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Zaven Haroutinian hat damals mit einer gebrannten Kopie von Diablo 1 begonnen, Diablo 2 in Internet-Cafes gezockt und arbeitet 25 Jahre später als Associate Game Director an der Zukunft von Diablo 4. Im Interview steht er uns Rede und Antwort, wie der neue Warlock in Lord of Hatred das Diablo-Meta auf den Kopf stellen könnte – und wie Blizzard darüber hinaus sicherstellen will, dass Diablo 4 über Season 12 hinaus eine erfolgreiche Zukunft hat.
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00:01Diablo 4 Lord of Hatred erscheint Ende April 2026. Aber ich war jetzt schon in Kalifornien
00:07bei Blizzard zu Besuch, um mir einige der neuen Inhalte anzuschauen. Beispielsweise
00:11den brandneuen Warlock. Aber darüber hinaus musste ich in Diablo 4 jede Menge tun, damit
00:16die Leute auch dauerhaft am Ball bleiben. Und genau darüber spreche ich mit Diablos
00:20Associate Game Director Savan Harutunian im Interview. Viel Spaß damit. Und ich habe
00:26übrigens nur wenige Stunden vorher überhaupt erst erfahren, dass ich dieses Interview verlaufender
00:29Kamera haben werde. Ihr seht mich also mal beim 1A Improvisieren.
00:34With the Warlock, you are retroactively building up a new class throughout three
00:40different Diablo games. So maybe you can talk a little bit about the backstory of
00:46this new character and the whole idea behind him or her.
00:51Yeah. So, you know, if you look deep in the lore of the Diablo series, the
00:58Mage Clans used to be kind of doing bad things. They weren't always doing kind of
01:04the elemental stuff, the Visjarii in particular. They got their start as a Mage
01:08Clan summoning demons. They didn't realize what it was at start. And eventually it ran
01:13into the Mage Clan Wars and demon summoning, demonic magic was outlawed across
01:18Sanctuary. So this is the most forbidden magic that exists on Sanctuary. And we're, you know, never actually had this
01:26kind of show up in one of the
01:28classes kind of as a result because of this narrative. But we're at this point where like,
01:32okay, what kind of person would do this? They would have to have, you know, the best
01:39interests of Sanctuary in mind, right? They're not trying to be evil. It's not like a cultist. So the hero
01:44version of something like this is someone who's, you know,
01:46willing to sacrifice even their own humanity to try to protect Sanctuary, right? They're willing to put
01:52themselves on the line and their soul on the line and be hunted and hated by all the rest of
01:57humanity for, for, you know, the things that they're doing. And so with Diablo II
02:01Resurrected, Ring of the Warlock, we kind of start this with just the earliest, you know,
02:06idea of like, oh, he's taking forbidden knowledge. He's trying to learn. He's just
02:11getting his start. Maybe before this, he was just a regular Mage. And then going into
02:15Immortal, they start kind of letting loose more, right? They start being more
02:19comfortable doing this kind of stuff. Now it's sort of an established faction. And
02:24then by the time we get to Diablo IV, they have no compunction about doing this, right?
02:28They're, they're, they're not worried about what anyone else thinks of them at this
02:33point. They're not hiding and they are ready to do whatever they need to do and
02:38to deal with whatever dark powers they need to deal with to save Sanctuary.
02:41And from a, from a gameplay perspective, you know, of course there are some
02:45leverages between the Warlock in each iteration. But like the, the ability to
02:51summon demons, but what makes the, what does make the, the Warlock in D4 distinct
02:56compared to Resurrected and Immortal?
02:59Yeah. So every, you're right. Every single Warlock actually is, you know, we
03:04kind of talk about as in the context of its own game, right? So for Diablo IV, we know
03:09that at this point, narratively, they don't really have rules. They're willing to kind
03:14of do whatever they want. Um, and the, the way that they view demons is not necessarily
03:19as a minion or as a familiar or anything else like that. Um, they look at them as a very
03:24disposable thing. They are able to just take demons straight out of hell. Um, they don't
03:28necessarily have to just focus on the demons around them, uh, to be able to do this stuff.
03:33They can just at any point say, I need this problem taken care of. I'm going to summon a demon,
03:37bind it immediately and have it, you know, uh, explode over there and kill the rest of
03:41its friends. Uh, and then I'm just going to move on with my life because I don't care
03:44about that demon. Right. So like, yeah, they're not friends. It's like, oh, thank you. You
03:49know, it's, it, they're kind of viewed as a hammer or any other tool or something. It's
03:52like, well, I, it did what I needed to do and now I'm moving on with that life, but kind
03:56of their ability to just tap directly into hell and pull things straight from there, um, is,
04:01is kind of a major difference, uh, with this one and the other ones. Um, and again, we
04:06kind of look at it as, you know, the example I've always given is all the games have a
04:10barbarian. They all have a barbarian, but each barbarian is a little bit different and it
04:14fits the context of the game that it's in. The warlock is kind of the same thing.
