Diablo Deep Dive – Rise of the Warlock | Official Xbox Podcast

SPEAKER 1: Games in this podcast range from E to M. [ Xbox sound ]

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Hey everybody, welcome to the official Xbox podcast, the only podcast coming to you from inside Xbox. I'm Jeff, and today sitting down with one of my favorite teams, the Diablo team up here from Blizzard, visiting us here in Seattle in the dead of winter. You're welcome, guys. Thank you so much for coming. First, here on the outside, we have the game director for Diablo IV, Brent Gibson. How are you, sir?

BRENT GIBSON: Good, thank you.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: And the lead game producer, Matthew Cederquist.

MATTHEW CEDERQUIST: Yeah, it's really great to be here.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: I heard people call you Cederquist.

MATTHEW CEDERQUIST: Cederquist, yeah.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Matt -- too many Matts on the team?

MATTHEW CEDERQUIST: You can call me Matthew, Matt, Cederquist.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: We're going to go with Cederquist.

MATTHEW CEDERQUIST: Whatever.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: I want you to be comfortable here on the show. We're very glad that you came up here.

MATTHEW CEDERQUIST: Thank you.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: And we're very glad. Normally, this set is bathed in green, and we got to have some nice red. I got to wear --

MATTHEW CEDERQUIST: Make it a little dark.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Yeah, I like this.

BRENT GIBSON: Look at that logo.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: And it's a good thing because, as we can see right here, 2026 is shaping up to be a colossal year for Diablo. It's the franchise's 30th anniversary. I mean, which is kind of crazy. I remember being in my dorm on my 386 Acer playing Diablo: Hellfire. I had the Hellfire version. And my God, just dealt with one dungeon. That's what you had, one dungeon back -- Kids today.

BRENT GIBSON: Yeah.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: They're so spoiled.

MATTHEW CEDERQUIST: They are spoiled.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Open, wow. Oh my God. So let's start there. What does the big 3-0 mean to the two of you? And what does it mean to the team?

BRENT GIBSON: I mean, for me, it's legacy. Here you have a game that came out when we were kids. We've played it. We started as fans. We've made our way through so many different iterations. And now we're here, actually contributing at the 30th anniversary. The honor of being able to be a part of that legacy and seeing it all unfold is this huge.

MATTHEW CEDERQUIST: Yeah. Teenager Cederquist would have never imagined -- never. Right? So many sunrises playing this game.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Yep.

MATTHEW CEDERQUIST: So many calls out of not going to work because I stayed up until 7:00 a.m. playing. Unbelievable to actually get the opportunity to put out a new class and new DLC for D2.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Is there any folks from the team that were there all the way back in the day? Or is it still working with you all? Who's the most tenured person?

BRENT GIBSON: The most tenured person? That might be Jason.

MATTHEW CEDERQUIST: It might be, actually.

BRENT GIBSON: Yeah. Jason Regier. Yeah.

MATTHEW CEDERQUIST: We have a technical director who was working at the time for D2.

BRENT GIBSON: He's at Blizzard North.

MATTHEW CEDERQUIST: Up at Blizzard North.

BRENT GIBSON: Yeah, exactly.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Thank you for your service.

MATTHEW CEDERQUIST: Yeah, exactly.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Very good. So let's jump in. Like, a 30th anniversary. Very few games get to celebrate a 30th anniversary franchise and still be super relevant to this day. So you brought announcements. This isn't just let's have a party, with a lot of candles and a lot of flames and blowing that out. And let's talk about what's new. You guys are releasing a new class. And this is really cool for both Diablo IV and Diablo II: Resurrected. We're talking about the Warlock. We're getting ready for this show, I was like looking through. There's so much speculation. People looking like, what could that be? Is it real? What could it be? This is how I would make it if I was designing the Warlock where it's real. It seems pretty badass. Tell us all about the Warlock.

MATTHEW CEDERQUIST: Do you want me to start?

