want all

the builds to be fun and you have success, you know, to certain levels of degree. And so, you know, one of the things we always talk about is like, we want every build to be able to do a pit 61 because we want you to be able to get all the masterworking materials. And so trying to make sure that happens. But in some cases, you go like, oh, the barbarian is like just out of whack. And you go, and people are having fun with it. So you go, you know what? Our new philosophy is leave it alone. You know, early seasons, we were kind of like, get on it right away. And now we're like, you know what, it's fun. I'm having fun. But in between seasons, we're kind of like, hey, Sork and Druid need help. And maybe we need to like fix Barb a little bit. And then all the bar people get really mad at

us because how dare you? And the sork and druid people even go like, not enough. And so, you know, so it's a constant ebb and flow on the balance. And we're working through that. But I mean, our intentions are the right intentions. We want all builds to be viable and fun. And so that's us trying to find that. And so I think the pit's been really helpful, actually, because you've been able to look at and say, hey, what's the top build at the depth of pit they go to?

And you can actually kind of see more of the discrepancies of like how far a Jewett can go or how far a sort can go. So that's been really helpful for the team. And I think you're really going to feel it in season five. They're really bringing, you know, the fact that you could temper legendaries meant that unique sworn as interesting. because they didn't get all the extra stuff. And so we're revisiting a lot of unique.

And we're not adding tempering to them, but we're making them more powerful so that now they're viable again. And then all the balance changes that are coming, like Sork and Druid are going to get the love that they deserve. And so there's going to be a lot of great stuff to go and find and play in five. Rod, you mentioned tempering.

Yeah. If somebody in kind of funny is tuning in, they haven't played since the launch of the game. Then shame on them. Shame on them. You should be playing. but tempering is completely new. Sure.

What's a brief elevator pitch for tempering for somebody who hasn't played? Basically, adding your own affixes to a legendary item, you know, essentially what we want. The problem that we had before Luke 2.0 was there was too much mental anguish to find out if this thing is better than that thing. I had to compare like six different things to say like, oh, two of them are same, four or different or three are different. How do I think about this? And so what we want to do is boil it down to like three main stats. So you could go better or worse, better or worse, and then go, oh, from my build, those other two, I want to add them myself. And so tempering is the ability to take a particular affix like my rogue has, has an ability called heart seeker, which is, you know, firing an arrow that homes.

I can add to my bow the ability for it to fire twice, right? And so that's very specific to my build. So instead of scouring the world looking for bows that have heart seeker fires twice, I can find any bow and add that to it, right? And if I'm lucky enough, am I tempering? And so that notion just allows you to really add power to your build and really focus your build, which is what I really like. In tandem, let's just hit like all the great new things from season four.

The aspect system, completely redone. In what way? Sorry, what do you mean the aspect system? So in the launch of the game, you had to go, you had to find a legendary, you had to put, it into your stash because maybe I'm going to use it. Oh, I'm sorry. I see what you mean. Yeah, they're putting it into the codex. Yeah. Sorry, sorry. Yeah. The guy's never played something. This guy's never played. I never played the game.

What I read online was that's really back of the box. Yeah, I know. I just never really, I never called it the aspect system before for some reason. Anyway, great point. But yes, that was the big thing was that because you could only like take it off of one thing and put it on another once, you ended up building up your stash of all these backups. And they were all of varying power. Like, oh, it does this 50%, oh, this is 40, oh, this is 30. I would never use this, but just in case. And so, and every time you found a new piece of gear, you'd be like, it's better, but is it better enough to break this one down to add this thing to it? And so what the new system does allows you to basically, when you salvage that, you put it into your book,

your codex. And now you can apply the best version of that all the time. To everything you find, like to every bow you find, you can add that thing. And so that just takes a huge weight off your shoulders in terms of making your build and optimizing it and leveling. And leveling, yeah. Playing hardcore. I die a lot. And then being able to just... Maybe you're not good at hardcore. Oh, I'm not. I'm not like, it doesn't mean you... Again, I play it. I'm not professing to be amazing. Massacist. I just hate myself. But it is easy to then level, right? It's easy to get a build back going. It is frustrating. Like when you were to die and like, oh, I lost all X, Y, and Z. No, I can, by level 15, 20, I'm back up and running my build at the level that I'm used to.

Right, because you've stored it in your codex. And that's the thing, it's actually, as somebody who's, I'm a pseudo-completionist. Like, I complete most of the things. But, like, that's one of the cool things with the codex now is that you can go and say, did I get all the aspects for all the classes? So having, taking five, like, or six, but all five of the classes to 100, I also haven't, I've got 100% of all aspects. I don't necessarily have the best version of them.

So there's still some like I haven't maxed out, but I know at least I have one of everything. So if I want to go make a build, I know I have an aspect waiting for me. And it makes a lot more fun. Totally. And easier, yeah. You get to play the way you want to.

You talked earlier, right, about the classes. We keep going back and through that. You talk about, you know, arguing with a team, joking around about that, everything you do with them. Right. When you're set off and they pitch you spirit-borne, and I assume that's how it works.

I don't know if you're in the conference room with the people on the whiteboard immediately. What do you have? Bring it to me. Yeah, exactly. Internally, was there like a pushback at all about this four spirit run? Because after playing it and then even the folks who watched it today, it really isn't, oh, I'm the spirit born. Like, it's the spirit born, but I'm also going to be the centipede or I'm also going to be jack.

It feels like it's four and one in a lot of different ways, which I imagine all these permutations make it even harder to make a character and a class and a build that doesn't break the game or doesn't negate something else you're trying to do on one into the spectrum. Oh, for sure, yeah. It's a lot more challenging and when you have that ability to mix and match.

And even just going deep, like when I, one of the last times I played it, I decided to go 100% centipede and I didn't pick anything that wasn't a centipede thing. And just the power that was there, we're like,

um, we may need to look at that. Like this, going 100% centipede is very overpowered in this particular moment. You never go 100% centipat. You never go. You never go full centipede.

