Diablo IV: Lord of Hatred w/the Devs! - Gamescast Plays

Summary

Kinda Funny Gamescast Plays: Diablo IV — Lord of Hatred w/the Devs!

Date: May 5, 2026
Guests: Zavin (Associate Game Director, Blizzard), Kinda Funny crew (Mike, Greg Miller, Xanth)

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Episode Overview

In this special Gamescast Plays, the Kinda Funny team dives deep into Diablo IV’s new expansion, Lord of Hatred, with expert ARPG correspondent Xanth and a special guest, Associate Game Director Zavin from Blizzard. The roundtable explores the expansion’s development, class design, long-term vision, community feedback, and the enduring legacy of the Diablo franchise. This rich episode is tailored for fans and newcomers curious about what makes this expansion the most ambitious Diablo content to date.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. A “Labor of Love”: Launching Lord of Hatred

• Zavin reflects on the team’s emotional journey leading up to and after launch, describing it as a true “labor of love”:
  • “We could not wait until players got their hands on it. And now that they finally do and they're enjoying it so thoroughly, warms our hearts.” (03:18 – Zavin)
• The team is made up of passionate Diablo fans who channeled their excitement and attention to detail into every aspect of the expansion.

2. Class Design & Shadow-Drop Surprises

• Big praise for the seamless Paladin and Warlock releases, a first for the series that involved shadow-dropping a class at season start:
  • "There's another thing that's never been done before is shadow dropping a class basically at the start of a season. Never been done before." (25:57 – Zavin)
• Huge shout-outs to the QA, live ops, and class design teams for making this possible.

3. War Plans & Endgame Connectivity

• The War Plan system was introduced to unify and connect endgame activities, making them more accessible and rewarding for newbies while adding new layers for veterans:
  • "We were in this cycle ... all very disconnected from each other. What can we do from a systems approach to make this attach to each other... That was a big part of actually going into Lord of Hatred." (15:54 – Zavin)
• War Plans emerged from the need to address a fragmented endgame, focusing on both systems depth and approachability.

4. Design Philosophy: Balancing Newcomers and Veterans

• Diablo IV faces the challenge of catering to both new and seasoned players with every new system:
  • “Rules are really cool for more hardcore players if you give them tools to break those rules ... it's a good on ramp for people. But we have to provide a way for players to break those rules ... and that's where the systemic depth usually comes from.” (18:19 – Zavin)

5. The Cube Returns & Itemization Evolution

• The return of The Cube was highlighted as a major depth feature that scales according to player investment:
  • "Tons of depth for hardcore players. Doesn't over complicate crafting for like regular person ... But it's there as soon as you need it." (20:55 – Zavin)
• Blizzard’s philosophy: nurture casuals into experts by layering complex systems on an approachable base.

6. Boss Design & Campaign Highlights

• Boss fights were conceptualized to be truly epic, with memorable moments like the Inarius fight and unique set-pieces (e.g., the boat sequence):
  • "Boss fights must be epic, and we have to see new things that we've never seen before... the measuring stick... [is] this constant escalation." (21:58, 53:56 – Zavin)

7. The Weight of Legacy & Internal Process

• The pressure of maintaining the Diablo legacy is strong, but developers see it as a challenge, not a burden:
  • "You can see it as a pressure thing, or you can see it as a challenge thing. I kind of look at it as a challenge thing." (24:43 – Zavin)
• New team members are often encouraged to replay Diablo 2 for pacing/design inspiration.

8. Cross-Platform Play & Engineering Feats

• Kinda Funny crew praise Blizzard for seamless cross-save/cross-platform support; Zavin talks about the engineering challenges:
  • "Every time we do that, it adds a bit of complexity to development. And it's awesome to hear that it was worthwhile because it means more people play however they want." (33:33 – Zavin)
• Balancing performance across wildly different hardware and playstyles is a daily obstacle for the team.

9. Long-Term Vision, Future-Proofing, and BlizzCon

• Zavin states the expansion was designed as a platform for future content, focusing on systems with “space to grow”:
  • "We are building a platform for the future. So we think about the Cube and war plans ... as good examples of this ... they have space to grow." (60:32 – Zavin)
• A “victory party” mood for BlizzCon, emphasizing community connection and future updates.

10. Scovos: Creating the New Zone

• Scovos, the long-mythologized new setting, was a "day zero" decision and a personal goal for Zavin:
  • "Going into this I was like, oh hell yeah, we're going to Scovos no matter what." (52:34 – Zavin)
• The brighter environment was chosen for high narrative contrast—watching this beautiful place go to hell.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Launch Nerves:
  "It's this terrifying moment at launch where it's like, well, I hope they like it. But we are honestly, we're blown away." (03:18 – Zavin)

• On Community “Keeping the Faith”:
  "We saw our players saying, I wish they would do this. And we're like, fuck yeah, we're doing those things. They just gotta wait a little bit." (04:49 – Zavin)

• On Boss Battles:
  "We knew we were going to have a big moment on the boat, right? That was gonna be a huge set piece for the prologue." (22:49 – Zavin)

• On Platform Inclusivity:
  "You're playing the game, your characters follow you no matter what platform you're on right now. Absolutely nuts. I love it." (34:59 – Zavin)

• On Legacy:
  "Storied franchise, dude. 30 years, right?... I kind of look at it as a challenge thing." (24:31, 24:43 – Zavin)

• On Season & Future Content:
  "We were very intentional ... that the game has space to grow. ... If this part of the game is successful, we can keep going, right? We can keep going for a lot longer." (60:32 – Zavin)

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Important Timestamps

• [02:20] – Zavin introduces himself; reflects on launch feelings.
• [04:49] – On how the team stayed motivated while keeping new classes under wraps.
• [08:30] – Setting the “North Star” for “best Diablo expansion ever.”
• [15:54] – Designing War Plans to unify endgame.
• [20:55] – The Cube described as major depth feature.
• [21:58] – Boss design decisions.
• [24:43] – On the pressure/challenge of Diablo’s legacy.
• [25:57] – Shadow-dropping Paladin; behind-the-scenes stress and payoff.
• [33:33] – On cross-play and the technical/engineering challenges.
• [52:34] – The story behind choosing Scovos as the new zone.
• [53:56] – Inarius boss fight philosophy.
• [60:32] – How new systems make seasonal content and game growth possible.

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Final Thoughts & Wrap-Up

The episode concludes with the hosts thanking Zavin and celebrating the “return” of Diablo for longtime fans and newcomers alike. Zavin reiterates that the expansion is both a culmination and a foundation, built with extensibility and player feedback in mind:

"We're not just saying it. Labor of love, dude. We play the game, we're feeling the same thing. And so that's how we know, like, oh, this is going to be bomb. Players are going to love it." (59:54 – Zavin)

Xanth’s final question spotlights the future-friendly design of Lord of Hatred’s systems, ensuring that Diablo IV is set to keep evolving for years to come.

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For Diablo fans, this episode is a treasure trove of behind-the-scenes insights, development philosophy, and a celebration of the ARPG community’s passion and creativity.

Transcript

[Host (Sponsor Reads)]

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[Mike]

What's up everybody and welcome into your Kinda Funny Games cast plays for a lovely Tuesday, May 5, 2026. It's a special one because we got a packed lineup for you. You can see it on screen. We're talking all things Diablo 4. The brand new expansion is out and I've brought on Lord of Hatred ARPG experts Greg Miller and Xanth to come help me. Hello Greg. Hello Xanth. How are you both doing?

