Following the departure of D2R Items its director in 2021 who had been in charge prior to that, following numerous lawsuits and investigations claiming allegations of a "frat boy" working environment in Activision Blizzard, Diablo IV is scheduled to launch in 2023. It will also support crossing-progression and crossplay between PC as well as consoles. Blizzard recently released new information concerning Diablo IV's fifth final launch game, the Necromancer.

We spoke with Diablo 4 director Joe Shely and general manager of the Diablo franchise Rod Fergusson about the current situation of Diablo and what their plans include for Diablo 4. as well as the way in which the game was designed to achieve them.

It's a busy time for Diablo. There's the launch of Immortal and this week you've shown some aspects in Diablo 4. Rod, as the overseer of the Diablo franchise, can you provide us a status report on the Diablo franchise? Where is it located and where do you think it ought to be?

Rod Fergusson: I think there's never been a better time to be an Diablo player and Diablo player. There's Diablo still out there--it's been since the beginning of time, but even in its most recent season, Season 26. There are over 150 million hours of gaming.

In actuality, we just hit 65 million players who played Diablo. We released Diablo 2: Resurrected in September. saw Diablo 2: Resurrected come backand more than five million players that came back to play D2:R. It's the 21st-year-old PC game that now has buy diablo 2 resurrected items been remastered and available on console too.