Ever since its announcement at BlizzCon earlier this year, Blizzard has gradually revealed some more info about the upcomingDiablo 4. While its release is still likely a long way away, Blizzard seems to want get fans excited and invested as early as possible. We already know some details like thereturn of Elective Modeand, more recently, we’ve learned that Blizzard plans on discarding a mechanic from the previous game.
Ancient items, which were introduced inDiablo 3, were incredibly rare variants of Legendary items that offered additional bonus modifiers. Apparently, a lot of players weren’t the biggest fans of these Ancient items, viewing them as boring upgrades that were rewarded for tedious grinding. So, Blizzard is axing them forDiablo 4and replacing them with something else entirely.
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We don’t know the name of this replacement, but Blizzard has stated that it will be a consumable item that will let players apply random Legendary affixes to non-Legendary items, essentially making their regular items all the stronger. However, these consumables will be incredibly rare; so rare in fact that they will only drop in “the late endgame.”
Blizzard also confirmed new stats for the game in a blog post onits official website. Angelic power will increase the duration of buffs and healing, Demonic power will do the same thing except for debuffs, and Ancestral power will increase the chance of on-hit effects. These stats can also appear as affixes, and Blizzard plans on implementing them as pre-requisites for powering up other affixes.
A full list of details can be found in the blog post, but it adds that none of the details it lists are final, as Blizzard is seeking constant feedback from its community and it intends on regularly sharing updates on the game from February onward.
It’s clear that Blizzard wants to makeDiablo 4the best it could possibly be, which makes sense considering it has big plans for it and the series as a whole, having previously referred toDiablo 4asthe “first chapter.”
This follows news that Activision Blizzard’ssales have dropped by a surprising and significant amount, meaning its next couple of titles need to be successes. Between what some fans deem to be mismanagement of the company’s franchises and the Hong Kong controversy that blew up in October, it’s possible that flashy new games aren’t enough to distract the audience from some very real problems with Activision Blizzard.
Diablo 4is scheduled to release on PS4, Xbox One and PC. It currently has no release date.