BRENT GIBSON: One of the things I really love about the Warlock, and we might talk about a little bit later, is that the way that we have looked at this is the sense that the Warlock itself is a legacy. You've seen those photos where you have the before-war and after-war picture. And so the journey that the Warlock is going to take between the games is that same kind of journey. And so when you're at D2, it's like when that dark magic just started.

MATTHEW CEDERQUIST: Yeah. He kind of comes down off of his high horse. And he's like, you know what? He sees Sanctuary kind of go into hell, and he says, "I'll do it myself. I'll figure this out."

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: What is a Warlock? I'm watching Stranger Things over Christmas. I'm like, wait, a sorcerer and a wizard aren't the same thing? So obviously sorcerer class is hugely important for Diablo. How does a Warlock differ in that way?

BRENT GIBSON: That's actually a really important point. When we had to think about Warlock, there's a lot of expectations that have already been set for Warlock when we're talking about Blizzard. So everybody immediately will go to that World of Warcraft vision of the Warlock, which there's a lot of great stuff in there that is still inspiring today. But we had to think really long and hard about what that means for Diablo, which is a little different. It's a little darker. [laughter] It's a lot darker.

MATTHEW CEDERQUIST: It's a lot.

BRENT GIBSON: It's a lot darker. You saw the trailer. It's a lot more rock and roll. And we really wanted to make sure that it really dug deep into that binding, breaking control over demons and demonology.

MATTHEW CEDERQUIST: Yeah. But just like you said, it's a story of the Warlock. So in Diablo II, it's a little bit more grounded to reality. You had to go through 25-plus years of Diablo. You couldn't just plop something brand new in there. You had to actually sit back and say, okay, this Warlock, what does it look like back in 1999?

BRENT GIBSON: Oh, God, yeah.

MATTHEW CEDERQUIST: And then for Diablo IV, take that --

BRENT GIBSON: Fast forward.

MATTHEW CEDERQUIST: -- and fast forward.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Let's talk about it. What's it like adding a class to a game that has been around since we were teenagers and in our early 20s? You're taking on something pretty big there, very well balanced and everything. So I'd just love to hear the story.

MATTHEW CEDERQUIST: Yeah. It's both surreal and intimidating at the same time. So you sit there, and you say to yourself, I'm actually building a class for the game that I played as a teenager. Don't mess this up. [laughter] You know what I mean? Don't mess this up. But you also have a huge, passionate fan base who has been playing this game, again, for 25 years. They know every little thing about the game, maybe sometimes even more than the people working on it, which is crazy.

BRENT GIBSON: Yeah. It's true, though.

MATTHEW CEDERQUIST: It's their life. Luckily for me, I still play Diablo II every day. But yeah, building it, it's surreal and intimidating. You can't mess up the perfection of what Diablo II is in my mind.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Junior Cederquist needs to approve this.

MATTHEW CEDERQUIST: Right, exactly. And it has to feel like it came out all those years ago.

BRENT GIBSON: And a lot of us, as developers, we see the game from a perspective on, here are all the pieces that make the mosaic. That is Diablo. And so you're always looking for that space where you can add a new triangle to that mosaic. And sometimes that's tough. You'll be looking at it purely mechanical or systems-based. And you might miss out on the fantasy. Or you're looking at it from the fantasy space, and you totally miss out on the mechanics that you can add to it. And so I think it's finding that perfect balance there, which largely comes from sitting down with fans, being a fan yourself, and really trying to reconcile both of those questions at the same time.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: So I'm really curious how you thought about the Warlock for Diablo II: Resurrected, and also for Diablo IV. So what are some of the differences besides looks good on a CRT monitor versus on a 4K monitor?

MATTHEW CEDERQUIST: Yeah, yeah, yeah. When we were originally coming up with the idea for the Warlock, it was almost like taking a historical building and adding a new wing to it. And you're like, it has to still be historical.

BRENT GIBSON: Got to match.

MATTHEW CEDERQUIST: It has to match. You still have to preserve what D2 is. But it also has to grip new sort of gameplay. So it pushes the limits a little bit on what D2 has to offer. So the folks who have been playing for 25 years, they get that, wow, this is a still new feeling. And for the people coming back, it's a nostalgia hit, and it's also the new new.