[Greg Miller]

I'm excellent. Xanth is the expert. Remember he is our. He is the kind of funny ARPG correspondent. He came in with that hot Diablo review he couldn't stream with Joey and I the other day. So I said, Zanth, show up and carry me through this.

[Mike]

Yes, yes.

[Greg Miller]

When you were saying it during Games Daily, the hair on the back of my neck stood up because back in the day me and Andrea Renee had this thing where we had a jar if you said games pass. But I was like, well he said it once, he's not gonna say it again. You kept coming back. I was like, I don't know when

[Xanth]

I kept going back to that. Well, can't interrupt him. I won't make that mistake again.

[Greg Miller]

Thank you.

[Mike]

That's all right. Well Xanth, you're here today cause you're gonna lead me, Greg, yourself and a very special developer joining us today to talk all things Diablo 4. Who's with us? Xanth, because I know you know him well.

[Zavin]

Well,

[Xanth]

we were just talking about a pre show. A man who has been with Diablo for a long time like this isn't just a D4 developer. This is a Diablo 3 developer as well. Somebody who's been carrying the Diablo banner for a while. We've got Zavin here.

[Zavin]

Hi everyone.

[Greg Miller]

Hey Zavin, how are you doing?

[Zavin]

Good. Good to be here.

[Greg Miller]

Good to have you. Thank you for coming through. Thank you for making the time. Congratulations of course on launching Lord of Hatred. We have been enjoying it quite a bit here at Kinda Funny. And I know of course you Xanth, have been enjoying it as well. Of course we heard your review on Games Daily.

[Xanth]

Yeah, so I also, you know, we've talked about it on games daily. I host a little podcast just about Diablo. And trying to record a Diablo podcast right now is so tough because everybody's playing Diablo. What a world where I'm like, hey guys, could you just give me, could you just give me like 10 minutes to talk? We could do something quick like. No, I can't, I can't right now. I'm too busy. Yeah, this is, this has been a fun little week. Zavin. How is the reception going over with you guys?

[Zavin]

You know, this is game development's fun. You spend a lot of time on something and then it's just this terrifying moment at launch where it's like, well, I hope they like it. But we are honestly, we're blown away. It's been so fun to see people enjoying everything from the campaign to all the class stuff, even the music. Like, I'm super proud that everyone's, you know, know everyone on team is feeling the love right now and feeling the appreciation for all the work they put into this. It's a, it's, you know, it's. I know. It's like, oh, labor of love. It's like, no, this is like literally a labor of love. The. The amount of people on a team who are huge fans of Diablo themselves, who have been players for a long time, who got to work on this and put everything they had into it is, is a lot, you know, like where we could not wait until players got their hands on it. And now that they finally do and they're enjoying it so thoroughly, warms our hearts, you know, it's already really hot here at House, but still good. Yeah.

[Greg Miller]

Zombie, Was it hard to keep the home fires burning? I mean, you talk about how pouring your all into this, I think it definitely shows in what we're playing. I mean, the writing, the cinematics, what we're doing, just top notch stuff, let alone all the gameplay changes. Like, when you're working on all of that undercover, you can't talk about it. Like, how do you keep everybody motivated? Like, no, no, we're. We're going to the true north. We're delivering on something.

[Zavin]

So I would say the, like the. One of the harder parts was when we were actively working on Paladin before the reveal and people in the community were like, where's the Paladin? You know, And I know there were some people who were disheartened. They're like, they're never gonna do this and they're really upset. And then there Was a small crew. They kept the faith. You know, they were blaming. And that was actually the thing is, we saw our players saying, I would wish they would do this. I would wish they would do this. And we're like, fuck, yeah, we're doing those things. They just gotta wait a little bit. And that was actually the worst thing. It's like, once they see what we're doing, we think they'll be really happy. I know right now is like radio silence, right? They don't know what we're doing. But then as we started rolling out information, that was like the big morale boost. Like, okay, good, they're getting it. We've been listening to them. We care about what they think, we care about what they want. We play the game. We have the same problems as they do. And that's actually what kept kind of the fire burning, right, Is we were. Even though they weren't responding to what we were doing, they were saying a lot of the things that we were already thinking and working on ourselves that made all the difference.

[Greg Miller]

What are you doing now that it's out in retail? I mean, are you in there once again? Are you rolling every class again? Where's your heart right now?

[Zavin]

So we were just talking about this. So I actually was not here local to the office during the launch because I was traveling for work. I visited Seoul, I visited Taipei, talked to our community out there. It was awesome. But it meant that I didn't actually get to play play at launch or around launch. And I finally got back and I immediately crashed because flying is tough for me.

[Greg Miller]

That's a lot. Yeah. Traveling the world, talking about the campaign.

[Zavin]

I feel bad. Like, I've, you know, game dev doesn't play his own game. Like, well, I've literally not had, like, a machine to, like, comfortably sit at and play, but I'm doing that now.

[Greg Miller]

Well, let me tell you about the Asus Rog, Xbox Ally X, and how that's a game changer for annoying your wife with clicky buttons in the middle of the night.

[Zavin]

You know what's funny? You know, my wife is a hardcore, hardcore gamer. So while I was out overseas, she's sending me, like, she, like, radioed, you know, silence for her. She's like, don't tell me any spoilers. So she's throwing me stuff like, why would you guys do this? And, you know, you're all, you killed who? And then she gets to endgame. And then I remember, like, it was like, right before my flight home, she sent me a picture of. She got a Scepter of the three on her warlock and she's like, what the hell? Like even is this crazy ass item that I got. It was the best thing, right? So she's, she's right now actually during this, she's definitely playing War.

[Greg Miller]

Zanth, how is the expansion sitting with you now that you know you are removed from, from the review? Of course. As we all know, the Diablo podcast, you go off, you consume the game for so long and then you come back to the microphones. How are you doing?

[Xanth]

I'm doing great. I mean, I was in the waiting room waiting for this all to happen and playing Diablo. While waiting, I was playing Diablo so that I could wait to play Diablo. That, that is an indicator of, of just how solid this expansion has been.

[Zavin]

Been.

[Xanth]

Like, we're eating really, really well right now. This is, I think and Z, like, you know, we kind of hinted at it before, but like this, this feels like the best version of Diablo that we've ever had. Is there. I mean, we won't go too far in the future, but is that reassuring or daunting as you kind of look towards the future?

[Zavin]

So, you know, when we first kind of started, started going into what we call production, there's prototype, there's like ideation, multiple phases in development, and we start going into production, the whole team kind of rolls on to Lord of Hatred and start working on it. I talked to the team at one point and I was like, hey, your job is to make what might be considered the best Diablo expansion ever. And you're up against Reaper of Souls and Lord of Destruction. You know, like, we are like bound. It's like duty, right? Like, that's the North Star. That's the target. If we do our job right, we might be uttered in the same sentence, right? Like, that would be a crazy honor if we can hit that target. So I think of this as like, that's great. I'm feeling the love right now. And we're feeling the love from the community. Community. It's awesome. We hope that we, you know, have made something that's worthy of discussion in that same vein. And that just means whatever happens in the future, same thing applies, right? Like we, we have a bar set for ourselves. That bar is already set by the past. If we can raise the bar, hell yeah. That just means we have more Diablo to make and we can go to new places just in the series overall, right. I don't consider it daunting. I consider it challenge. Challenge is good.

[Xanth]

You brought up Reaper of Souls up and You've worked on Reaper of Souls, correct?

[Zavin]

Yep. Back in the day.

[Xanth]

What's the. What's the contrast in terms of the feeling between the. The two of these?

[Zavin]

Do you mean how I feel as a developer or just, like the product? What do you mean?

[Xanth]

I think I could go, let's do both. I like both avenues on that.