And so there, but yeah, I mean, it's one of the, was one of the interesting challenges, because we were talking about what expansion should be. You know, we were saying, let's do something different because when you think about Diablo, you think of like, you know,

Eastern Europe, medieval kind of feel. And so we're like, oh, let's take it somewhere else that you're not, maybe would be, you know, feel very different in the moment. And so that's where the jungles came in. And so, and then it all, it was kind of one of this like serendipity things where things started clicking in where you're like, oh, we're going to go to the jungle and, oh, Mephisto's the big bad.

and oh, Mephisto comes from, you know, from Khoras and all that stuff, that area. And so bringing Nihon to as a nostalgia play for the Diablo 2 players, but bringing it as sort of for Diablo 4 players is very visually different sort of region. And then the real big decision was that, and Brent brought it up on the stream, was just like we wanted to have a class that came from the new place. We didn't want to have it to be completely separate. Like, oh, we have this Holy Paladin and we have a jungle. Those don't fit.

It's a theme, you know. And so we definitely have heard. the we've definitely heard the board in a sword and board thing that people want that we're very aware of that but for this first one we really wanted to focus on making sure it came from the right place and and bringing something new because you know the first five with a with 10 years between d3 and d4 we wanted to make sure we were paying homage to the past that we were hitting all the nostalgia beats and that you could see the demon hunter in the amazon and the assassin in the rogue and that you could feel like the barbarian was the barbarian and you have whirlwind and all that stuff

and so this was our first like okay let's go and just really bring something new and And then, yeah, the complexity of like, okay, it's a four and one makes it challenging, but it actually makes it super, super interesting because you can find all those different play styles inside of it. For sure. Yeah, I think that was what spoke to me, again, even visually here, but then playing it, was after so, you know, 120 plus hours or whatever, which I know, chump changed numbers.

Don't get in my face about it. But of running around sanctuary, right? And then suddenly having this green lush environment, these new enemy types, you know, new effect. I was like, wow, this feels so good and looks so good, too. I think that's one thing you guys don't get enough credit for is how good that game looks in action.

Thanks. Yeah, I appreciate that. Yeah, I think it's going to be, it's really interesting. The thing that I find funny, though, is that the way that the story continues in the expansion, it continues in a way that the character

and Narell have a relationship, right, because they've known each other, well, because it picks up from the main campaign story. And the one thing that I hitched on a little bit was that I was like, oh, I got the expansion, I'm going to roll a new spirit-born, and then my new spirit-born

rolls into the expansion and Narel and then my character are talking like they known each other and I'm like, like you guys just met. Like what do you? And so I really want to play, once I get the expansion, I want to go back and play the whole campaign as Spiritborn. Sure. Which you can do. And we recorded all that dialogue for the Spiritborn to play the main campaign. So please go play the campaign as spiritborn. But then to build that bond with Nail so that when I go enter the expansion, that that knowing look they have is like earned because we did play together, that kind of thing. And one of those things, sorry, just cut you off before we lose that thread, because again, you're talking to not only my wife, Jen, but Snowbike Mike out there, right? Right.

Of course, he's got kids to take care of them. What do you do? A single parent, it's wrong. I know, I know, I know. But Mike is very much, loves Diablo, but hasn't been back for any of the seasons. However, the expansion, he's all in for he's coming. I want to call out that you can bring your eternal character and play this new vessel of hatred content, right? Yeah, totally.

You can do, that's one of the things we focused on was the player journey. And it was like, okay, we want a level one spiritborn to be able to play the expansion. We want a level 100 eternal to play the expansion. We want a level 50 season six character to play the expansion. So it really takes into account where you are. And so, yeah, you can approach it from however you play.

With the success Diablo 4 had it launched and the new players that joined it, let alone now with Game Pass and people are, I'm sure, so many people, this is their first Diablo. Yeah. Have you guys had conversations internal? only about like changing seasonal content to where you could bring an internal character in do experience it at all uh i mean we we talk about all of those things i think the thing that

we were kind of were was the easiest to action in the moment right now is that we're bringing the seasonal content to the eternal realm so things that you're seeing like the the new horde mode in season five will be in the eternal realm so that you can go play that that content there and so we're trying right now is to bring all as much much like health tides and those sorts of things. We're trying to bring as much into the eternal realm as well as the seasonal realm as opposed to the characters moving between the realms. Sure. But it's an ongoing conversation, you know, that's like what's the best way? Is there a

good way to do that? Because it's a standard piece of feedback. There are types of players who are like, I'm 100% invested in this character and I spent 100 hours making them and I don't want to let them go. And then you have, you know, people who like, I can make another 100 in 24 hours. So I'm okay kind of cycling through. it. And I want, because the, the hard part is, like, when you look at what Diablo three did with seasons and its success, which is sort of the model or the inspiration

for D4, was that the, you know, the dopamine hit of Diablo is progression, that idea that you're moving through. And so that idea of, like, oh, you know, season four is done. I'm on season five and I'm rolling the level one and I feel that ding, ding, ding as I go, I'll move up to a hundred. Like, that's part of what's great about playing a Diablo game. And so that was the reason why we really went into that seasonal model. initially.

As you're talking a little bit about progression, right? And I think when we're looking at like D3 to D4, I love the fact that you guys capped. Like we hit level 100, we don't go past that. But we're going into an expansion. Right. Now, if you can't answer, we may be doing things about that, yes.

Okay. We may be aware that, like, you know, how you think about how you progress your levels or where your level stop or how that all works. like there will be there will be things to talk about at a later time. Lots of stuff to still talk about. Yeah, that's the thing about the expansion.

There is lots. And like I said, the fact that it's on top of season six. Like that's the thing around when people, it's easy to get slightly confused because I too get slightly confused, but the notion of when you do something at a seasonal cadence,

but it's not seasonal specific. So take Luke 2.0 or the aspect system you talked about, like those occurred, during season four, but they are game changes that are forevermore. So it's not like when season five starts, the Aspect system goes away or the... That would be real bad.

That'd be real bad. We don't want to do that. Yeah, and so even when we look at stuff that maybe there are things and more things will get revealed, but there may even be things like when we look at season four and go, like, this is going away. Like when we start, day one in season four,

we go, hey, we've introduced this thing at the end in three months, that's going away. And then as we watch this, season play out, we'll go, oh, that's way more successful than we were intending, or are we expected. So therefore, you know what, that's staying or it's coming back in a different way, but it's coming back. And you see that a little bit when we did, took, you know, the seasonal mechanics of like season one and brought them back as rings, or at least some of the powers of that. Like, that's one of those things you go like, oh, like my necromancer having the auto fire ring.

