Blizzard has announced that die-hard Diablo fans will have the opportunity to play on a closed beta of Diablo IV this yearwhile the public beta will arrive in early 2023.
Announced in a Blizzard blog post, the company announced that players who have recently spent “significant amounts of time” playing the endings of Diablo 2: Resurrected, Diablo 3, or Diablo: Immortal will be able to participate in the test.
Unlike most betas that give players access to the early hours of the game, the Diablo IV beta will do the opposite, allowing players to enter the endgame directly. It will be available on all platforms (PlayStation 4 and 5, Xbox One and Series X/S, and PC) with cross-play and cross-progression.
“We’ve decided to focus the closed beta on Diablo 4 endgame offerings for a number of reasons,” Blizzard states in the post. “The full story of Lilith’s return to Sanctuary is not something we want to spoil before launch; players will experience a post-campaign Sanctuary during the closed beta of the final game.”
“Also, for many, the endgame is their favorite aspect of Diablo. We want to make sure it’s satisfying, and there’s no shortage of variety of challenges to experience over many, many demon-slaying game sessions.”
Players who feel they have played enough at the end of the recently mentioned Diablo games will receive an email invitation to the betathough only if your marketing options are enabled on Battle.net (instructions on how to do this are available in the blog post).
This must be done before October 18, and invitations will be sent no later than November 18. Blizzard has said that this will be “the first of a few opportunities” for people to experience Diablo IV before its 2023 release date, and has also confirmed that “public testing phases will begin early next year.”
Gamers got an unofficial chance to check out Diablo IV gameplay content recently as, along with Rockstar’s GTA 6, over 40 minutes of the game was leaked. However, Blizzard hasn’t been as quiet as Rockstar, posting quarterly updates on what players can expect from the game. Although it will only include five classes at launch, the developer has already confirmed that Diablo IV will receive years of DLC content.