[Zavin]

So I worked on Reaper of Souls, but I also worked on just main, like basic Diablo 3. Right. Vanilla. You know, when. When we launched Diablo 3, I think, you know, we all know what the community reception on that was, and we kind of looked at and said, it doesn't really matter what we were intending. The reception is what matters. And I remember leadership. I was not a lead or a director back then, just to be very clear, Right. I was like, junior developer. My first actual.

[Greg Miller]

Just a punk kid talking about I

[Zavin]

was a punk kid. Less grays, no children, more time to play. But I remember it was like, hey, so let's do whatever we need to do to make this better, to make this right. You know, Diablo is important to all of us. We care about it. And so there was a lot of, like, dig deep, figure this out. And I think the whole team kind of came together to make Reaper of Souls. The energy was in that direction of make this the best thing it can be. I think with Diablo 4, we didn't have such a rocky start, and I think the reception was definitely more positive from the get go, especially in terms of things like tone and the story and things like that. But even, you know, we had an end game.

[Greg Miller]

It.

[Zavin]

Was it complete? No, but we had something more than running the story again back then. Right. So this was more about how far can we push it. Right? What can we do? This is also the first time in Diablo's history that there's a second expansion. There's never been one. So we were literally in uncharted waters. Right. Not to be too punny about it.

[Xanth]

Sorry, dad.

[Zavin]

It was. It was kind of. It's like, well, where does it go? And so there was a couple things. It's like, hey, so we're doing something that's never done before with just having a second expansion. And we were actually also doing something else that had never been done before is we were ending an arc. Right? Like, famously, LOD and Reaper kind of had a very. A very, you know, cliffhangery kind of ending. And there was no kind of overall resolution to their arcs, not in the same way as what we've done with Lord of Hatred. That was also very intentional.

[Greg Miller]

And that's awesome by the way. Like, you know, one of the things Anth and I go back on all the time is the story and this and like, you know, he's all in on it. I'm here to smash stuff. I've never, you know, whatever. Like I was shocked this time around how into it I am, how much of a joy I got out of so seeing Lilith again and then everything that happens with her and just crushed it, man.

[Zavin]

I'm super happy again with the reception of this. We developed this in a relatively different way than I think most things get developed. We had a huge lead up time so there was a small crew of folks who were working on all the ideas that would eventually become what we shipped. It wasn't literally in the same shape as it was today, but a lot of the bones were there. So we had this benefit I think that historically I think most games don't get to have honestly where we had a pretty long lead up time of just small crew jamming off on the corner while the rest of the project was kind of raging on. I'm super pleased with how this has gone. I think it also a struggle with action RPG's is honestly how to tell like a good story in it. I don't think they lend themselves. It's not easy, I'll say that much. It's I think very, very difficult. So again I, I think back, well,

[Greg Miller]

it's not like there's some players who skip every cut, not like there's some players who skip every cutscene.

[Mike]

Here's the deal. He attacks me. This is my friend group, you know, that's my friend group.

[Greg Miller]

I love better friends.

[Mike]

It is interesting you brought up now this being the second expansion unlike any other Diablo before. When you guys were creating Diablo 4, it was so long ago. Was there the road map of like hey, we're going to be here for a while. We are going to get to a second expansion. Or was it something of like hey, it's a massive hit, Diablo's back. Let's start tearing up these expansions.

[Zavin]

That's actually every Diablo, every Diablo has always had like a of a plan so to speak. It's always rough, you know, there's that like mean drawing of like a horse, you know. And it's like super well defined. It gets like less, less defined and more rough and block outy over time. Like that's kind of how planning these kind of projects always works out. So yeah, we're like yeah, we'll do expansions but we've always said that. Diablo 3 said that. Diablo 2 said that. Pretty damn sure. Diablo 1 said that if you do deep research, you'll find stuff from like 30 years ago. Xanth probably knows Hellfire.

[Xanth]

Yeah, but so you know, in talking about the success of, of this expansion, the one thing that really stands out when we were talking a little pre show is war plans, as you may mention. You know, Diablo 4 launches and it has an end game, but like the interconnected activity is less than stellar. Right. It just is missing that little bit. And now we have war plans in which we have this massive connection between all of these end game activities that are amazingly done and skill trees to kind of push our characters forward. Where did that come from? Like, where did, where did the. The genesis of war plans kind of came. It created.

[Zavin]

Yeah, so there's kind of the two halves of this and they didn't start off attached to each other. The meta progression and the like playlist, they weren't actually part of this. Again, high level ideas is kind of where this. And then eventually they end up like, oh, cache these things together. And that worked out. But we were in this cycle, you know, we shipped with three activities, we added four more over the course of development in terms of it being live, and they were all very disconnected from each other. And we knew that kind of going into this we were like, okay, we're going to get a bunch of players coming back, it always happens. And we're going to get a bunch of people who don't know the entire history of endgame development in Diablo 4. What's the thing that sits atop this game that makes it make sense for them? That was a key question to answer because when just think about if you don't know anything about what Diablo has ever been or you haven't played maybe since launch and you're coming back and you're like, okay, here's this giant open world, here's this mega campaign, all these classes and seven activities that are all completely disconnected from each other. What's the value of doing any one of them versus another one? Where should I be spending my time? How should I play? How do they work together? These are all just, you know, they're obtuse. They had to be because of how the game was kind of constructed over time in the live environment. So we looked at this and said, okay, what can we do from a systems approach to make this attach to each other and to have the whole thing make sense? And that was a big part of actually going into Lord of Hatred is Endgame was like the earliest uttered sentence was like, we are going to be very endgame focused expansion. That's, you know, I consider, consider that like a day one, day zero sort of thing. When we were first talking, before we had anything written and a big part of that, right, was as soon as I finish the campaign, what do I do and how do I know to do it? That was kind of the genesis of that part.

[Greg Miller]

A quick question, piggybacking off of that, you talk about, you know, well, the player who comes back, who hasn't been here since launch, and then they both how impossible is it to balance? And then how do you tackle balancing? Hey, we're building something new and we want to make sure that if you've never played Diablo 4, you understand what's going on. And if you're Zayath and you play it all the time, there's stuff for you to do here all the time and be interested in it.

[Zavin]

You know, I'm going to say this, I'm actually really curious if like, if this like resonates, right? So like I think, I think if you're adding like a system, this is a systems driven game. Death just Diablo is action rpg, very system centric. So anytime we're adding a system on top, what we're really talking about is adding rules, right? There's always some rules about how something works. And rules are really cool for more hardcore players if you give them tools to break those rules and to subvert those rules, to modify those rules. That's where that crazy depth comes from. From an action rpg. Without any of that though, it's really nice guardrail for a more regular person who's not playing as much as we are maybe. So we kind of look at this as like, hey, this is great, we can establish rules, we can be very clear. It's a good on ramp for people. But we have to provide a way for players to break those rules, to change those rules and things like that. And that's where the systemic depth usually comes from. That's where the other half of War Clan sort of thrives, is it adds a ton of depth to the end game. But a brand new person who doesn't know what they're doing can't even touch it right. It's something that's progression. You've got to earn the right to be able to violate, you know, the rules of the pit with what you're doing. So we kind of get both. A new player has a pretty surface level set of activities and more hardcore players they get to, they get to break the rules on the content side, which they have never been able to love that.

