Though Diablo IV recently went gold following a lengthy development, that hasn't stopped them at Blizzard from iterating and planning the future of the upcoming live-service action RPG -- a well-known fact that will be on full display during its recently announced beta weekend scheduled for May 12th. Hot around the heels of the first two beta weekends, which featured the entire first act of Diablo 4's campaign, the developers have moved quickly to implement lots of changes according to player feedback, including everything from character class balances to dungeon reworks, as well as changes towards the fonts used.

Among those developers are game director Joe Shely and associate game director Joseph Piepiora, who I had an opportunity to sit down with to go over their beta learnings and also the surprise "server slam" weekend -- your final beta test which will give players one further opportunity to jump into Diablo 4's first act early.

"We took a glance at all of the different dungeon objectives to ensure they were as fun as you possibly can"

One of the most popular pieces of feedback in the previous beta weekends was that dungeons required lots of backtracking and repeated objectives that took too much time for you to complete, and Blizzard has moved to address a number of these with changes that'll be implemented over time for the server slam.

"We took a glance at all of the different dungeon objectives to ensure they were as fun as you possibly can," Shely explains. "About backtracking specifically, we checked out where objectives were spawning about the layout of the dungeon. We also adjusted how the dungeons are organized... so the layout itself requires less backtracking."

Piepiora added, "We also designed a couple of adjustments to a number of our objectives. There are a few dungeons where players are inspired to kill all of the monsters within the dungeon. To not have access to players who have missed one zombie inside a corner someplace, now a number of these creatures will begin chasing after you."

The developers also addressed random events, that are supposed to spawn inside dungeons, but seldom did in the first couple of beta weekends.

"There are events that may appear: A tile will, rather than having a regular group of monsters, has some event where one can engage inside a mechanic like Jar of Souls," Shely explains.

I played Diablo 4's beta for more than 80 hours and may attest to the rarity of events like Jar of Souls, which I only saw once. The event, which occurs randomly, spawns a jar and sends waves of enemies at you, which may be killed to farm souls that fill the jar until it spawns a unique boss who grants powerful loot when killed. "Some people may not have access to seen these events whatsoever because these were very low chance," Shely admits.

But within the upcoming server slam and the launch day version of Diablo 4, the chances you'll reach see these events for action are much greater. "It went from the 10% chance those types of events would spawn to love a 60% chance," Piepiora says. "So yeah, an enormous difference for players if they are starting to undergo these spaces -- you will see a lot more of this content."

Another major change deploying alongside the server slam beta weekend is a rebalancing of character classes, which unsurprisingly concentrate on the demonstrably overpowered necromancer with some nerfs, and provide some important buffs towards the druid and barbarian classes.

"To be clear, the necromancer did get buffs too"

One of the ways the necromancer has been brought down a peg is by making their summonable army rather less tanky. "We do want players to become interactive with summoning their skeletons and coping with corpses as part of the routine of playing a necromancer. That's part of the mechanical mastery of playing a necromancer is managing these skeletons and mages and golems as you're playing. So we do wanna ensure that players are now and again need to re-summon in a variety of fights," Piepiora says.

"To be clear, the necromancer did get buffs too, as part of the Book from the Dead feature, numerous attribute stats on those effects improved," Piepiora clarified. "We wanted to ensure that there is an interesting insightful choice for players to make and that is the core of lots of our balance fundamentals."

I seemed to be able to make sure the necromancer's bone spear ability has retained its awesomeness too, so my fellow necromancers do not need to fear these balances an excessive amount.

For the druid and barbarian classes, which I felt were quite underpowered compared to the other classes, each is becoming a slew of buffs, including stronger abilities minimizing cooldowns for both. But more to the point, the barbarian gets a flat damage resistance increase of 10%. Piepiora explained that although level 25 isn't exactly reflective of how each class will feel when players reach the max level, a number of these changes should result in the leveling process feeling good.

"The manner from the buffs that people provided are useful for ensuring survivability is increased which classes feel a bit more competitive within the early game," Piepiora explains. "But there are lots of mechanics that players haven't unlocked as part of the beta. Barbarians unlock a weapon technique slot they reach use which makes them double recorded on their weapon expertise abilities, causing them to do more damage. The druid's reach uses spirit boons to unlock new, really powerful passive powers from spirit guides. But you didn't get an opportunity to see a number of those things as part of the level 25/Act I experience."

In addition to the changes to character classes and dungeons, Blizzard has additionally implemented numerous other changes, including an overhaul from the fonts accustomed to make reading item descriptions and stats feel more in-world, the removal of the "reset dungeon" button in reaction to players exploiting the feature, and improvements to The Butcher, a demon who spawns randomly in dungeons with murderous intent, who'll now be much more deadly.

"The team has already been engaging in creating interesting content for players to experience following the game goes live"

As somebody who has spent a large number of hours playing and referring to live-service games, I'll admit I'm astounded by the speed at which these changes happen to be deployed which speaks well to the way forward for the Diablo series because it enters the games-as-a-service fray.

"The developers who happen to be working on obtaining the game prepared to ship, are transitioning to operate on future expansions and also the live-service content," Shely explains. And while Piepiora plays his cards close towards the chest by what the live-service team is focusing on, he teases that, "The team has already been engaging in creating interesting content for players to experience following the game goes live and we're excited to carry on to grow, iterate, and make new and fun opportunities for players to interact with the core Diablo experience."

The server slam begins on May 12th, closes on May 14th, and can give players an exclusive chance to earn an Ashava mount trophy whether they can beat the beta's world boss at level 20. But doing this won't be easy, since powerful loot drops happen to be reduced to much less generous levels and also the new level cap will result in the fight being harder. "It's Ashava's server slam, right? She's destined to be slamming the server," Piepiora jokes, "We're excited to determine players attempt to throw themselves only at that."

Tip: Buy cheap diablo 4 gold from professional d4 gold shop buyd4items, with constant delivery and a safe deal!