04:18But this, there is skill connecting each, each warlock.
04:22Yeah. There, there's things that kind of, uh, show up more on the thematic layer than
04:26anything else across all three, because we're not trying to say, oh, uh, we have to find a
04:30one size fits all mechanic for all three warlocks. Right. We really wanted to make sure
04:34that every warlock was empowered to be the best version of a warlock for its own
04:38game. So there is no requirement or anything like that, that they're mechanically all
04:42identical. Even the way that they deal with demons is tied directly to the systems of
04:47the game that they're in. So the way that the Diablo two warlock kind of deals with
04:51demons and the way that the Diablo four warlock deals with demons is very different.
04:54Right. And immortal again is different than those.
04:56And can you walk us a little bit through the different play styles that you get to, to
05:01experience in Diablo four with the warlock? Uh, so yeah, um, we're, so I'm going to
05:06enumerate some things, but let's be honest, players are just going to find a bunch of
05:11stuff. I'm not going to pretend like, oh, these are all the things, but just to give
05:14some examples, right. Um, one of the things that we really like about the warlock is how
05:18crunchy it is. Um, so we try to make sure that, uh, I, in my opinion, this is maybe one
05:24of the more complex classes in terms of the way the various parts of its kit work together
05:29across the skill tree and also across this class mechanic with the soul shards. Um, so
05:34the idea here is if you want to be a, uh, a character who's just summoning lots of demons
05:39and just having these huge army sort of with you doing your will, uh, you can do that, right?
05:45You have an option to do that in your soul shard system and you have enough demon skills
05:49to be able to do that. If you want to focus more on just being more of a caster, right?
05:53So you're not really consorting with summoning demons or using their body parts or whatever
05:58like that. We, you can do that. We have this kind of like hex abyss sort of thematic that
06:03you can go with. It makes you play more like a traditional caster. Um, and then we have the
06:07version where it's, you know, I don't need lots of guys. I just need like a couple of guys.
06:13Um, and you can play that version too, where you're doing, you're being very selective with
06:17it. Um, but this is a mid range caster, which means it's very flexible. If you want to be
06:23up in the middle of stuff, you can, if you want to play from far away, you can do that
06:27too. And anywhere in between, we, we think of it as a visceral caster, right? There's
06:32a lot of physicality to it. Um, it's not, you know, magic motes and things like that,
06:37right? They basically put their whole body into it anytime they're fighting.
06:41Right. I can imagine there will be many comparisons with the Necromancer as a seminar. If you were
06:47to draw a line, what makes the, the, um, Warlock distinct compared to like, is it, is it this
06:52flexibility that you can pick and choose if you want to more like a cat play, like a caster or
06:57summoner or what would you say? I, I would say, and I love Necromancer. So I really hope I don't,
07:03you know, piss off a bunch of Necromancer players. Uh, I always kind of think of the Necro primarily
07:07as in the back of the line conducting, you know, and, and controlling the army of stuff up in the
07:15front. They even have a bunch of skills that they can shoot from the back and things like that.
07:18Yeah. There's flexibility. You can, you can do other things with the Necro. But when I think
07:22about that, it's like, I'm a ranged caster with a bunch of melee skeletons being like my wall,
07:27right? Sort of thing. The Warlock is more in the middle, right? They're, they're closer to the
07:32front line. They're in the front line and they're not necessarily summoning demons as this part of a,
07:38of an army that they're controlling in such a direct way. It's more like there's a problem over
07:43there. So I'm just going to send one of these demons to just deal with that problem. I don't
07:48actually care what happens to that demon after, because if I need, I'll just make another one,
07:52right? It's very disposable mindset in terms of how the minions work. Um, and again, some of these
07:57are, you know, it's, it's, it's a kind of a stretch to call it a minion even because they're using
08:02them
08:02almost as a projectile, right? You're launching demons at other things and then they explode.
08:07They're hardly ever alive. All right. When they're on screen, they're like, Oh, they showed up,
08:11they fell through the sky and they landed and splatted on the ground and their viscera killed
08:15everything there. So it's just a very different mentality. Um, visually it's very different,
08:20but also just play style wise, I'm not trying to build up an army and, and do stuff as my
08:25core
08:25thing. A lot of it is centered around the disposability of demons and just using them as
08:30tools. And talking about, uh, skills in the, in the spotlight video, you mentioned a massive
08:35overall for the skill tree and everything surrounding it. Can you dive a little bit deeper into what's
08:41going to change? Uh, yeah. Um, is everything a bit, okay. So, um, traditionally, right. Um,
08:49across the existing skill trees, usually you have, you have your skill, you can dump points into it,
08:53you can make it better. And then you usually have like one of a few options that you get to
08:58pick from.