[Xanth]

Yeah. In kind of answering in what you brought up, Sabin, I, I think when I was scoring Diablo 4, I, I gave it two scores. I, I said for your, you know, traditional player who hasn't played in a while, I gave it about a nine. And I said for your player who's been in the, the ecosystem and kind of hasn't left, I said it's like a 9.5. Because, because of what you're talking about like where like you, you've known the rules for so long and now you have the ability to break them. To make the Pit what you want it to be. To make undercity what you want it to be in like to find all these weird mechanics that could never exist, that you basically get a new experience so it just becomes infinitely better.

[Zavin]

Yeah, the. That's something we wanted to extend everywhere for what it's worth. So the Cube is another great example, right? Like itemization. The Cube. Cube's back.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah. And Deus Morte says the Cube has been the best main, the best main improvement for me.

[Zavin]

Yeah, that's, that's another great example of this though. Tons of depth for hardcore players. Doesn't over complicate crafting for like regular person just trying to enjoy the world, play the quest, doing the story right. But it's there as soon as you need it. And we have things that kind of draw you into it. It's a very old school Blizzard design philosophy is we take casual players, right. We grow them into hardcore players. Anyone who's played Blizzard games from the jump, they probably have experienced it themselves. I'm gonna check this out for this. And then Here we are 30 years later playing Diablo, just slamming things in the Cube and so on and so forth.

[Xanth]

Now since we just did it, I have to ask, like this expansion has dropped some amazing bosses. We won't spoil the, the later ones, but as we're, you know, taking on Rathma's Golem here, was there any edict in terms of like boss design or was it just, hey, question. Get. Just have some fun. Make something we haven't done before.

[Zavin]

Return there was make epic boss fights. Campaign deserves them, game deserves them, players deserve them. And so anytime we could so just. And, and this isn't just, you know, this cool guy we're looking at right now, Rathmo was. This guy was a delight to work on. But even just a basic boss, just like a simple dude, right? They must exist so we just said, yeah, the bosses must exist. And honestly, there's. This is old lore I learned when I first joined Diablo 3. I got. I got taken aside by veterans back in the day and they were like, hey, like, go play Diablo 2. And then set like a timer and you'll see that you have a pretty good rhythm of seeing new stuff. As a first time player, obviously, you know, going through Diablo 2, right, like, that's the. That's the measuring stick. So when we're playing through Lord of Hatred, we're like, well, every X amount of time, I'm seeing something new, seeing a new environment, seeing new items, seeing new monsters, seeing new boss fights. And there's this constant escalation that needs to be present for it to feel like real Diablo. So we kind of built that in from the get go. We knew we were going to have a big moment on the boat, right? That was gonna be a huge set piece for the prologue. Just to get things going and saying, no, this is Lord of Hatred and shit's gonna get wild right away. You know, we have rising and falling action, like all narrative kind of, you know, stories do. But then we had this. And so we made sure that we had iconic bosses on every island as much as possible. Right. Early on, it's a little slower because it has to be. But then as soon as we could ramp up, we did the old story.

[Greg Miller]

I have a question before we get into more of Diablo 4 stuff now that you're an old man, just ancient.

[Zavin]

My wife is fucking laughing at that, by the way.

[Greg Miller]

And you've been there so long, when you bring on new people to the team, do you tell them to go play Diablo 2 and set a timer? Or is there a new gold standard you send out?

[Zavin]

So I have. I used to be a lead on Diablo 4 in the past. I did that. We actually. There was a point where there were exactly eight of us, myself included. And so we just ran through Diablo 2. That was during COVID It worked out as a bonding exercise. So we tell those stories. It's different for different people, right? That's a very content centric story that we can talk about. So we do use that as an example still. There's a bunch of other, like little stories from the past, including from Diablo 3 that we still kind of use in an illustrative way.

[Greg Miller]

I love that.

[Zavin]

That's the legacy, man. Storied franchise, dude. 30 years, right?

[Greg Miller]

It's a. I can only imagine the pressure at any point in time to live up to the legacy of Diablo.

[Zavin]

You know, you can see it as a pressure thing or you can see it as a challenge thing. And I think it's all about perspective. I kind of look at it as a challenge thing.

[Greg Miller]

Oh, yeah? What's your wife look at it? Is it. It's her shared burden of you just like, ah, coming home every night. I gotta do this. I gotta make the greatest game all time. Or ruining the lake legacy.

[Zavin]

I am very, very fortunate that we actually, I. I miss our anniversary because of the launch as well, so.

[Greg Miller]

Oh, my goodness.

[Zavin]

I owe her.

[Greg Miller]

How many years?

[Zavin]

I don't know. Long time. She doesn't know either. I don't feel bad.

[Greg Miller]

Okay.

[Zavin]

We got married. We got. We kept on going back, so, like, sure, 13 years.

[Xanth]

Nice.

[Greg Miller]

How'd you guys meet?

[Zavin]

Online dating. Like most people.

[Xanth]

Nice.

[Zavin]

At this point, I think. Yeah. Two kids, you know, not bad. I got my. I got my.

[Greg Miller]

They like each other. All right. It's going all right. I got you.

[Mike]

I know that we're quite some time removed from it because it has been a fun rollout, but what was it like with the Paladin into the Warlock releasing and releasing two new heroes, two new characters and classes, but separate timing on this. What was that like? And how did that pan out now that we can kind of look back on it?

[Zavin]

I mean, you know, we were saying, like, oh, Lord of hatred does things that's never been done before. There's another thing that's never been done before is shadow dropping a class basically at the start of a season. Right. Never been done before. I have to just give a massive shout out to our QA team to our class designers who, you know, they basically had to get done before the rest of the expansion was done by months. And they pulled it off. And also, massive shout out to our live ops department. These are the heroes who, like, make sure things go smoothly. And Paladin was like, crazy smooth. And we were able to hide it. It was able to be a surprise. And again, we had a lot of players who were keeping the faith. You know, shout out to them, don't give up. Follow your dreams. Paladin was there. I want you to walk into the street and scream, like, again, like, we've just been seeing players say, paladin, Paladin, Paladin. You know? You know, they won't make it. So honest. And so it was like a sense of relief. I was at the game awards when we did it, and I think not everyone, like, it didn't actually click for people because it was such a weird Thing to have the class launch early. Like not everyone actually understood what we meant. I remember being a thing. We had to kind of like hand hold some people and say like no, like you can go live now now

[Greg Miller]

and play it and go right now. Turn it on.

[Zavin]

Yeah. They're just not. They. They couldn't imagine that we would do it right. Because Blizzard had never done anything like that. Gabo had especially never done anything like that.

[Mike]

From the outside it felt like a great shot to the arm of like, hey, let's get back in there. There's something new, there's something fresh for people who might not be like Zanth grinding away and always playing this right. It felt like, hey, I'm calling my friends up.

[Zavin]

You.

[Mike]

You see they dropped a new class. We gotta go play right now. Like it was. It was. Felt good like that.

[Zavin]

Yeah. It was actually the hope to like, you know. We knew we weren't going to dive into all the details at launch. Sorry. Revealed at the Game Awards. We were not going to talk about everything. We listed almost everything but we didn't describe any of it. But the Paladin was tangible. You can go play it and you can experience it and hopefully, you know, players could just. We didn't have to talk about it. They can go play it and know we meant business with this expansion that we weren't pulling our punches. Right. It was all in. And by the way, Mystery second class right at this at the same time. So just like the mind blowingness of it was kind of the goal. Right. Just be very clear with our players or the community. Hey, we're listening. We know what makes a great Diablo game. We're just going right for it. And here's kind of the opening shot. Right. And again, I'm super proud of everyone who puts their work into that. It was nuts. We've never done anything like that before. We had basically two versions of season 11 being simultaneously developed. It was nuts.