Right. Like having the auto fire ability was so transformative as a necro. We're like, well, we kind of have to have that. Like you can't let that go away forever. And so now it's back as a ring. And so we, you know, we're watching and learning all the time. And we have, we have a roundtables with, with players, we do surveys, we do, um, look at social media. You know, we have our actual data art telemetry that we can measure. So we can actually see what's happening. And, and that's one of the things is really interesting to me. Like, if you look at season two, which was really popular because of the vampire theme, like the average level in the average max level, of a character in season two after five days

was 38. In season four, it's 53. Right? So just the amount of like, A, it speaks to that find the fun fast, but also the notion of like, oh, I'm going to sunk a bunch of hours into this right now because it's so fun right now, you know? One of my favorite things from the tour

and the visit and the preview last week was getting to go to like Mission Control where we just walked by it, but it was all the screens like, oh yeah, and this is like, you know, the brain of Blizzard. You can see all the people playing and what they're doing and where they're, and I was like, oh my God, it's just data on all these screens. I was like, I would love to actually go in this room

because I was allowed in the room to sit there and watch all that and see what's up because it's just so impressive to see how many people are logging in. Like you're talking about telemetry and tracking all that. Yeah, it's an important part of what we do. And that's we have a whole team dedicated to it. And that was part of the thing that, you know, we had a, for a while, like for season one,

our live team was actually part of our season team. And we recognize that, oh, that's not working, quite right. And so we created an actual separate live team that they're just, all they care about is what's happening in the game, like right now in the balance and stuff while people are off working on seasonal stuff. And so it was meant to be that focus that we

recognize pretty quickly. Like, hey, from a balanced perspective, from all the things, you know, when people in our streams love Colin, they let Colin Cook. Like, you know, he's part of that live team that's all about like, okay, what are we seen in the game and what do we need to do to make it better for the next season? You got to take care of those players.

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Kind of Funny Games with the super chats for your questions for Rod. We have a bunch piling up we will get to, but right now, Zanth, back to you. So we did get to see a new class today, the Spiritborn. Yeah. Let's just, let's hype that.

Hey, way to bring it back on topic. That's fine. Somebody's got to do it. I'm going to keep this show in line. Rod's like, why don't they only want to talk about season four? So we're bumping out. We're getting a new class. You talked a little bit before about class balance.

Yeah. How much harder is it as you introduce a brand new one? The joke we've made on our podcast before is like every time there's a new class that gets entered into sanctuary, it's always a little out of whack. They're the most powerful thing ever. It's not a bad thing? No, no, absolutely. I mean, I'm going to love this. but how much harder is it to balance a new class plus all the other ones that are already in play?

It's extremely difficult. I'm not going to lie. Even when, you know, if you were to survey the people watching, they would say that we still haven't figured it out for the five we have. So why are you doing it for six? You know, so it's definitely a challenge, especially relative to each other. And especially when, you know, it's one of those things where you give something and it's hard to bring back. So you make somebody overpowered. And the moment you try to like, oh, we have to nudge that back a little bit. They're like, what the heck?

You know? And so it's an ongoing conversation. And that's why we changed our philosophy around how, you know, how busted does something have to be before we fix it? And generally it's now, you know, we've kind of gotten to the place. So as long as it's not breaking the servers, because we've actually had that. We've had a bill that, you know, when you look at the PTR for season four and the screen full of fiery dust levels, you're like, oh, if that went public, like, in a wide, you know,

crashing. Yeah, it was bad. And so you have to, like, rein that in. And then, you know, we sort of look at, like, okay, at midseason, we're going to have midseason, that's a good time. You got to play with it for, you know, a month and a half. We might need to tweak a few things, and then you get an, you know, and then we'll carry on. So we try to be more transparent and more deliberate of a balance.

So it's just not, you wake up one morning and all of a sudden your build isn't viable anymore. And we would never swing it that much. But that's how people sometimes feel. Like, I have this amazing build. And then I went to bed and woke up the next morning. I'm doing half the damage. I thought it should be do.

Yeah. And so we definitely, you know, wanted to get out of that. And so it's really a philosophical change around not trying to chase the ideal of a perfectly balance and more about recognizing what's fun and chasing what's fun

and letting people have what's fun. And honestly, like anytime you have that feeling that you're breaking the game that you've somehow cheated, you figured something out. Like the time when I recognize, you know, I can drink two potions

if I drink these two in particular. Like, then you feel like, who-hoo-hoo, I'm getting away with something. I'm breaking the game. I feel good, right? Or, you know, as I talked about, my son is 70 in an hour, like that feels like you're breaking the game,

but it feels good and fun. And so why do I, why do I need to be the fun police and say, like, oh, I hate fun, so stop doing that, you know. So what I'm hearing is we should all be spirit-born. Yeah. Oh, yeah. It's going to be.

Just rock that. It's going to be broken in the most fun way, I'm sure. No, it's going to be overpowered for sure. But, I mean, it's just because part of it is just the creativity that goes into and the effort that goes into the builds that go out there. Like, you know, we do a lot of work. We do a lot of testing, but you can never kind of test to the degree that the experts out there and the build makers and the guide makers do. And so they create these combinations and all the stuff where you go like, wow, I had no idea that if you did these seven things, it would add up to this, right?

And so there'll probably be some early learning. But again, our philosophy will be as more around the, as long as it's not crashing something, then we're probably okay for a while. And so I don't, you know, my expectation is we will not be knee jerking a bunch of fixes or balance changes just because somebody's having fun with the spirit born. I hope you don't because I had a lot of fun with it when I got to go play with it. Yeah. So tell us about that. How was your visit? It was great. Like I, again, like I think coming into it, there was, for me, a personal bias and trepidation of like looking at it and being like, oh, okay, spirit born, this jungle thing. like for me it's, it looked a lot like

when Marvel does Savageland stuff and it's like which has never been my jam I'm always like I'm always like oh the jungle thing I'm not really like it. I do you know like you talking about historic at least.