BRENT GIBSON: Yeah. I would say, going in and adding to this game is like very sensitive brain surgery. The precision involved, the discussion, the prep. Before you even start an ounce of content, it was pretty tremendous. And it was great to see the team coming out, sitting down in concept art reviews, and looking at the various versions of the Warlock and the way it should be. We had big vision boards on what it meant. And we had great debates on the differences between what we wanted to see out of Diablo versus what the expectation might be.

MATTHEW CEDERQUIST: Yep. Because we wanted to show the growth. We wanted to show --

BRENT GIBSON: -- where the Warlock was --

MATTHEW CEDERQUIST: -- if it was back 1999, 2000, to where it is now.

BRENT GIBSON: Exactly.

MATTHEW CEDERQUIST: And that hits with the art style as well.

BRENT GIBSON: Yeah. You're building a lore. And that you can't take lightly either. So we're talking about, for the Diablo universe, a new class of magic that is rooted in lore. You can go back, and you can take a look at any of our lore and see where we have some connective tissue there. And then building upon that. And what is it like to be a person who turns their back on the light and lives with demons for decades? What would that do to you? And so that's where a lot of the gameplay. A lot of the powers that you're going to see are going to be based on what that manifestation of that dark power is going to look like. It's a spectacle.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: I'd imagine your hygiene would take a bit of a hit. [laughter]

BRENT GIBSON: And you'll see that. It gets grittier and grittier and grittier.

MATTHEW CEDERQUIST: It's actually hilarious.

BRENT GIBSON: Yeah.

MATTHEW CEDERQUIST: Yes. Because that was a point in --

BRENT GIBSON: It was, yeah.

MATTHEW CEDERQUIST: In many meetings where we're like, we need to make this grimy. We need to make this dark.

BRENT GIBSON: Even in the cinematic, remember, we were like, no, that's a little too clean.

MATTHEW CEDERQUIST: Yeah.

BRENT GIBSON: Right?

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Shaving days are over.

MATTHEW CEDERQUIST: Exactly.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: So the Warlock in Diablo II: Resurrected, available now.

BRENT GIBSON: Yep.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: And while some of us have been playing Diablo II since 1999?

MATTHEW CEDERQUIST: Yeah, it came out in 2000.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: 2000? It's now available on Game Pass for the first time.

MATTHEW CEDERQUIST: It is.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Which is very cool. And it means a lot of people are going to be playing for the first time. How excited are you for people to be experiencing what you experienced back then and just have it be available for just so many more people now?

MATTHEW CEDERQUIST: Yeah, it's epic. It's epic to see so many people still playing Diablo II to this day. Millions and millions of people still playing a 25-year-old game for the core gameplay loop, for the itemization, just the thrill of what the game has to offer. And then to add on to not only a new class, but all the other plethora of things that we've added on to that, and having Game Pass people come in and play as well, just epic.

BRENT GIBSON: And it is every game designer's, game artist's, game developer's dream to get your craft out into as many hands as possible.

MATTHEW CEDERQUIST: Oh, absolutely.

BRENT GIBSON: So to be on platforms that allow us to reach out to as many people as possible and know that you're bringing fun to the communities and the world, it's incredible.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: So with this update to D2R, there's not just the addition of the Warlock. But you've gone in there and updated a number of things as well: Terror Zones, Uber Ancients, some stuff with Loot. Can you tell us about that?

MATTHEW CEDERQUIST: So we've added a ton to this game. And the great part about it is that we actually, again, 25 years' worth of feedback. Super passionate fans who have told us through community forums, Discord, whatever it may be, to talk about what it would be like in Diablo II if there was something else coming. Nobody had a clue that we were going to do something for Diablo II. In what world do you come back 25 years later and put out new content like this?

BRENT GIBSON: It's insanity.

MATTHEW CEDERQUIST: To me, it's insanity.

BRENT GIBSON: Yeah.