[Mike]

That's awesome. Well, I want to talk more about the expansion and what we're playing right now. We're going to get down deep into it because we also got to talk about the new location a little bit. You know, we're running around. I want to hear all about that. But we're going to come back with more right after a word from our sponsors. Great opportunity to get those questions in. You have any questions for the Diablo team or Xanth and Greg myself. Get them in the chat right now. We'll continue to ask those on the second half of the stream. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor.

[Host (Sponsor Reads)]

This episode's brought to you by Rocket Money. Rocket Money can track subscriptions and has the ability to cancel unwanted ones within the app with just a few taps, saving users over $880 million in canceled subscriptions. The amount of times that Snowbike Mike is has signed up for something, forgot about it after the trial period ends and then charged. It's quite frankly terrifying. So many people have at least one paid subscription going unused each month. Thanks to Rocket Money, you can see all of your subscriptions in one place and cancel them within the app with just a few taps, saving time and avoiding charges, and the app consolidates checking, savings, loans and investments into a single dashboard. Rocket Money is a personal finance app that helps find and cancel all unwanted subscriptions, monitors your spending, and helps lower your bill so you can grow your savings. Let Rocket Money help you reach your financial goals faster. [e-mail] KindaFunny that's RocketMoney.com Kinda funny this episode's brought to you by Factor. Sometimes hunger strikes and you are just exhausted or you're hosting shows back to back to back and you just don't have it in you to set up and prepare the whole meal that you thought you would have time for. That's why so many of us here at Kinda Funny Love Factor. Factor makes it easy with fully prepared meals designed by dietitians and crafted by chefs so you can eat well without the shopping or cooking. On many occasions. Factor has completely saved Greg and Jen when they needed it most. Every meal is crafted with functional ingredients, lean proteins, colorful veggies, whole foods and healthy fats. Factor bans 175 plus ingredients, no artificial colors or sweeteners, no high fructose corn syrup, no refined seed oils, nutrient dense food. Feel the difference no matter your routine, head to factorymeals.com kindafunny 50 off and use code kinda funny 50 off to get 50 off and free daily greens per box with new subscription only while supplies last until September 27, 2026. See the website for more details. This episode's brought to you by Aura Frames. Mother's Day is right around the corner and guess what I need to worry about for the very first time? Getting Gia a Mother's Day gift. But guess what? I'm not stressing at all because I got the perfect gift lined up to show off all the adorable pics. A little baby Samsam this year, ditch the flowers and upgrade to the digital frame. All of Kinda Funny loves The Aura frame. With the Aura Frame, Greg's been able to constantly keep his mom updated with photos of her grandson via the Aura app. He just clicks the photo of little Benny as he's shredding on his skateboard all over here in San Francisco. Help is that by the way, it taps a button and it's on Jamie Kennedy's frame in Chicago named number one by Wirecutter. You can save on the Gifts mom's love by visiting oriframes.com for a limited time. Listeners can get 25 off their best selling Carver matte frame with the code. Kinda funny. That's a U R A frames.com promo code. Kinda funny. Support our show by mentioning us at checkout. Terms and conditions apply.

[Mike]

Talk about coming back after that ad. We have a lot to talk about now. We got Xanth, of course, always working out and playing at the same time. Sinking it up on his.

[Greg Miller]

He inspired me. Do you know that's. I play games on the peloton now.

[Zavin]

Nice.

[Greg Miller]

Because I was, I. I had played games way back when I had a gym membership on the Stairmaster.

[Mike]

Okay.

[Greg Miller]

And then when he was like, I do it on the treadmill. Like that makes so much sense. And I was like, you know what I probably could do on the peloton. And I do.

[Mike]

Nice. Great.

[Greg Miller]

You figured it out. Nice.

[Mike]

What are you playing on? Because we were just talking about syncing it up. Xanth playing on PlayStation now, going through cloud play on the phone or remote play. What are you playing?

[Greg Miller]

I guess you haven't heard of my baby. Oh, yeah, the Asus, Rog, Xbox, Ally X that I love and play all the time.

[Mike]

Okay.

[Greg Miller]

I can't believe Andy tried to break my Y button. But it doesn't matter. I use it all the time and that's where I'm playing for Sure. I mean, it depends, you know, what I'm onto, but usually that's where it is.

[Mike]

Zavin, that's a fun question. Of course, Diablo 4, similar to other Diablo games out everywhere though. But like, what is that like to hear Xanth Cloud playing it remotely on the treadmill. Greg playing it on every device under the sun. What is that like for you and the team? When we Talk about Diablo 4 being such a hit and on so many

[Zavin]

different ecosystems, every time we do that, it adds a bit of complexity to development. And it's awesome to hear that it was worthwhile because it means more people play however they want. Like, I grew up playing Diablo 2 in particular in a PC cafe. I didn't even have a machine that could run that thing at home when I was very young. Right. So I had no choice. I had to go to this PC cafe to play Diablo 2 with my friends all the time. But nowadays, yeah, running off your phone, kind of nuts.

[Mike]

Isn't that amazing? Yeah. Me and my brother grew up with Diablo 2 on the PC and I cannot believe that we're playing it on the phone. It's wild.

[Zavin]

It's nuts. And it holds up, too. I haven't played it on the phone personally, but I've seen other people stream right from their devices to their phones. It's nuts. It's crazy that it can even happen. I feel like you look in the last 30 years or whatever of industry and what we've kind of been able to achieve. It's nuts. And testament to our engineers who've been able to do miracles.

[Greg Miller]

You know, as somebody who plays so much on so many different platforms all the time, shout out, of course to you and the team for making sure it's. You have a cross platform. Save the fact that I boot. You know, I mean, I'm on the. I'm using the PC launcher. I'm on the razor blade at my desk. I go home, I put on the Series X. All right. I'm doing on PlayStation. If you're a remote player, I mean, it's insane that it's all there.

[Zavin]

Yeah, absolutely. It's actually, you know, I think back to like even battle.net with Diablo 2. I can log into that account anywhere and just play that same character. We take that for granted these days. But that wasn't always true. I couldn't do that with, you know, playing Diablo 1 back in the day without actual or whatever it was. So I feel like we're just in this new era. You're just connected everywhere. You're playing the game, your characters follow you no matter what platform you're on right now. Absolutely nuts. I love it.

[Mike]

What are some of the headaches or obstacles to have it running so well on the back end? Right. You and Xanth, before we started, we're talking about the engine really singing and like finding its way now. Like, what are some of those hiccups that the team have to overcome to fix that and make it perfect?

[Zavin]

So it's like resolutions are different across platforms. It's just like a thing. The hardware is different. Some platforms, consoles are locked to their hardware. You're not going to be upgrading those graphic cargo anytime soon. Right. So it puts a lot of pressure on our performance. Kind of initiatives, like making sure that the game is running smoothly, as smoothly as possible, especially with an action rpg, is really hard, right? You can't just go and collect every monster in a dungeon to a single point and then throw an apocalypse on them or whatever. You can do that and just try to make sure that the game is always running, no matter what crazy stuff players do. It's also because it's an action rpg, we don't actually know everything that you can do. Players surprise us all the time. It's a part of the magic of the genre. It's something we embrace with Diablo, which means sometimes you're like, oh, God, what are they doing? It's like melting the servers or it's just melting their computer, right? So designing in this space is very challenging because you want to make sure you don't put players in a position where the right way to play is basically to destroy their machine. Right? It's just. It's just really challenging. And this counts to, like, monster density and all this kind of stuff, but also just how they're incentivized to play with their buttons, right? What. What are they playing? What. What times are they pressing their buttons and things like that all have an impact on this. So it is really much like art, engineering, design. Everyone has to be working together to make sure that we are not in a position where we have to limit how fun the game is for it to run well.

