Diablo 4 is currently in its open beta ahead of its release later in June. Despite a few technical hiccups, the feedback so far has been generally positive and there are already thousands of Diablo fans grinding their way through Sanctuary.
But what about Diablo 3? Well, as you probably could have guessed, the arrival of Diablo 4 means that Blizzard will be focusing its efforts on developing new content for the new game, and so, Diablo 3’s next season will be its last. At least, in terms of new content.
In an interview with Wowhead (via Games Radar+), Diablo general manager Rod Fergusson said that Season 29 will be the last new season for Diablo 3. Also, "it won't be as rich as Season 28," so Nephalem might not receive the usual armor, portrait, and pet cosmetics they've become accustomed to. If I had to guess I'd say that the armor is probably the most likely feature to be cut for Season 29 as it requires the most work, but we'll have to see. Fergusson did say that Season 29 will still have its own theme, so there's that.
Beginning with Season 30, Diablo 3 will begin repeating content from prior seasons with "a mix and match of previous cosmetics and features that made up previous Seasons." With 29 seasons to choose from, there's quite a lot of content in Diablo 3's back catalog, which will surely provide plenty of variation for die-hard Diablo 3 fans.
What this essentially means is that Diablo 3 is on its way to retirement. You gotta admit, eleven years is a tenure any game would be proud to have, especially after a start as rocky as Diablo 3. Blizzard spent years learning the ins and outs of a live-service game, and now it plans to execute those lessons in the upcoming Diablo 4, which arrives on June 2.
Diablo 4's beta tests are giving us a great idea of what to expect from the final product. It appears most of the changes we can expect between now and release will be technical, such as improvements to server stability and hopefully a solution to the thorny issue of some players' GPUs being bricked. We know for sure that Diablo 3's fantastic respecc system will make it into the final release, with players able to refund single skills or an entire tree for a very reasonable fee. It's not quite as forgiving as Diablo 3's system, but it will make it so buildcrafters will have plenty of room to tinker in the endgame, and players will be able to switch out their builds in the early game without much of a financial setback.