MATTHEW CEDERQUIST: Right? To me, it's insanity. And so to bring the stuff that people have been really itching for, Terror Zones, updated Terror Zones, updated core gameplay loop, and then some of the other stuff like stash tabs, material tabs, consumable tabs, all these things are where the ARPG genre has grown. And we have brought that in. Loot filters. There's many things that are coming along to make it feel new, but the gameplay still stays the same. You're not changing the Mona Lisa, but at the same time, you're bringing it up to new standards of 2026.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Updating the frame.

BRENT GIBSON: That's a good way of putting it, yeah. We're rearranging the furniture a little bit. But that's also incredibly important for any new player. I mean, we've got players in the franchise that weren't born when this game was out. And so their expectations for modern gaming has changed. So the quality of life updates that we're doing with the stash tabs and being able to stack items and just making it a little bit easier, the modern gamer won't have to go through the decades of workarounds that were there. And so I'm incredibly impressed with how much is added to the game to just make it more approachable to a brand new audience.

MATTHEW CEDERQUIST: More accessible.

BRENT GIBSON: Yeah.

MATTHEW CEDERQUIST: Approachable. Yep. And we did a lot of that type of work when we brought the game onto console, onto Xbox. We took a hard look at it.

BRENT GIBSON: The controls were a big deal, yeah.

MATTHEW CEDERQUIST: Yep. Yep.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Yeah, I mean, I think it was, it might have been Diablo III when it was the first to really make that jump to console. And I was like, but I'm used to playing with a mouse. And then I was like, wait, this really works.

BRENT GIBSON: Yes.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: At the end of this. Yeah. So kudos to y'all for that. All right. So that's the start of the year here. Now we're going to start looking ahead to April. We got Lord of Hatred, of course, coming. I think it's going to be huge for Diablo IV. I was in the audience at the Game Awards during that reveal. I was breathing in the smoke. It actually smelled like strawberry. It was great. [laughter]

BRENT GIBSON: Yeah, it had a good scent.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Don't do envermotherapy, [phonetic] I promise you. It was good. And of course, like a lot of other people, as soon as I got home, I pre-ordered Lord of Hatred, because I wanted to get ahold of that Paladin and have gone through and throwing shields and hammers and all this and just really love it. I loved it enough where I was like, I'm not even worried about min-maxing. That sounds like a cool attack. I'm just going to just try that out. And then later, I went back, and I was like, oh, my build craft can use some work. So much fun to -- so many different ways to attack. So I'm just curious, now it's been a couple of months, what has feedback been like on the Paladin, and just how that all went?

BRENT GIBSON: The reception has been overwhelmingly positive. One, the fans have been asking this forever. I was doing interviews pre-Vessel of Hatred, where everybody's like, when is Paladin coming out, when is Paladin coming out? So we knew that this was something that the fans were super, super passionate about. It's a class archetype that we also know and love. And so it was a clear vision on how to get there. And the thing that I'm most excited about is not only did we deliver it and everybody is having a great time, but when the game comes out in April, you're going to get a full skill tree revamp to that class. So not only is it new now, it's going to be new again in April. So there's just so much to look forward to that class. Plus, you've got the Warlock class coming out at the same time. I mean, a lot of the themes that you're going to see in the entire expansion are around the duality between Heaven and Hell. You've got the Paladin. You've got the Warlock. But the Paladin journey has been amazing. It was a huge hit. I'm looking forward to more improvements to it as we go along, just like we do with any of our other classes, and it's been pretty great.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Very cool. So at the Game Awards, you introduced another cinematic. The cinematics have been awesome from the very beginning.

MATTHEW CEDERQUIST: Absolutely.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Okay. And that's a Blizzard specialty, I think we have no problem saying, which gave us a lot of good looks at the Paladin and, of course, at big baddy, Mephisto taking on -- A lot more dangerous than a dog. So almost a dwarf. Not a good boy. Exactly. I would have went in for a pet. That might not have worked out. But then the next week, you released an excellent video called Diablo IV: Lord of Hatred, The Story so Far. I consider this required viewing, and not just because there's more Ralph Ineson, voice of Lorath. Also, I'm playing through Final Fantasy 16. If I could have a superpower, I don't need invisibility. I don't need flight. I want his voice.