[Mike]

How do you feel as you look towards the future now? Like, are you. You and the team feel like you're set up for the next five years, 10 years? Is there a lot of work to be done that will always constantly be evolving and changing?

[Zavin]

Not going to talk about major future stuff or anything like that, but I will say do it, you know, because I've seen.

[Greg Miller]

Where's Diablo 5? We knew that's the only reason we brought you on. We knew we'd crack you.

[Zavin]

Nice try. So I will say one thing. I know that, you know, we did so many updates, you know, overhauls, reworks, all this stuff for, like, okay, like, we're really happy with Lord of Hatred right now. Are we done with, you know, flipping a table on something? And I will say we're. We're basically. We're happy with it, too. We feel like most of the game systems are in a very healthy place. Optimization's in a really good place. Crafting's in a good, good place. Guiltry's in a good place. There's some weird outliers where it's like, Ah, that's kind of out of date. Maybe we'll do something there. But, you know, the. The era of, like, big changes. I feel like we've hit a really good point right now, but it always depends on what the community tell us. So we're waiting really early right now in Season of Reckoning in Lord of Hatred, right?

[Greg Miller]

Yep.

[Zavin]

What do players feel in two weeks? What do they feel in two months? What do they feel in two years? And so we're responsible.

[Greg Miller]

That's a question I have for you in an interesting spot, because it's gonna sound like I'm fishing. I'm not fishing, I swear. It's more. This is out now. Awesome. Everybody's playing it. You're taking in feedback, yada, yada, yada. We talked at the top of the show about, okay, when you had to just sit there and take your loafs while people were asking, blah, blah, blah. How do you view the upcoming Blizzcon? Cause it's September. Right?

[Mike]

Right.

[Greg Miller]

Am I wrong about that? Is September. No. September crushed it. Like, is that going to. Do you see that now as the next milestone you guys are working towards for whatever that is? I'm not saying big, small update, whatever, or is that going to be the victory party of, hey, we did this. We did Lord of Hatred. We got it to this great place. Now we get to be with the community.

[Zavin]

I'm not sure what you mean by the victory party party part, because, like, I feel like we're in the victory party now, but now you're gonna literally

[Greg Miller]

be with your community then literally everything. I'm gonna be there.

[Zavin]

Mike's gonna be there. I. I'm. I'm excited by that. Blizzcon is one of my favorite things. Dan, he's going, for the first time I get to meet this dude. That'll be great. But I'll say, as a. As a developer, like, Blizzcon is always like, where you go to charge your batteries, or at least that's what it always felt like me, like, yeah, sure. It's not that everyone's just like, oh, no, you can't mess up, or whatever.

[Greg Miller]

You know, people actually criticism.

[Zavin]

Like, I want to be very clear. That has happened multiple times. But the. The. You can just feel the passion so much more at BlizzCon. Even if somebody has, like, tough things to say. Right. And criticisms to give. It's just very different being in person and seeing that. Not the same thing as seeing a bunch of posts online or whatever. Right. Like saying, oh, this thing's Bad or whatever. We hear that this thing's bad at Blizzcon, like, all the time, but having it in person and just being able to kind of jive as a. As a. As a, you know, as people, as humans who are fans of this game, devs and players together is magical. There's nothing like it. And anytime we've skipped blizzcon has just been a rough year for me, personally, because I don't get that right. So I'm excited in terms of, like, what are we looking forward to next? I'm looking forward to finishing Lord of Hatred. Personally, I have not been able to play because I've been traveling and I've been overseas and stuff. So I'm like, finally, finally, as of yesterday, was able to play for the first time ever. And so, like, way behind my wife right now, who's, like, in Endgame. But, yeah, next things up, you know, realistically, is the next season.

[Greg Miller]

Like, hell yeah.

[Zavin]

We're. We're not. We're not resting. That's. That's not how we do things. Right.

[Mike]

A fun one for you then, since it's your turn to finally jump into the game. Toasted. AFK did write in with a super chat and says, sorry, guys, just got to the stream. What class is everybody running right now? And this will be a fun one for you. Of what class will you gravitate towards? What are you going to pick when it's finally your time on the sticks?

[Zavin]

So I'm. I'm playing Warlock right now, and I want to. I want to play the game, I want to. I want to get through a bunch of this stuff. But my usual is I would play a hardcore character. So I've kind of already decided after I finish my Warlock, I'm going to roll a hardcore Sorc and Z when I die.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, of course, when Zant, he was like, oh, well, I had to do my soft core. He's always calling out whenever he comes down here with the commoners. Whenever he comes and plays up, I never do this. I only when Rod Ferguson was on the show. Oh, I never do this. I'm like, all right, we get it, Zach. You're better than a scene.

[Xanth]

There's no way to not sound pretentious that I only play hardcore. So I'm just gonna soak it up. And I'll admit it, you've earned it.

[Greg Miller]

You know what I mean? With the hours you've put in, with what you've done, you've earned it for sure.

[Xanth]

I just know how to time players

[Zavin]

like, you are the reason why we're like, yeah, of course we're gonna add hardcore.

[Xanth]

Absolutely. So I'm curious. Oven I. You know, we've talked a lot about, like, you know, we talked cube, we talked war plans. Well, we haven't really talked about our skill trees. Like the Warlock, you know, brand new class, everything feels new.

[Greg Miller]

And by the way, toasted afk. I'm running a Warlock. That's what you're seeing.

[Mike]

Oh, yeah.

[Greg Miller]

On your screen. We never really answered the question. We just moved on to what you're doing.

[Zavin]

We just moved on.

[Xanth]

I'm also running a Warlock.

[Mike]

And you're seeing a Paladin. I'm a paladin out there as well, so that's cool.

[Xanth]

But there are new skill trees for literally every single class. How much of an undertaking was that?

[Zavin]

I mean, it's basically making eight classes. You know, if you think about it like, this is a systems game. We have a bunch of systems. A class is. It's system. You. You can't. It's not just make a cool idea for a skill, right? There's tuning and balancing, but then you have to make all the iterations on it, right? All the choices in the tree. You have to make sure you have items that work with those skills. Otherwise they're basically dead ends. You have to make sure even the paragon board, right, has something that talks to your other choices, not to mention your own class mechanic. Every class is different, so each one of those is a different novel problem and then uniques again. Immense, immense problem space. And we effectively just assigned a person to each for the most part. Right. It was. It wasn't so clean. There were some people who doubled up and some people crossed over between classes. But that's basically how we kind of tackled it, was making sure that there's somebody who can own the vision and wherever possible, is someone who really understood that class. Right. So when I. When you. You say things like, oh, the Druid's feeling good, I'm like, hell, yeah. Because they did a great job, right?

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Xanth]

Send my kudos to them personally.

[Greg Miller]

Will do.

[Mike]

So what was it like for the team?

[Zavin]

Real clear, I'm not the guy. Yeah.

[Greg Miller]

Damn. He's like, all about himself, you know?

[Host (Sponsor Reads)]

Yeah.

[Greg Miller]

I'd like you to send my anger to the team. When I came and did my preview for. For Vessel of Hatred in the Q and A, I said when they were adding pets, they should add a wiener dog. And no one has done that. And so I'm still angry about that. Thank you. Back to you, Mike.

[Mike]

Not badass enough.

[Greg Miller]

What are you doing?

