Some of you hyped for Diablo IV will be bummed with the news that one of the more contentious aspects of Diablo III will be returning in the form of “always online” gameplay.
At the BlizzCon 2019 panel, lead designer for Diablo IV Angela Del Priore addressed a question about whether the game can be played solo and whether it will support playing offline. “We are not going to support an offline mode,” says Del Priore. “But as I said before, nothing in Diablo IV is going to require partying up. You can play solo and dungeons are private. Campaign quest areas will [also] remain private.”
One of the main criticisms of Diablo III upon its launch (besides the eventually-axed Auction House) was its use of always-on DRM to protect against piracy. Meaning, if you didn’t have an internet connection when you started the game, you couldn’t play. Not to mention the bugs (or the wait times) that came along with the system.
While it was tolerated by PC gamers, the concept will no doubt be a bone of contention for console players, as Diablo III had the ability to play offline on the console versions of the game. For Diablo IV, all versions of the game will be online-only, regardless of whether you’re a console or PC player.
The Diablo IV campaign will take you through a massive open-world with five distinct regions. In a change from the previous entries, players won’t have to play through the main story in its entirety before doing much else. Instead, players can now take breaks and jump into the game’s side content whenever they want.
Diablo IV is in development for PS4, Xbox One and PC.