BRENT GIBSON: That's right.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: That would be good. I would just take that. I'd be happy. What can you tell us about the Lord of Hatred story?

BRENT GIBSON: Yeah, I mean, obviously, we're building up to the Reckoning of Mephisto. You're seeing that in all the cinematic content and story content that we've been releasing. And that's really what we want to do, is get to a point where we're showing that the Age of Hatred is not just about a primeval trying to take over Sanctuary. It's a primeval trying to reshape Sanctuary, put it in a whole new vision. And you are on the doorstep of that happening. And not only is that going on, and you're watching all the fallout that's happening across the continent, plus your friends, but you have to be in an uneasy alliance with Lilith. There is so much juicy content there that we're putting into a wonderful campaign that everybody is going to absolutely adore, that ends on a boss fight that you do not want to miss.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: By the way, bringing back Lilith, because last I saw, she was crumbled into dust. So I guess we'll have to see how that all comes together.

BRENT GIBSON: You've got a special bond with Lilith. If you really go back and you look at the story and how you first met Lilith, what was that first encounter like? Right from the beginning of the prologue of D4, that was the beginning of this big journey. And we're leading up to some big moments.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: All right, all right, all right. I love the lore. I'm one of those people who probably plays more for the lore than anything. But obviously, the mechanics are what keep people coming back and playing through again and again and again. And so you've got a bunch of updates that's based on player feedback, something I think the Diablo team has always been good at. So what are some of those updates? What do you think people are going to be really looking forward to?

BRENT GIBSON: I think War Plans is huge. One of the feedbacks that we get all the time is endgame, endgame, endgame, endgame.

MATTHEW CEDERQUIST: Yep.

BRENT GIBSON: And we've got Diablo II that has an amazing endgame. We've got Diablo III, that's got an amazing endgame.

MATTHEW CEDERQUIST: It's that core gameplay of people.

BRENT GIBSON: Absolutely. A hundred percent. And so we're injecting a system that gives you control over all the core activities inside of the game. And so not only can you gain progress in those, but you're going to get unique skill trees per activity, and you can manipulate the activity itself. I mean, that is such an interesting concept. When the team brought it up, I'm like, we have to do this. If you can actually alter your Nightmare Dungeon experience and bring in mechanics from other activities into a Nightmare Dungeon or change what's happening with the monsters or the goblin spawns or the rewards, and giving that much agency to the players in the endgame when they're chasing their final items, it is massive.

MATTHEW CEDERQUIST: Anytime you can put the player in the driver's seat and let them figure it out, it's beautiful.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: People love the grind, but if you can make the grind a little less of a grind, maybe.

BRENT GIBSON: Make it more custom.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Yeah.

BRENT GIBSON: That's the thing that I like. We get feedback on every activity all the time. We're like, okay. If you want to adjust it, here you go.

MATTHEW CEDERQUIST: Yeah, here you go.

BRENT GIBSON: Earn the right to adjust it. And it extends the journey significantly as well. The amount of attention you put into a character, now you can start putting that attention also into the activity.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Can we get into details a little bit about the skill tree updates? I'm a bit of a skill tree nerd. Are you changing the structure? I'm used to this sort of diagonal. Early on, every five points, I get a new ability, and I'm going back and modifying those.

BRENT GIBSON: Yeah. There are a lot of changes to that. I mean, I don't know if it fully represents the footage that you've seen of this, but it's like we do joke that it is a skill twig right now. And we want to make sure that it's a skill tree. And so we've looked at it from two angles. What's working with the class? And so a lot of stuff is going to be the same. It's going to be familiar. A lot of the skills you're going to see are the skills you know. But as you make your way further out onto those branches, we took a hard look at some of those AB choices and made sure that they were up to snuff. Are there any changes that we need? So we reworked up to 40 additional per class.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: So when you say AB, you have one or the other?