Yeah, yeah, you talk about season two and vampires though right and I was like that way I was like hell yeah let's go Jen, make a character

she's like I don't watch a make a character vampires we're going no but getting in and seeing the presentation we just saw and then getting on sticks for me was such a oh okay I really do vibe with this and I vibe with it

the way of like being a poison build already, like for my rogue in the eternal realm, that's what I think of all the time for my character. I feel so connected to that centipede. But then it was the idea of going in and mixing and matching the two spirit classes, right,

and having that and seeing what the buffs could be like, okay, well, I went through and did them all. And for me, it was centipede gorilla. Then it was Jaguar Eagle. And like, even Eagle being at the bottom, I'm not like, oh, it's trash. It's just like, oh, I wouldn't, you know, I felt like, I was describing it to you in the car, right?

The only way I know how to do any of the stuff, and describe anything is through comic books, right? Okay. And so it's that idea of like, well, Jaguars Flash, sure. You know, I think of the gorilla as a Hulk character. Okay. Poison could be anybody, but kind of with the summoning in the green, I think Green Lantern, but it's very different, but you know how to it.

Poison Ivy. I don't know if you caught the thing, like, I'm naming her Maleficent because it's like, that's where it's going to be. I'm going to do a purple and green like outfit build for or whatever. So Poison Ivy didn't really work. It doesn't matter. And then, of course, to round it out for Eagle, I was like, okay, it reminds me of like how I think a lot of people think of a

Superman or a Wonder Woman of like you know that power but that agility and like you know flying and feeling like you're moving around anyways I liked it all but I was I think I'm gonna probably go 100% cent centipede because I did really like that and when I toyed with everything and moved it around but what I was

so impressed by was finding something I liked in every one of the class is the power it did feel like again like something you know we talked over it too I know and blah but like something I didn't see driven home as much as it was, was the idea that, like, Spiritborn is so combo-based. Right.

Where it is, like, that third shot is doing something cool. And even when you can upgrade it, so they're all the third shot, and then there's another third shot, it's like, there's like an insane amount of stuff going on there. But the visual of it and the ability to get in there and have the worm out, but then the poison swarms and then everything else going on. I was like, I feel so powerful and this is so much fun. And it doesn't feel like what I was worried about feeling like I'm like, I'm a jungle character and I, you know, I'm here with my, another pet.

I'm already running around another pet that's doing this thing like that vibed so well with me the customization and the ability to tweak things vibes so well with me and then again it's always weird talking Diablo and to put you over once again

right when I was coming on the podcast there I was so nervous and I don't get nervous at all on camera or podcasting. Really? Yeah yeah I've done it once in twice we're a big deal but it was that idea of like I listen to that show and I know the minutia

they know know and how they engage with Diablo. Whereas, you know, for our audience, for me to be here and be like, oh, yeah, I've played, you know, 120 hours of a game. Like, for a lot of games, that's a lot. And for Diablo, that's not a lot. And so it is that idea of, like, I know that, like, even though I'm not casual in the way, like, oh, I play once or 12, like, I play a lot and I'm on portal.

But it's like, I'm a casual Diablo player in the way of, like, I really don't midmax that much and I really don't worry about my build. I like this. I like that. I run with it. To be playing this spirit-borne character. And I think to look at how many people are going to come back to this or come for the first time to it. Sure.

I loved going into the skill trees and the way you guys color coded it. Where it was like, cool, if you just want to be a centipede build, like, here is the green centipede. You should be chasing on this tree. Right, right, right. And into this thing. And I thought that was so smart in a way of like, I think, you know, when we talk about video games here, kind of funny, lots of time Pokemon comes up as like, you know, baby's first RPG. Not because it is so many people started with it as a kid that way. And it is so approachable to.

learn a turn-based mechanic or how you're going through and doing this. I bet there's so many people who are like me and even further behind me and the casual, I guess super casual, if that's what you'd want to call it, that are just like picking things and not even really thinking about how they interplay or this would be better if you did that way. You know what I mean? Whereas this skill system, I think you've done and the skills you have for the spirits, you know, the one and two are going to be so additive and like, oh, like light bulb moments for people of really how it all plays together. Totally. Yeah. I think. because the dedication to a particular guardian is in itself a build,

like a lot of times people will be like, oh, I'm going to roll a barbarian, but I don't know what builds. Like, okay, there's four or five viable bills, and I'm going to go down this path, and they're just sort of taking what looks cool. And that's fine. They're having fun. But like you're saying, I think the notion of,

oh, I can be 100% centipede, and then you're like, well, that's in itself a build. So just by being a centipede or by focusing on centipede, you've created one of the, whatever, eight, nine, ten builds that they're available for spirit for. So, yeah, no, it's a great point. I'm somewhat, like, I'm a big thorns guy, and so my homemade build is always a thorns necro,

and so this season four was the time that that could actually work. So now looking at, you know, having thorns get projected out with poison, like it's kind of like the chef's kiss for me. Yeah. It's so good. And, like, for me, the thing when I play, like, because I play necro a lot, the having minions, like having people do my bidding.

You're bidding. Like, I love that. And so what they showed in the stream around the pestilent swarm, where you can actually send it out, it's so great. When you kill something and then the swarm comes out of it and then like hovers around and chases things down for you, it's just, it feels so great. So I'm definitely leaning into the pestilence swarm

and looking at the legenders they had. Yeah, for me it was the idea of like, okay, coming in, I'm excited for a vessel of hatred. I'm excited for a new area. I'm excited for new adventures. But it was like, am I excited for this character? And after playing it, I am. That's great to hear.

Because I do think it is a little challenging from an, like, archetype perspective. You know, when you think about fantasy archetypes, a lot of people can get the, you know, the rogue. You think of like the inth, you know, sork and the deck, Zorog and the Strength Barbarian. And the Necrant, people get those power fantasies really fast. And when you go like, hey, spirit-borne, and you're like, I don't know that like the martial artist jungle spirit person is like a classic archetype that I instantly grok and want to become. and so that's why I think it's going to be like things like this and going deep in it and letting people like you play it

is to be able to say like oh actually there's a lot of really here that's really cool and aspirational it's just not instant sort of D&D class matching of I get the power fantasy right away and what I also thought was fun about it and interesting right was you guys had preset characters right you had four for us to jump in and do any

okay this will be the eagle centipede they had mixed a match a little bit too sure and it was like I'd play a little bit as one pop out and play the other one pop out play the and finally I was like, wait, I'm treating these as if they're four separate classes. When the character I'm currently playing, I can just hold triangle, right? Reset all my abilities and build what I want there. And I was like, oh, that is so cool for this demo, obviously, but then to think about it in game,

where it really is going to be cool. You've gone this, you know, when you get to level 30, right, which is where you get the second spirit class. Now, do you want to just go and really get wild with it and experiment a million different ways and find in the character you've already spent as much time as you spent with it, what the fun is for you? Yeah. And it kind of harkens back to that classic Diablo thing of like, oh, I have a playstyle, but oh, this wonderful thing dropped.