08:59Um, and that's sort of this thing over and over again for all the skills that you do. And then
09:03in
09:04the skill tree, you have a bunch of passive benefits that you can do that aren't directly related
09:09to the skill. They might be adjacent to it. In some cases they can be kind of semi directly.
09:12And then you have the ultimates at the very end, which is more of a straight shot progression,
09:16right? There's not really a bunch of customization in those things. So all three of those things are
09:20going to change. So the skill tree is being focused on the skills, which means all the nodes in there,
09:26as much as we can, they are touching directly the skills that they're associated with, or in some
09:30cases, categories of things, if, if, if it makes sense, right. Um, and they're also being kind of
09:35purpose-built. So as an example, the druid skill tree is not identical to the sorcerer one because
09:39the druid has shape-shifting, which means there's some changes, right, in terms of like how you are
09:44trying to customize, because you have to take shape-shifting into account, things like that.
09:48So now with every skill, you can still put points into the skill to uprank it, but you can customize
09:53it in multiple stages. So right now the, the general number is in about three stages, right? Um, you can
10:00say, I'm going to have a choice between A and B over here, choice between A and B over here,
10:04and a
10:05choice between A, B, and C over at the end. And I can have any combination of those that I
10:09want
10:10for every skill, including all, you know, to the ultimates and things like that. And the cool thing
10:16about this is now when you start playing, you can just start customizing your skill right away.
10:21You don't have to wait for a legendary item or something else to drop to be able to play a
10:25play style
10:26specifically. You just get that from the get go. Instead, all those passive things that just
10:31generally enable, um, kind of wider swaths of play styles, that's actually been moved onto the
10:37legendary space instead. So if you're looking for progression power and trying to widen your
10:41abilities, then you can do that. But if you're trying to really customize fireball, you can just
10:46customize fireball. You have all those tools at your disposal. And we also have some other items
10:49that again, modify the customization even further. Uh, uniques can do this as an example. Um, but also
10:56we have items that say, you know what, that, that choice, that one's on. You can pick the other one.
11:01Now you have both, right? So there's cases where you have that layer of customization. And again,
11:05every class gets this, including the original flat five, including spirit born, including paladin,
11:11which means everyone who's playing paladin right now in season 11, right? By the time we get to, uh,
11:16Lord of hatred, the paladin's going to have the same thing. They're going to have way more options
11:21for all their skills, just like everyone else. But how do you, do you balance and play test such
11:27a huge overall? I can imagine it's already pretty much quite the task to, you know, with every new
11:32season, you have a new matter, uh, characters are evolving, players are finding out new, new strategies.
11:37And now you switch up so much of every class. How do you manage to, to balance this without being
11:45overwhelming? So, uh, I mean, for us, uh, we've, we've been doing this over a course of time,
11:51right? So we didn't start with everyone all at once. Um, I believe the first class that we did
11:56was actually the sorcerer. I think that was the first one that we, we were like, okay, this is a
11:59good shape of the tree. Um, but if you look at the paladin right now, live in season 11, you
12:05know,
12:05I'm not saying it's perfectly balanced. In fact, we know it's not, we know there's things we can do to
12:09make it balanced. Maybe some other class as we go up, maybe paladin has to go down. Besides the
12:14point, um, I feel like we're getting better, um, over time at the window, uh, is getting smaller,
12:23right? Or, you know, the gap is narrowing between the highest and the lowest. So we're getting better
12:28at balancing it. So we're taking all those learnings and we're pouring them into the skill
12:31tree update. So are there going to be, is there going to be perfect balance? No, I'm, that'd be
12:36foolish of me to say it's perfect balance, but we have a plan. Um, we're confident in it and we
12:42know
12:42that we can be very reflexive. And if we need to update things rapidly after the fact, we're
12:48committed to doing that because the goal is not to say this class or this play style is the only
12:52one
12:52you should do. We want the game to have all this variety, which means all of it has to be,
12:57um, you
12:58know, valuable for players to even try to do, you gotta be viable to do it. Yeah.
13:03In our German, um, GameStar community, there are many old school Diablo friends and, uh,
13:08discussion that always comes up is, uh, one about difficulty for, uh, Diablo four because,
13:14you know, there are many people who really like to, uh, delve deep into end game and like
13:18experience the pit and the tower and everything it has to offer. But there are other people who
13:22really just want to play campaigns and enjoy the story and everything. And they sometimes argue
13:28that the game is overall too easy. You become too powerful too fast because
13:35a power fantasy is what you want in the end, but they really like the approach of older Diablos
13:40that, that you work more to before you become better. So how do you balance between, um, those
13:46different target audiences? And I, uh, I saw in, in season 11, you already, uh, uh, the, the difficulty
13:52rose in, uh, I think the heart difficulty is now harder. Uh, do you have other ideas on
13:59how you're going to improve these difficulties in the future?