BRENT GIBSON: You have to make the choice. Right. And so we've reworked a bunch of those in order to make sure that they're up to snuff. We have also added 80 additional options across the tree that allow you to modify the attributes of those skills. And with Lord of Hatred, we've added 20 additional choices. So, where you have the branch between A and B, now you have a C. And those C's are where you're going to see really big change, really build-defining choices for each of the classes. So, for example, we talk a little bit about you have your Hydra. You're used to seeing your Hydras. Now you can turn them into Frost Hydras, which brings a whole new damage type and a whole new set of gameplay to the Sorc in a way that I think players are going to really love.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Is the goal to make existing characters -- Obviously, there'll be a lot of focus on the Warlock. People are still enjoying and getting used to the Paladin. But to make existing classes feel new again?

BRENT GIBSON: Oh, that's absolutely what it is. And it's for everybody. So everybody is going to get these changes. Even if you haven't gone and got Lord of Hatred yet, you're going to be able to feel a fresh new take. It's going to feel way more robust. The customization options are so vast that you're going to have more agency on making some really weird builds that we haven't seen yet, which I think is really great. And then if you're in Lord of Hatred, it just takes it another step further. So you're going to see it for all the existing classes. The Paladin came out. Everybody has been playing the Paladin. It's going to get those changes. And then obviously, the Warlock will come out with all those changes included as well.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Very cool. Definitely thinking of my beloved Necromancer and what I can do differently there.

BRENT GIBSON: It'll be fun.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Very cool. So this is great stuff, I think, for the people who are with you season in, season out. It's also a lot of players. I think that they jump in when there's new story content, when you drop a new playable class. People that a few weekends a year, they'd lose themselves entirely. They stay up very, very late, like Junior Cederquist did back then. So what's the best place for people that maybe, again, are playing a few weekends a year or haven't played in a little bit or maybe since Vessel of Hatred to keep up with, like, oh, well, this is how this new stuff is going to work, here's the best place to spec your Warlock or your Paladin or things like that?

BRENT GIBSON: Yeah, we have one of the best communities in the world. I mean, they are so --

MATTHEW CEDERQUIST: Ultra passionate.

BRENT GIBSON: -- all in. And the amount of documentation that they like to create is pretty significant. You can go out there, and you can find a whole number of communities with a bunch of different flavors that fit you and your play style. One of the awesome things about Lord of Hatred is that everybody is going on a new journey together again. So we're disrupting the skill trees. We're disrupting the endgame. We're giving you a brand new campaign. If you didn't come along for Vessel of Hatred, we're giving you all the things with Vessel of Hatred. And so you're going to see the communities really activate around those changes. And they're going to be doing new build guides. You can actually be on the forums in real time with them now. So my suggestion is, go out there, find the community that fits for you, plug in, and get ready for this ride because there's going to be a lot of cool stuff coming down the pipe.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Very cool.

MATTHEW CEDERQUIST: Yeah. That's half the fun about putting out something new.

BRENT GIBSON: It is.

MATTHEW CEDERQUIST: It's when the community really digs into it.

BRENT GIBSON: I agree.

MATTHEW CEDERQUIST: You kidding me?

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Content creators be very busy --

MATTHEW CEDERQUIST: Yeah, oh yeah.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: -- next couple of months.

MATTHEW CEDERQUIST: Yeah, most definitely.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Yeah, cool. So that's just the first part of this year because that's going to take us through, what, end of April. But there's more to come from you all, I'm sure. I won't press too much because they would just edit it out anyway. But I mean, I'm assuming you've got to keep some stuff up your warlock sleeves here because this is BlizzCon this year. It's coming back.

BRENT GIBSON: Oh, yeah.

MATTHEW CEDERQUIST: Yeah. We're pumped about BlizzCon. Like a year without a BlizzCon, it was sad.

BRENT GIBSON: It was a sad.

MATTHEW CEDERQUIST: It was a sad time.

BRENT GIBSON: I did not like it.

MATTHEW CEDERQUIST: Yeah. I love connecting with the fans. It's a wonderful experience. And to actually potentially drop some new stuff there is --

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Potentially.