And now I'm going to change my play style because I have this thing I didn't have before. And that's something I've always loved about Diablo is like, I'm going this way. And you get this, you know, a unique falls and you go like, or I guess I'm now doing this, right? And it just causes you to sort of change it up and just, you know, try new things, which is fun. I want to pull from the chat and pull from a super chat at once, all right? Our friend who's around for everything, Langley, M. Neely, who is the person who died. who was downloading it because we were all talking about on the last one, had said earlier in the chat and it would,

wait a second, 100 hours isn't a lot. What am I getting myself into? And what I appreciate so much about Diablo is, Diablo is the game you want it to be, where I think there is that audience, that is Zanth, that is, I'm going to only play hardcore characters,

and I love the story and I'm all about that. Then there is Joey who I skip every cutscene and I'm just out there to play with my friends and beat things up and do it. And then there's me where I'm in between of like, I, the story is so far gone for me now. It's just about the narrative I'm building around the character I am, right? Where right now I'm rocking this Wonder Woman outfit. And I am, you know, this is Diana Thamescara and she is out there in the Helltides,

beating it up and doing these things and yet. And I'm like, for me now, the chase is the trophies, obviously. But even for the first time, your battle pass got me this, this time around where I'm like, damn, that level 80 armor actually looks dope. And I think it's going to be such a nice crescendo to, again, the story I've made up for Wonder Woman, Diana in this game, where it's like, I think that's a great final armor for her

when I have to leave her to move on to season five to roll somebody else and go through it that way. Well, and you'll have that armor for the next season. You can apply to whatever character you want. Exactly, exactly. Yeah, I mean, I think it's, I think it is a nice thing about Diablo's.

It can be what you want it to be. It can be only a story-based game, finish the campaign, roll the credits, and say that was an awesome game and move on. There's the people who play the end game forever and ever and ever. And so I think like 100 hours isn't casual. casual, first of all. But yeah.

I'm sorry. Zanth, how many hours do you have this game? But just because he's on PlayStation and 400 and something. And then there's PC too. What's PC looking like? I don't count that. Oh,

you don't count that. Okay, no big deal. I appreciate you earlier in the thing. I don't know who said what, but your son popped in and he's like, he's got 400 hours. Finn,

I have told you. Don't go on daddy's PC. We're not talking about this. here today. It's just Diablo builds. Just Diablo builds. Like, my dad's a dork. Throwing me under them.

That's my son. But yeah, so you can, I mean, the other thing is, like, we find, there's a lot of people that Diablo is a log on and chill kind of game. You know, they come home from work, and they just want to kill a bunch of demons and just sort of sit there and relax. And so for some people, just sitting there and being overpowered and being able to just wipe out stuff and just feels good in the moment. Like your builds firing, you're killing hundreds and thousands of demons.

And so you get that sort of like, this is my game I go to at night to relax and kind of thing. And so I think there's room for all kinds of players. And I don't think people should think of a hundred hours as like, oh, they're casual. That's a lot of time to spend on a game. And we know that. But what we want to do is make sure that people who want to spend 400 hours in the game have something to do and it's fun to do. And so we're continuing to work on that.

You know, we know, again, it's a journey, not a destination. We will not go like, okay, we're all done. People can do it. You know, we're always adding much like we're adding a Horde mode in season five and all the cool stuff with the expansion and, you know, our plans for season seven and beyond. Like, so, like, we're always trying to work to improve that. Yeah, one of the things that you talk about there, you know, is a chill game, right? Where that's, I think of Diablo so much is comfort food.

Yeah, where it's that idea of like when I don't know what I want to play, or more importantly, there are so many times I get to the end of the day you know, Ben's asleep, Jen's going to sleep early and I'm like, I'm going to play games and I go down there and I'm like, I'm exhausted and I know I got an hour and a half in me and I'm like, I'm not at the point where I want to take on a new game where you start a new game, you got to learn the thing and do the thing.

So it's like, let's just go Helltide, let's just go Diablo, let's go chase this off. And I was actually commiserating a bit at the trip with Travis Northup from IGN. And he was talking about how sometimes he's, he's fallen asleep playing Diablo before and people take that as an incident. insult. And he's like, no, it's just, it's such a Zen experience. And I'm like, dude, I have

fallen asleep playing Diablo so many times that it's not that I'm not interested. It's just that muscle memory. I'm like, okay, do this skill, to this skill, to this go to this go. Do the thing. Do the thing. All right, cool. Got it. Teleport home. Change it out. You know, junk my equipment or whatever, but it's, it's, it's, I think that's the highest compliment you could get it. And so I originally talked about Langley and pulling it back into a super chat. We had a super chat from test subject who said never played before is now the time. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it'd be great. He'd be great. He's like, he's like, No, my game sucks.

It's terrible right now. Today would be a terrible time. Yeah, I mean, no, it's great. If you've never played before, like, the nice thing is that because of the seasonal realm, like you can go and play the campaign and jump into the season any time. And so, you know, like if you want to go start the campaign today, that'll be great. And then when you come out of the campaign, you can go jump into season five or however long it takes you.

And then you're getting ready for the expansion because I think you're going to have a lot of fun with Vessel of Hatred and, you know, going and finishing the campaign and then kind of picking it back up with the beginning of Vessel of Hatred, I think would be great. So if you've never played before, I would recommend not skipping the campaign. I would recommend going through that, through the story and understanding the lore and all the stuff that's involved in the game and getting to know Lilith and getting to know your character. So yeah, I think now is a great time. Now, if you've played the campaign when we launched a year ago and you haven't been in back,

like season four, as we've been talking about, is a lot of fun. And in a couple of weeks on August 6th, we're launching season 5, and that'll be a lot of fun too. But with a couple of weeks, you can definitely get to 100 and a season 4 character if you wanted to. Unless you're casual like Greg,

then you'll never make it. Never seen 100. That's one of the trophies we got. You will get there. And I think, like, coming back to when you brought up before, Greg, like, what I've always enjoyed about Diablo is you have that ability to go casual

and to go hardcore. Not just the mode. But to, to, I can drop in for five minutes. I can drop in for five hours and I can get something from it. I can get a minor upgrade. I can get a level. I can get a unique.