14:02So one of the things we are doing is, I know we've talked about this previously is, you know,
14:06adding more torment tiers. Um, so there's going to be, uh, and it's, it's not necessarily that
14:11the ceiling of the game is going higher. The ceiling is currently defined by features
14:15like the pit and the tower, right? That's the hardest place you can go, but the entire rest
14:19of the game can't scale right now. More torment tiers lets us do that. So that means things
14:23like infernal hordes or hell tide, they can start being competitive with things like pit
14:27and tower in terms of difficulty. That's a huge part because most of your end game is
14:31spent in those activities, right? So if those activities can't actually scale like the, you
14:36know, tower in the pit, then they get left behind. Everything starts feeling easy. So that's
14:39one thing. The other thing is I meant, you know, we were talking about the skill tree just
14:43now and I, and I put out there, it's like, yeah, the passives are by and large removed. The
14:48passives were a source of just free power historically. So as you're just playing
14:53through and leveling, the skill tree is just giving you in some cases like 500%
14:57extra damage, which is an extreme amount. I know there's cases where it was even more
15:02than that. That's just power that you didn't work for or earn in the traditional
15:07sense. It's not from you getting a cool build together. It's not from cool items you
15:11found. It's just, I played enough time and I have more power, right? So that stuff's
15:17gone, which means the power is now returned mostly to the item game and to the combinatorics
15:22of your builds. So if you're making good builds, you can do cool things. If you're finding cool
15:26items, you can get more powerful. This actually makes it easier to balance things, right? Because
15:31if you don't take the passives, you are less powerful, just straight up. And the disparity
15:37between players who are just playing, trying to play casually and the ones who are optimizing
15:41was so dramatically large. Now it's a bit more normalized because the skill tree isn't playing
15:47dual purpose, right? It's not both a source of free power and it's not also customization. It's
15:53customization. Power is the domain of items and your build overall.
15:58And there's been a lot of discussion about the sheer amount of loot that you find in D4 compared
16:03to older games. Now we get a loot filter to actually turn off unnecessary stuff, which is nice.
16:08But do you have further plans to make the quality of loot more rewarding even before reaching endgame
16:15as a whole? So, you know, one of the things that I talked about is kind of reshuffling where things
16:20come from, which means some of this stuff now ends up in the legendary item pool in some cases.
16:25And we are making a bunch of uniques, by the way, for all classes. So there's going to be more
16:29things
16:29to find. The last thing though is we just, we know that there's, if the only cool things you can
16:37find
16:38is one of the item slots on your character, we have a very small pool of those things. So, you
16:43know,
16:43we have the talisman system also coming and that adds seven new item slots for you to gear towards.
16:49It doesn't take space on your existing class, you know, paper doll to be able to do that,
16:55to put in the slots. It's seven brand new slots, which means there's seven new things you can find.
17:00One with, which is the seal, it goes in the middle and then six charms. And so that's where the
17:05set
17:06gameplay is, which means there's just way more cool things to find right now. There's the collection
17:11aspect that sets used to give us. That's back. There's a really cool interplay between how seals
17:15and sets, a set charms work. And then just charms overall, right? Just being able to find more
17:21different things that slotted the different parts of your character widens the item game dramatically.
17:26Now there's just more things that can drop cool things. Because if it's like, well, I already have
17:31the cool sword. You don't care about getting better swords, right? That item slot is dead. And there's,
17:37there's just few right now. So we're basically increasing it by about 50%. If you, if you know,
17:42almost. So I think that gives us more opportunities for cool things to drop. It also, because of the
17:48set system, it means that there's opportunities to find things and piecemeal together, the cool
17:53options and opportunities. And you wrap all this stuff up with the fact that we're putting a
17:56Haragic cube in there, right? There's a bigger crafting angle as a result of that. It's about
18:01item modification, which means there's rare materials. And that starts meaning, well, the,
18:06the, the only measure of is the item drop good is no longer whether it's an upgrade to one of
18:12your
18:12existing slots, right? It can be one of those. It can be the new slots. It can be crafting materials.
18:17It can even be an echoing hatred key, which is a rare drop item that lets you go play echoing
18:22hatred.
18:23Amazing. Unfortunately, this is all the time we've had for today, but thanks again for having me.
18:28And I'm really looking forward to get to play the add-on.
18:30I am excited for you guys to get your hands on.
18:32I can imagine.
18:32Yeah.
18:32Yeah.
18:33Yeah.
18:33Yeah.
18:33Yeah.
18:33Yeah.
18:33Yeah.
18:33Vielen Dank.
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