MATTHEW CEDERQUIST: -- is awesome.

BRENT GIBSON: I mean, everybody knows that Diablo is a live journey.

MATTHEW CEDERQUIST: Yeah.

BRENT GIBSON: We're going to continue to find ways to surprise and delight everybody as we go season to season. Moving into BlizzCon, we've got the 30th anniversary. How do we take a fan-first approach to BlizzCon and that anniversary? I mean, we're going to take you on a journey. We're not going to spill any beans right now on what we're doing. But everything is focused around, you've been with us this long. Okay. Let's sit down, stay a while, and listen.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Switch it smooth.

MATTHEW CEDERQUIST: I can never be that smooth. That was nice.

BRENT GIBSON: It's going to be great.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Very cool. I'm looking forward to it because I'm planning on talking my boss into letting me go to BlizzCon this year. I've never been, so --

BRENT GIBSON: If you need any help, I'll send an email to make sure that that is the case.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: That's permission, if ever there was some. All right. Before we wrap up here, just a final question for both of you. Obviously, the Paladin is great. The Warlock seems really cool, really filthy, and in the best possible ways. But of everything that we've discussed here, what are the things that, as you're working on things, and you're working on design doc, or you're seeing something come to life for the first time, and you're meeting with QA or whoever it is, and you're like, oh, man, I cannot wait until the community gets to do this. Do you have anything that jumps out at you where you're like, I know people are going to love it? It feels so good.

MATTHEW CEDERQUIST: It's such a hard question.

BRENT GIBSON: It is a hard question.

MATTHEW CEDERQUIST: Such a hard question. Listen, for the Warlock itself, I'll jump in.

BRENT GIBSON: Okay, you got it.

MATTHEW CEDERQUIST: I'm just going to go back to never in my life would I ever imagine a new class for Diablo II. So as a player, again, my mind is already blown, and I'm the one thinking of the things to bring to the game. You know what I mean? If you have the passion to continue to be playing Diablo II or understand that Diablo II specifically is the genre-defining ARPG that everyone at least knows about, what a great time to come back. And just like Brent said, these are live service games. Even Diablo II still gets updates, live service. Not necessarily content specifically, but even when Resurrected came out, new content. So there's a healthy amount of feedback that will go through for Diablo II, and hopefully there's something there in the future.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Oh, okay.

MATTHEW CEDERQUIST: Even more.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: All right. I love it. I'm looking over to make sure PR is not doing this.

MATTHEW CEDERQUIST: I know. Trust me, I usually get that sort of like, eh, stop.

BRENT GIBSON: I think for me, it's the journey that is the combination of everything we're doing with the class skill trees and the war plans and game content, because the combination of the two brings forth my favorite part of this game, which is we don't know what's going to emerge from that journey. And so there's going to be builds that we have never seen before. There are going to be challenges on the leaderboard at levels we haven't seen before. The community is going to argue and debate and really dig in. And that's what this game is all about. And I can't wait to see that happen.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Brent, Cederquist, thanks so much for --

MATTHEW CEDERQUIST: Thank you.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: -- creating all this stuff for the 30th anniversary. I'm very excited. I just want to go back and play some more, and we'll be doing that. And thanks also for joining us here on the official Xbox podcast. We're very excited for this year, for the Diablo team, and for those who are going to be jumping into Diablo IV, Diablo II: Resurrected for the first time. It is available on Game Pass, so no excuse not to check it out. Any final thoughts before you go?

BRENT GIBSON: Other than, hey, I'm glad everybody's been with us on this entire journey, and I can't wait to see you in Sanctuary.

MATTHEW CEDERQUIST: Yeah, yeah.

JEFF RUBENSTEIN: That wraps it up perfectly. So why don't we just -- we'll leave it there. Thanks to all of you for watching and for listening. We really appreciate you as well. This wraps up this episode of the official Xbox podcast. We're kind of in the middle of a bunch of Blizzard episodes, which is a pretty great place to be. We've got another one coming, so we will see you with that very soon. Have a good one. [ Xbox sound ]