And shout out to, again, I'm going to come back to season four's improvements. I'm getting uniques at like level 20 that I couldn't get before. And then suddenly my build is online and I'm now going to rip out another five or six hours. That originally we're only supposed to be about one. So I think that's one of the big bonus. of Diablo and what the series is, is that you, you can give it as much time as you want.

And you're usually rewarded for it. Yeah. And we even like the Uber Uniques or the Ultra Uniques, like those, the season, I've got, I didn't get one in the first three seasons. I have three of them now in season four, you know. And so there's that sort of idea that, again, finding the fun fast and getting people to get to experience more of the game during a season, that it's not sort of being gate kept behind lots and lots of hours. Like now you can actually go and experience like a lot of the game,

which is great. And I think if I can take 30 seconds to pitch Vessel of Hatred for a second, or at least why you might want to get it today, is one of the things we really want to do is make sure that people who really have some fun with the stuff right away. And so if you pre-purchased the Vessel of Hatred, which is coming on October 8th, you were able to get today the cat mount.

So the big cat, you can ride a basically a giant jaguar around instead of horse, which is awesome. You'll be able to wear giant angel wings on your back at all time, which we'll see when they fire up, because I currently am riding my big cat with my angel wings in our hardcore character play. You know, there's the new pet system that we brought in for season four, so now you have a little animal that runs around

and picks up all your gold and anything else that drops on the ground that would normally get picked up automatically. And, you know, so we have the snow leopard and the tiger and the war dog and all that stuff. Like there's some cool stuff that if you're thinking about it and you really want to get into vessel hatred, it. No better time to get it today because you can actually play a bunch of stuff

use a bunch of it today. So there's, yeah, exactly. There's our, I never remember the names of the actual. It's like watching the Lennie, like, rhyme off the names of the spirit guardian. I'm like, I'm never going to remember. That was such an understated moment of the stream. I was like, what was your favorite spirit? And they're like,

oh, Santa Pieto. And she's like, well, I, and by name, she knew that. I was like, damn. She is, she is the writer of this game. Exactly. So, yeah. So anyway, just shout out to like, if There's something there. You get a bunch of stuff today if you go and pre-purchase it. Real quick, it wouldn't make any sense,

but I made sure when we were there playing the game and getting the interviews, I talked to Stephen over there. And when we were talking about pets, I brought up the fact of, please add in a wiener dog. Right. You know what I mean?

If we can just get a wiener, I don't know why. You can just do it quietly one day and just quietly drop them in there. It doesn't matter. You know what I mean? Or season eight, season of the wiener. You know what I mean?

And it's ready to go. That's how we do it. That's great naming right there, Greg. You know what? There's a reason. Kind of fun. He's a mid-linked success. Duly noted.

Duly noted. And you can log off. I did actually hear about that, by the way. Yeah, I didn't realize that when he stopped me. He's like, actually, we know each other. I'm like, oh, who do you? He's like, I know of you, Greg, through somebody. I'm like, who?

And he's like, oh, oh, wait. Are you the guy trying to find wonder? And he's like, yeah. You know, you wear this? No. I got this great barbarian. All right? Okay.

Diana Themisgara. If there's a man who can get to the bottom of it. There, you of course have your little player cards and we get to go pick our names or whatever. On the second tier, you have wonder, which would be great for Wonder Woman. Sure. But I don't have it. So then I Googled, couldn't find it. Then I hit up Zanth, the man who knows everything about Diablo.

He didn't know. Then he starts working on the inside of Blizzard trying to find out where it is. Nobody knows how to get wonder. Give me wonder. That's all I'm saying. I will have it for you before the end of the day. Thank you. That means a lot to me.

I will know it's origin. You just said it. That's just said it. While we're streaming, it'll pop for me, all right? Is that how you earn it? Yeah. Wonder!

Yeah, exactly. You find Rod Ferguson. I appreciate this. This interview is now run into just, can you do this for me? It'd be really nice if you could do that. I need a weir dog pack. And a one of the tough questions.

Give him a tough question. What does the community want that this guy's always dodging? What's he over here doing, you know? Well, we already covered, it's not a paladin. Yeah. Which I think was like most... Not a demon hunter. I saw people in the chat.

I mean, I'm all about that. That wiped out a bunch right there. You know, we've talked about it. They talked about it doing something new, stretch the creative in muscles, you know, but like, is that always on your mind as a team?

Creative muscles, doing things interesting, keeping your job, whatever, but is it always on your mind of like, oh man, like I know the community thinks they want this, but so now we have to make something

and it has to be even better? Well, yeah. I mean, we're trying to, always find a balance between nostalgia and bringing the familiar, but also the stuff they don't know they want. And so, and bringing the new. And so that, that's always going to be, we're always going to have that line. But like I said, we felt like the nostalgia and the familiar, we were over-indexed on, or not over-indexed, but we indexed on for the first five. And so, like, okay, if we're going to start

bringing, we want to grow, we want to world build too. We want to, like, we don't want to just be, like, and here's the thing that already existed in the world, right? We want to, we want to be able to be additive to the world and bring new things too. And so, you know, like, we plan on supporting Diablo 4 for years and years and years. So this will, I can say today, this is probably not the only class we're going to add to this game. And so the notion about like how we think about that moving forward, this one, like I said, we wanted to be of a place. And we wanted to be from the jungle. And the Spirit Board allowed us to do that.

So there's going to be, again, I think I'm going to ask questions that you can't answer. Okay. That's the best part. I'm really good at saying no comment or I can't. So, Greg, you were talking about community questions. Yeah. If I get to talk to you and I don't ask about the cow level. Okay.

Yeah. No, there's no. I can't talk about that. I don't even know what you're talking about. I was going to say, you mentioned earlier, you have a bunch of kind of funny folks here watching who are like Langley who are hearing about Diablo and getting what is a cow level. Oh my goodness. I don't know what it is.