[Mike]

I want to talk about the Warlock spanning three different games, right? You put the Warlock in Diablo 2, Diablo Immortal, and now Diablo 4. Of course, like crazy stuff. And we've kind of talked about it in the previews. I'm sure people if they're too tuning in this far, they know about what that kind of looks like. But what was that design wise to create a character that's gonna or a class that's gonna go in three different games and kind of span the history of the Warlock here?

[Zavin]

You know, it actually kind of came in late. You know, the development timelines of the various games are not like aligned. You know, there isn't some master plan. Like, we're not that organized, guys.

[Greg Miller]

Game development.

[Zavin]

We eventually hit on the point of like, hey, we want whatever we do in the class space to represent what we considered a very important core theme for Lord of Hatred, which was Heaven and hell, humanity caught in the center, right? And just having classes or having a class that could represent and speak to those ideas separately. The Diablo two guys were spinning up a potential new class and they were looking at some of the same things. We were looking at that. And then so is the. On the Immortal side, they were kind of looking in the same space. So there is that moment. You know, it's like that meme like, wait, who are we? Just like kind of all going in the same direction. And. And it felt like, well, we're all just trying to make it a very Diablo thing. And you know, what Diablo hasn't done is this. And so we were all kind of just walking towards the same space before we realized we were all walking towards the same space. And then honestly, it wasn't even. So like, okay, let's decide what it is and parcel it out. We basically just decided on, hey, narrative links between stuff. How does this go? Right? And you know, kind of having this idea that the Warlocks, you know, kind of came about during Reign of the Warlock, Diablo 2 time and then sort of evolved over the years into the one that we have in Diablo 4. That was something we worked out. We worked out what visual identity could be, right? Sigils, runes, words, language, we make up languages and stuff for our, you know, various cultures, all that kind of stuff. And then beyond that, we were like, so it's about demons, right? And hellfire. Cool. And then just move and that's it. And everyone just kind of did their own thing and we just let every part of this define what is the right Warlock for their game, right? It makes no sense for Diablo 4 to tell Diablo 2 how its warlock should play or vice versa. So hey, Diablo 2, you guys know that game. You guys are in tune with what the community wants. Go make the best Warlock you can for Diablo 2. Diablo Immortal is going to do the same. Diablo 4 is going to do the same.

[Greg Miller]

That's awesome. Speaking of doing the same, Etreyu in the chat says WOW has a wiener dog pet now. So just copy those assets over to Diablo and we're set to go.

[Zavin]

It sounds like, you know, I, I, we did make that joke at one point by the way, which was like, hey, for the first time we'll take a WOW class, right? They took everything else, so we'll, we'll take the war.

[Mike]

There you go.

[Zavin]

I feel like we barred enough right now. Maybe we have to let that on cool down.

[Greg Miller]

Fair? Fair.

[Xanth]

Maybe that's a Blizzcon. Surprise, Greg.

[Greg Miller]

There it is. There it is.

[Xanth]

That's all I want.

[Greg Miller]

I'm not asking for too much.

[Zavin]

The bad news is it's on a stick.

[Mike]

That is good.

[Greg Miller]

Oh, the new wiener dog weapon.

[Host (Sponsor Reads)]

You know what?

[Greg Miller]

That's a corn dog.

[Zavin]

Butcher presents. Do not be foolish.

[Xanth]

As a, you know, you, you made mention like you played Diablo 2 back in the day in an Internet cafe. What was your reaction to seeing the like hearing internally that they were going to update Diablo 2?

[Zavin]

So the way I actually heard about it is, you know, my lead at the time was like, hey, we need you to go look at something. And I did. I knew that we were eventually going to do it. You know, Starcraft was a hit. We're like, okay, we're going to do this. And so they just asked me like, hey, like, go just take a look at what they're doing, see if there's anything you can do to help and so on. So I went and I remember the presentation and I got to see it running before it had all the art, like it wasn't like done, but I was like, oh man, this is gonna feel like coming home. Like for a bunch of our players, this is just gonna feel like coming home. I was excited. You know, I had dipped my toes a long time ago. I worked on, we had an anniversary event in Diablo 3. I worked on darkening at Tristram. And I knew even back then, like we have an audience who spans generations at this point. You know, people play their, play this game with their kids, in some cases with their grandkids. Crazy, right? So I just kind of knew that this is going to resonate so deeply with a bunch of our core audience, right? And I knew going into Diablo 3, you know, we had, we had taken our lumps on some. It's like, hey, this isn't like that game. This is a little different. Diablo 4 is also not exactly like that game. And from our perspective, that's fine. Not every Diablo game has to be the same. D1 and D2 are very different. But it's like, here's a great way for people who really, really wanted Diablo 2 and have more Diablo 2 to be able to get it. And we kind of expect it's like, well, and if it's successful enough and we're successful enough in making this, that gives us an opportunity to grow it. Now we've got Reign of the Warlock, right? So it was, it was unreal kind of seeing that. It's like the. It's like a memory from the past and you're like have the rose tinted glasses thing, but you take the glasses off, it's like, oh shit. No, it does look dope. It looks.

[Greg Miller]

It is that great.

[Zavin]

The question is, what will he do with it?

[Mike]

One of my favorite parts of a new Diablo expansion or a lot of Blizzard expansions is a new area, a new part of the map to go explore, go out and, you know, share with my friends. We haven't talked about the new area of the map. Loving the look of it so far. I'm sure Xanth and Greg will go in a little more detail with you. But like, what was that? Like, what was the decisions of, hey, we want to go with a little brighter coastal side of things. You brought up the boat as well, which is a big deal. Never been on a boat before, so that was pretty cool.

[Zavin]

Stuff like that at it was Scovos was I call like a day zero decision in that I went into, you know, working on Lord of Hatred, saying, I want to go Scovos. So I again, I played YouTube back in the day. I played Amazon, I read the manuals. I loved all this stuff and never been there. So I knew that no matter what, like Lord of Hatred should go somewhere new. Especially, you know, we're coming out in a Hontu. We had just gone to Chaldeum and Kerstan and stuff. I want to go somewhere new. And so there's not a whole lot of places left that was brand new and that was one of them. And it's a legend. So when I joined Diablo 3, Scovos had already been cut. So there was a very early version of Diablo 3. It was in the plan. They never actually made it by the way, but it was cut. And I remember as a new employee walking down the halls and there's this gorgeous painting concept art of Scovos. I actually have it right there on the floor.

[Greg Miller]

That's awesome.

[Zavin]

I'm pointing in this way. It's actually right over there. And I would just see this friggin painting every day for years. And it's just taunting me. Like, look at a picture of something that can't be and won't be and we're never going. So going into this I was like, oh hell yeah, we're going to Scovos no matter what.

[Greg Miller]

I'm doing it.

[Zavin]

Yeah. And then the bright color palette is. It's really funny. I think everyone was kind of like, you're doing whatever we, we had like initial concept art. And I was like, no, trust me, this is going to be such a cool juxtaposition. You're gonna see in real time this place go to hell. And until we finally had the whole kind of place built out is when I think it clicked for everybody and they understood kind of what were. What was going on here. And yeah, when you first get to Scopus, it's like, oh man, it's so nice here. It's like, yeah, shame something would happen, right?

[Xanth]

We are getting to one of. So there are two boss fights in this campaign that are major highlights. This is one of them. Now the other one we won't talk about. For anybody who has not made it towards the end of the game, what can you tell us about this boss fight? The Inarius boss fight? Because this, I mean technically we fought an angel in Diablo 3, but it was a little different because you know, he was corrupted by the black Soul Stone. This is an angel fight. How did this come to be?

