This week, *Diablo 4* unveiled its first-ever content roadmap, offering players a detailed glimpse into what’s coming in 2025 and a sneak peek at potential updates for 2026. The roadmap was discussed in an exclusive interview with IGN and *Diablo 4* game director Brent Gibson, where topics such as the second expansion and future collaborations were explored.

However, the release of the roadmap sparked a wave of discussion—and some concern—within the *Diablo 4* community. Many players questioned whether the planned content would be substantial enough to keep them engaged throughout 2025.

“Oh boy! Can't wait for new Helltide color and temporary powers,” said Reddit user Inangelion. “It's gonna be so dope!”

While that enthusiasm was echoed by some fans, others expressed disappointment over what they saw as a lack of innovation in upcoming seasonal updates.

“A new season in other ARPGs is like ‘let's put in a little housing system where you build up a home base with vendors that give you more gear’ or ‘let's put in a whole shipping system where traders from other lands bring materials that let you upgrade your items in ways that change your class mechanic entirely,’” added feldoneq2wire.

“A new season in D4 is ‘what color are we making helltides this time?’ And ‘what powers and reputation skins are we whipping up this time?’”

Some players voiced concerns about the depth of new content, even while affirming their love for the core game:

“I'm not a Diablo 4 hater, I love the game, but there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of meat on the bone here which is a bit disappointing,” said Fragrantbutte.

“‘And more’ is doing a lot of heavy lifting here,” added artyfowl444.

The growing debate prompted *Diablo 4* community manager Lyricana_Nightrayne to respond directly on the game’s subreddit:

“We added fewer details to the later parts of the roadmap to accommodate for things the team is still working on,” they clarified. “This isn't all that's coming in 2025 :)”

Blizzard’s Seasonal Content Strategy Under Scrutiny

One of the key points of contention is Blizzard’s approach to seasonal content resets. While some players appreciate the fresh start each season brings, others argue it diminishes long-term investment. Some have even suggested they may stop playing until 2026, when more substantial updates are expected.

Mike Ybarra, former president of Blizzard and current executive at Microsoft, also shared his thoughts on X (formerly Twitter):

“Don't ship to check a box,” Ybarra said. “Seasons need to get off the cycle of shipping, spending two months to fix issues, then repeating.

Pause and give the team time to really address the end-game issues. Playing for a week to then one or three shot a ‘uber’ boss 500 times for a unique, then quitting until next season is fundamentally not fun.

Expansions schedule is too long - should be yearly. Reduce ‘story’ investment (costs so much for one-time element in an ARPG) and focus on new classes, new mob types, new end-game activities that last more than a few days.

If the cycle continues to just ship without fixing the fundamental issues, then I'm not sure where Diablo is going. You can add all the end-game activities you want, but you'll be running in place with the same issues. At some point there's just so many random things, it's not worth the effort.”

Diablo 4: Vessel of Hatred Gameplay Screenshots

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Much of the conversation around expansions stems from the delay of *Diablo 4*’s second expansion, originally slated for 2025 but now set to arrive in 2026. Originally, Blizzard had aimed to release an expansion annually, with *Vessel of Hatred* arriving in 2024 as planned. However, expansion two will now skip 2025 entirely.

In our conversation with Gibson, he acknowledged the evolving nature of developing a live-service title like *Diablo 4*, balancing both free seasonal content and major paid expansions:

“I definitely feel like gamers are more hungry than they've ever been,” Gibson said. “And even if you delivered on their appetite today, that appetite will shift tomorrow. And so you just have to be in a really good spot to adapt to that situation. Because a lot of times too, what's important this month is going to be completely different three months from now. The priority of things can shift very, very quickly based on another game release or the state of your own game. Or maybe we've discovered something really cool and we want to be able to get it in there to change the formula.

And so it is definitely a new way of developing. It is definitely high interaction with the community. The interesting thing about Diablo is that we have a lot of different community types, right? We have our casual players, we have our hardcore players. They all fall into subdivisions of types of players inside of that. And so what we look to do is season upon season, look at the things that are important to some of those groups and go after them with focus.

When you take a look at something like what we're doing in Season 8, we know we have a ton of boss lair feedback and so we're adding in the quality of life improvements for those players where that is a big focus of their gameplay type, or we might shift to nightmare dungeons when we're in Season 9. And so it's an opportunity for us to address different groups at different times, leading to an expansion where we're going to be addressing everybody all at once with something big.”

Upcoming Seasons Schedule

*Diablo 4* Season 8 is scheduled to launch later in April, followed by Season 9 in the summer, and Season 10 later in the year. Each season aims to refine and expand the player experience while laying the groundwork for larger updates ahead.