I've never heard of it. No, he knows what it is. He's playing dumb. If I know about it, Rod knows about it. Zanth, what's the cow level? The cow level. The mythical cow level. Essentially in Diablo 2, and if you have not played Diablo 2, you absolutely should.

Please go. Diablo 2 resurrected. Insincted. Did anybody catch that? Please. And I'm going to need that. But Diablo 2 resurrected is a great way to experience it. Essentially, what you are going to do is you're going to beat the base game.

And then you are going to go and find Wirt. You're going to steal his leg. You're going to take a tome of town portal. You're going to put it into your Horgicube. You're going to hit transmute, and you're going to be taken to the cow level. The cow level is exactly what it says. It is a level filled with bardish-wielding cows who are out to kill you, and it is phenomenal. Dates back to the beginning of the series in Diablo 1.

When we were so bored while playing, we were clicking on cows thinking that we could summon some sort of weird devil. There was a rumor. It was like early internet. rumors. The best kind of internet rumor is on a BBS somewhere.

Right, like, oh man, if you just go and you click on this cow 666 times, you'll be transported to a cow level.

So D2, they ended up incorporating it. And I have slaughtered more, I'm from Wisconsin. I've killed more cows in Diablo than in... I should hope. I understand,

like, where you're from, but I should hope it was in the game. Well, you know, you don't know what I do on every time. That's true. Browser history. I don't know what he's talking about.

Okay, fair enough. Okay, so we don't know about that. But what I would be kind of curious about with the DLC, right? Let's go back. Let's talk to Vessel of Hatred. Yeah, let's do it. How does it work? Are we going to immediately be able to jump right into Vessel of Hatred with a new character at level one?

Will we have to have completed the campaign? and yeah I guess I'll give you a floor on that yeah I know as I talked about before the player journey we want people to be able to get into it and the worst thing would be like you have a friend who's just getting into it and you're like come oh then there's a new expansion you should play and you know well I would play with you

but I first have to go finish the main campaign and that's going to take me a couple weeks so I'll see you on the other side we didn't want that and so even if you haven't finished the main campaign you'll be able to go and jump right into the story of Vessel of Hatred and so yeah so like I said you can roll a level one you could bring your level 100 or whatever eternal realm character, you can bring a seasonal character in at some other level. So it's sort of, it's aware of where you are in your progress and your process.

So yeah, and so it's up to you. But no, you don't have to play the main campaign. We wanted friends to be able to play with each other. Now, Rod did mention it before. You absolutely should play the campaign. The story is amazing. It's our best story for sure. Oh, 100%.

And it's beautifully done. the side quests are also like, okay, now we're going a little off tangent. Greg's going to talk about how he skips all the side quests. I know. I don't skip them.

I do them. We just got my beans. They even took my beans. Okay. For the record, that's not a side quest in Diablo 4. Should be.

You make my wife. Nor was it voiced like that. But anyway, yes. It could be in vessel of hatred, though. Yeah, it could be. Again, season eight, season of the weiner, let me come in and record the beans quest.

The beans quest. Magic beans quest. I've already written 50% of year. The work's done. Send me the recording. A question I do have, I know we're winding down because I need you to go get trophies with me. Diablo Immortal. Yeah.

I don't think we're talking enough about Diablo Immoral. I agree about that. And I've been interested that there hasn't been more of a tie-in between Diablo 4 and Diablo Immortal. Not, hey, your characters are crossing or anything like that, but even like a battle pass integration or a sync thing that I get every season. Have there been thoughts about that? We dabble. I mean, that was the big thing about the anniversary this year is we actually. took one of the world bosses from D4 and made it a Heliquary Ross in an immortal.

We've been doing more stuff with Immortal like even with in terms of like IP collaborations. We just did a World of Warcraft IP collab with with Immortal. But yeah, we're kind of like we're around the edges on that. Like we sort of dab a little bit because one of the things we found was that those players aren't actually the same players. And that's what was really interesting for us is when we looked at, you know, we expected when we ship D4 that the immortal player base would be cannibalized

and it actually went up because of just the amount of all the brand marketing and all things we were talking about Diablo to everyone everybody was like, what is that? And then there's this free one that they can go play in mobile. And so it actually turned out to be, you know, D4 shipping was actually beneficial to a mortal, not a negative. And it's just that, but we recognize that there's, they're just very different players. And so the idea of saying like, hey,

you're a hardcore, not the mode, but the, type mainline game player, maybe Immortals for you, we find that they tend not to, because there's the notion around, the thing about a free-to-play mobile game is that there isn't that sense of like hitting, min-maxing it to the fullest, where in the mainline game,

a lot of people are like, I have to be level 100, and I have to beat all the bosses, and like the completionist thing, and on a sort of an infinite progression game, that's really hard to work. But if you've never played Diablo before and you're at all,

curious about it now that we're talking about it. There is a game called Diablo Immortal, which is available on PC and mobile that will have tens and tens of hours of things you can do for free. You can play the full campaign for free. You can play a whole bunch of the world for free. So you shouldn't feel any pressure of like, oh, I'm going to have to go in and put a bunch of money down. There's so much fun to be had an immortal just as a free player. And, you know, the majority of people who play Immortal play it are as free players. And not for you, Greg, But there's a lot of great story that is integrated into a mortal. I listen to the story.

All right. I still memorize it. Like, you freak, all right? I can't believe you skip every cut. The stuff with the girl and she was going to help her mom, but then her mom turns into the mind. I was awesome. That was all awesome in Diablo four.

Come on now. You got the stuff. The girl with Nehrel. It was like, she's kind of important. Kind of important now. She kind of hangs out the entire time. Kind of looks like she's getting important to the next one. You know her.

Yeah. She's the daughter. That's what you call her. It's what she is. It's got the thing. One of my final questions. Okay. Is you mentioned, of course, hinted, I should say.

You plan to support this for a long time. Not going to be your last class, probably. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I'm not trying to pin you down or misquoted. My question would be something I saw in the chat while we were watching the reveal stream together was people asking questions about the expansion where it's like, oh, this is really cool. are they going to do a lot of these?