[Zavin]

So we knew from the, from the get go in Diablo 4 that we really wanted to double down on this idea of, you know, the story about the creators of Sanctuary and you can imagine that's Inarius and Lilith. Lilith was the big bad that ties in directly to, you know, what is. Who are the characters in her orbit. Rathmasto and Inarius are kind of like this. The three characters who are most in her orbit and you know, spoilers in Lord of Hatred, you'll be doing your showdown with Mephisto. We just saw Rathma and we also knew that, you know, she had successfully killed Inarius. But a lot of players wish they could punch him in the face themselves.

[Greg Miller]

Oh, 100%.

[Zavin]

And I I felt that, too. I was like, I would love to punch this dude in this face.

[Greg Miller]

He's a jerk.

[Zavin]

But it just felt right. Right. Because, you know, we. There was a bunch of stuff that we were excited to be able to show the relationship between these characters, spending a bit more time with them, especially now with Lilith, in a very different context. Right. We're not hunting her. She's not hunting this. We're sort of working together. And trying to get her perspective on these events was really important to developing her character more. And then on top of that, Mephisto has a relationship with this guy too. He tortured him for thousands of years. Right. And it's always been the biggest mystery over what that looked like and what that was and what was the point. And so we got to answer some questions. On top of that, I said before, boss fights must be epic, and we have to see new things that we've never seen before. To your point, you never actually fought a true heavenly, angelic angel, Right? Like, as angel as they could be with no precondition or, you know, qualifications. There's no soul stone stuff. It's not death. Whatever. We get to do this. And so it was. It was an absolute blast. And, you know, we're always inspired by everything that has come before. I know a lot of people wish they could punch imperious in the face. That was another good example. Right. But we saw Inarius. We've already established Inarius as super badass. We see him in that cinematic. Just wreck the demons in hell, and now you get to fight him. And I. I saw, like, live streams, and I saw people playing, and they just thought it was gonna be like a quest NPC moment. And then the chains break and the music starts. It's like, nope, get. Get locked in, like you're about to fight this thing. Yeah. He's got quite a few kills, by the way. I think on internal statistics, he just killed Mike.

[Xanth]

So, yeah.

[Mike]

Yeah, he got me, put one up on the board.

[Greg Miller]

How hard is it not to just sit at your desk and look and refresh statistics like that, see what's happening. You know, when I got my tour of Blizzard, when I went for Vessel, it was. You know, we walked by the war room, and it's just screens and what's going on and where people are logging in. Like, I feel like I would get lost in that on the daily.

[Zavin]

You know, I. When I first heard that we had all that stuff, I was like, oh, that's so cool. And I would go look at it and eventually I was like, it's fine. Like, I know it's there and I know anytime I want. More importantly, I trust that I've got colleagues who are looking at that stuff and if any, you know, funny business happens, they'll like, let me know and then we'll deal with it. Yeah.

[Greg Miller]

Oh, yeah, that's, See, I look at it just for like, oh, that's cool. Not the, oh my God.

[Zavin]

What's wrong?

[Greg Miller]

Why is it not working in East Asia right now? What is happening?

[Zavin]

I've been there. I will say there was a, there used to be. I don't know if we still have this map. Again, I don't go hunting stuff, but like we used to have a map that showed like players around the world, right? And you'd see kind of their activity and anytime there was like a server outage, you just see like this vanish on the world map. So we, we do have that kind of cool visualizations of stuff that I've seen before. But yeah,

[Mike]

guys, we are going to complete our stream after the end of this boss fight. So to Xanth, Greg, if you guys have any more questions to the audience out there, if you have any more questions, now is your time. Of of course we would love to keep Zing all day long and talk more Diablo, but I am not allowed to do that. I got to keep them moving. So now is a great opportunity for you to write in those final questions comments at all as we talk about Diablo 4 here. My fun one is, of course, the storefront is always interesting to me when we talk about live service games. Diablo in particular. Diablo 4 has a great storefront on a lot of awesome cosmetics in here. Any fun ones that stand out to you? Of course. I have the wow bundle on right now, which I really love. The Blizzard crossovers. What are some of your favorites? Is there any that you know you want to do or what else is there?

[Zavin]

I, I will say as soon as we're like, yeah, we're doing a Paladin, we're like, and then of course we're, we're doing Judgment. Like we're just kind of new from the get go, we're like, we're gonna have to, are going to want this, right? I, I think, I think there's some. Did you tell him we're in a wide world? I'm not, I, I, I can't say. I can't say. I shouldn't say it.

[Greg Miller]

Nobody's watching. Nobody's paying attention. They are. Is it also in this discord?

[Zavin]

No, I, I Think I'm good. I'm gonna keep my mouth shut on that one. It's always. It's always fun to do it because we, you know, we get to. If we're lucky, we do justice to it. Right? It's always exciting to try to get something through the lens of Diabolo and get into the world. I'm actually really happy with the berserk stuff that we did. It just looks so cool, right? Even the materials around it, like the promotional stuff around it is just an opportunity to have it to work and see this stuff come through in the world of Diablo. So I'm happy people are happy right now. Again, long time coming, Paladin players rejoice.

[Mike]

Xanth, Greg, anything before we wrap up today's stream?

[Greg Miller]

Okay. Congratulations. It's so much fun. I know Xanth's gonna have questions. He's gonna keep you talking. I just want to say how it's so nice to be back. Like, I love being back in Diablo 4.

[Zavin]

I'm really happy to hear that, honestly.

[Mike]

We.

[Zavin]

We're not. I'm not just saying it. Labor of love, dude. We play the game, we're feeling the same thing. And so that's how we know, like, oh, this is. This is going to be bomb. Players are going to love it.

[Xanth]

Since I'm. I'm taking the last one, I think.

[Mike]

Yes, you get the last one. End of strong.

[Xanth]

Let's. Let's look a little bit to the future, right? You've done all of this great work with Skill Trees with the Cube. Does the work that you've. Does the work that you've put in for this expansion make seasonal content easier?

[Zavin]

You mean like, easier to make?

[Xanth]

Yeah.

[Zavin]

So I don't know about that. Let's make one better for us to make development is own thing, but I will say is we were very intentional to say, like, hey, we're going to add these things. Seasons going forward need to benefit in some way from the existence of these things in the game. And so one of the things that we had was like, hey, we're building not just an amazing expansion with these great features, we are building a platform for the future. So we think about the Cube and war plans in particular as good examples of this is they are systems. They are features that can vary not easily in terms of work and difficulty of work, but they have space to grow. That was really important for us to make sure that we have space to grow. Then changes to itemization, changes to the skill tree are all in support of that. As well, when we say easier, really, we just mean we made sure that the game has space to grow. It's not necessarily missing anything. It's not like, oh, there's these gaps to fill is that, hey, if this part of the game is successful, we can keep going, right? We can keep going for a lot longer.

[Greg Miller]

Hell yeah.

[Xanth]

Nice

[Mike]

guys. Everyone out there watching the kind of funny best Friend audience. Thank you so much for tuning in to this week's Kind of Funny Games. Cast plays for Diablo 4 with a brand new expansion. Say what, Greg?

[Greg Miller]

I'm kicking everybody out of the clan that has been gone for over a month. So if you want to join the kind of funny clan, you have your shot. This is, this is it, everybody.

[Mike]

Great way to end that one. That's right. Of course. That is our ARPG expert Xanth joining us. And that is the associate game director, Zavin joining us from Diablo and Blizzard. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you for answering the questions and thank you for sharing in the excitement and the enthusiasm that is Diablo and Video Gaming.

[Zavin]

Thank you guys so much for having me. It's fun.

[Mike]

Of course, to everyone out there watching you, it's been our pleasure to serve you. We'll be back tomorrow with more Kind of Funny Games content.