Are they going to be more of them? And I'm not trying to at all pin you down, but is expansion something you see on an annual basis or when it's right or how do you guys think of expansions, I guess, versus the seasons and everything you're doing? Yeah, I mean, we can't really, we're not committing to, like, it's to be able to say, like, we're doing this on this cadence or whatever.

And part of it is actually going to be like what happens on October 8, you know, in terms of there's a lot to learn there. Much like season one, you know, taught us a lot for season four, are looking at expansion one and going, you know, how do we think about that? Like the reality is, like I talked about with the swim lanes, is that you tend to need to be working on the thing over top of it. You don't build in cereal. You don't wait for expansion one to finish before you would start in expansion two

if you were doing one. And so, you know, we have to be, we have to look at those sorts of things about, like, you know, how are we thinking about season five and season six and season seven? How do we think about expansions? What we want to do is bring what, you know, interest players and what players want to do, in Diablo. And so we're always looking at what is being successful and how do we think about the next

era of, you know, starting with season seven, how do we think about the next era of the live service and how do we think about how we're going to support it? So there's a lot to be learned still. So that's why we're not committing to anything today. Okay. Fair enough. I heard at least one a year.

Was that just me? That was just you. I think I might have been. I said a lot of words to get to the words on questions. Maybe I got caught up there. You got any final one, Sam? Let's think towards October here. Okay. It was pretty awesome as Diablo was launching that we got to go and get tattoos.

Oh. What's the likelihood we can do that again? Oh, having another Hells Inc. Did you get one? Oh, I got one. Where? It's here. It's left your shirt.

Where are you two? It's fine. Let's show me this tattoo I don't want people to see my nipples You run all the time You're in great shape And it's a Diablo 2 logo Right

Cut away Hold on I don't want people See my nipples Okay that's fine No nipples That's awesome That's awesome

That's dedication Yeah I like that a lot Yeah I did the necro I don't know You guys are so cool I didn't get no tattoo So there's like

I have the necro class very cool where's yours Greg I didn't know this was the thing I didn't know me about you guys he did you

skipping all the cuts now we know why you're casual that's why I'll get the I'll get the woman's mom I get the woman's mom and the woman on there only 120 hours

big fan the last time we walked through with marketing there wasn't a Helsing plan between now in October I will take it back to Danny and she can do what she's going to do with it

but yeah No, I mean, it was, it was, I talked about this at Blisscon. Like, it was phenomenal. I think there's something like a thousand people got permanent tattoos on our road to launch. So it was just, it was crazy. And the energy you went to one, because you got your tattoo, and I went to one to get mine. And just being in line with people or talking to people in line and just hearing all their stories and what it means to them. And it was, that's really kind of like, that's, I love that the most, like being able to talk to players.

When you go to what used to be the E3 or you go to a Comic-Con or you go to something. something where people would sign up to like, line up to, you sign a poster or whatever and you hear their story and what it means to them. It's just, that's, that's what the really gratifying part.

Because you can kind of get into the echo chamber of Twitter or X or whatever and the echo chamber of social media and all the stuff. And people are mad because they're barbarians not balanced right or whatever. And but then when you go out and you have this person who says, this is what this means to me. Like I just did a call with a couple who are, they're both over, they're both 70 years old, and they've been playing since Diablo 1, and hearing what it meant to them and how, you know, they were giving me lots of feedback, which you've

all given me, which is like, I need more character slots. I have 12 level 100s now. Six of them are eternal and six of them are seasonal, and they don't want to sacrifice their eternal ones like you do. And, but it was just hearing, like, that's how they bond together as this couple, that they play Diablo together in their 70s. And, you know, that's the gratifying part of being, being, being, in is that the fact that how much it impacts lives and what it means to people. And so that's what keeps you doing it for sure. I think that's pretty great. I was going to say that's beautiful.

That's fantastic. And I like that because I think the Diablo community is awesome. And I like the perspective of like stepping outside of some of the vitriol. Yeah. Right? Because in general, like being at those events, or at least the one I went to, it was amazing. It was great to be surrounded by a bunch of people. who are fans of the same thing.

And it wasn't a, let's all get together and crap on this. It was, hey, this is, what was your experience? Like, what was your favorite character? All of this. What are you going to play when D4 comes out? And I think that's pretty sweet to hear. And I'm glad you get that perspective.

Because it's very easy to just get something in the hate on all that garbage. Yeah, for sure. Rod, thank you so much for spending the day with us. Oh, no, this is awesome. It's my first time being here, and I certainly enjoyed it. Great. Well, you're not done yet, of course. We're going to go straight at the game. We're going to get me some trophies.

Over here, Neo-Aoshi in the chat said, we should all get a tattoo to commemorate this podcast. And what I'll say is this, when you add the weiner dog pet. That's when I'll get my tattoo, all right? Okay, this is recorded, though. Yeah, oh, that's going to go out. I don't get me. I got Portillo in this game.

I try. Is the tattoo going to be the girl and her mother? No, no, it'll be the wiener dog. Okay, well, putting a wiener dog tattoo on is not. exactly a big stretch. No, but it's your we can figure out like this is my memorial deportee. We can put like the Diablo logo around it and have like the weaner dog pop. Well, you guys got artists. I'll just tell them to draw. I'll tell them what I want and I'll make it happen. You know what I mean? A demonic demon demon demon whiner dog. I love it. Oh my goodness. Ladies

gentlemen and NBs, guess what? That's the end of this episode of the kind of funny games cast. Each and every weekday we come to you with the hottest reviews, previews, topics in the video game industry. If you like that or like this show, go ahead and pick up that Kind of Funny membership. It keeps the lights and mics on for this 11 person independent operation, small business. You can pick it up of Patreon.com slash Kind of Funny or YouTube.com slash Kind of Funny Games. If you are watching later, remember, we're about to go stream Diablo 4 with Rod and Joey. You can catch that on YouTube.com slash Kind of Funny Games. If you're watching live on YouTube, there'll be a new link to click on. If you're on Twitch, just chill out.

I think Joey's going to probably start it up while we scarf down some food real quick but then we'll be in there as I continue to make progress towards my platinum trophy. You know what I mean? And it just sounds nice. Platinum trophy.

That was an achievement. What does that even mean? You know what I mean? I mean, gamers score. It just rolls off the tongue. Ladies and gentlemen, until next time, it's been our pleasure to serve you.