When is the right time for Diablo 5? Blizzard's Rod Fergusson hopes Diablo 4''

Diablo General Manager Rod Fergusson, by talking about success, is one of Diablo's most compelling failures, at the 2025 Dice Summit 2025 Opening Ceremony: Error 37.

Error 37 is a bug, and at the launch of Diablo 3, players experienced an error that prevented them from accessing the game as a large number of players tried to join at once. The issue affected a large number of players, sparking widespread criticism of Blizzard’s handling of launches, and Even becoming a meme. Blizzard finally solved the error and Diablo 3 finally (with a lot of time and work) succeeded.

But it is understandable that Blizzard and Ferguson have been eager to avoid this happening again, especially as Diablo develops into a more complex field service effort than ever, with frequent small updates, ongoing seasons, and major expansions planned regularly. Diablo 4 received live service than any of its numbered predecessors.

Another error 37 or similar error would be catastrophic. Especially if Blizzard hopes Diablo 4 continues to surpass its main content release: the real live service juggernaut.

Diablo, immortal

In 2025 at Dice Summit in Las Vegas, I spoke with series general manager Rod Fergusson, titled “Evolving Sanctuary: Building Resilient Live Service in Diablo IV.” On stage, Fergusson covers four key components to ensure Diablo 4’s resilience: Successfully expanding the game, keeping content flowing, not overly attached to the purity of the design, and making players update what in surprising ways.

In his speech, Ferguson reiterated the team’s goal to keep players regularly. His description of content roadmaps and seasons contrasts with past numbered Diablo games – while the series is certainly no stranger to expansion and updates, Diablo seems to be promising a live service trend that sees large AAAA games continue more and more and more rapidly than ever before, and change more quickly than they have before, rather than having new annual differences every year.

So I asked him what this plan was: Diablo 4 Eternal, or rather, immortal? Is there a marker for Fergusson looking for when it should go to Diablo, or Diablo 4 this Is Diablo implicit, similar to Blizzard's endless MMO World of Warcraft?

Maybe not forever, Ferguson replied. But if he had his own path, it would definitely be a long time.

“We hope it will last for years,” he said. “I don't know if it's eternal. I think fate tried it and did, “It's a decade of game,” and then it's not. We want people to see the road ahead because we know that to play Diablo, you can spend hundreds of hours, we want people to know that we respect their time, and that we're not only here and here.”

Fergusson reminds me that it has been more than a decade between Diablo 2 and Diablo 3 and Diablo 3 and 4. Right, neither game is near the radical update Cadence of Diablo 4's program. But they also didn’t have Fergusson at the helm, as he joined 2020 after years leading the Gears franchise. Fergusson believes in looking forward to the future…but the progress is not far away.

For example, Fergusson announced the second expansion of Diablo 4 at the same dice summit Not to arrive until 2026. Although initially planned to expand annually, their hatred boat schedule was extended when they pushed their staff to expand to necessary, instant live games when Diablo 4 launched, and when the first season fell. There are 18 months between Diablo 4 and Hate Ship, instead of the planned 12 ships. But when I asked Fergusson if 18 months were the new normal for expansion, he was reluctant to commit to a specific time frame. He knows better now.

“I learned the lesson about shooting too early. So I thought “Hey, you can relax for the next 11 months” and that's just that I want to get into this question now…We're not in a place where we want to have a stake in the ground and call it. Because we're still building it and learning from it… Our process is usually when we get inside to a place where we can make sure we can make a call, and then you get to a place where you want to make a public call. We're not in a public area yet.”

Deliberately destroy surprise

Fergusson's caution is guaranteed here, especially since his team's preparation is more transparent than ever. Part of this is the above content roadmap, which will be displayed in April. Another element is the public testing realm, namely PTR, where opted-in players can play in an upcoming patch version before being live-streamed to the wider public. Fergusson said in his speech that the team initially struggled with the decision to use features like PTR or content roadmap for fear of sabotaging players’ surprises. But he overcomes this fear.

“You just realize that it's better to spoil the surprise of 10,000 people to give millions a great season,” he said in the conversation. “Even if you mess up PTR, even if anything you offer them in the mechanics is bad, I'd rather have a bad week in PTR than three months trying to recover from putting in some of our amazing players, and it turns out that's wrong.”

He added to me in the conversation, “You can really spin it.” “And we had it early on. We were like, “Oh, this is dug out, people know that.” “Well, how many people have seen it? It's on this reddit thread, which could be 8,000 people there. But we're going to have millions of people. So at the end of the day, that's OK. We haven't ruined the surprise for everyone.”

One challenge Fergusson is now facing is that he wants to provide PTR to more people through the console. Currently, players can only access PTR via Battle.NET on their PC, which Fergusson says is due to certification challenges and the overall difficulty of releasing new builds on consoles. But he said it was something Blizzard was investing in, now backed by parent company Xbox.

Another benefit of Xbox, he said, is the presence of Diablo 4 on Game Pass. In short, it can make Diablo accumulate as many players as possible. He compared it to why Blizzard decided to release Diablo 4 on Steam in addition to battle.net – it was just a matter of attracting more people.

“It's a different thing when you think of live services behind the salary gate (like premium live servers, which is Diablo, not a free live service like Diablo Immortal Immortal, because there's no entry barrier, so there's a chance to grow more easily because there's no entry barrier, right? And buying a boxed product or buying a main game is a barrier for some people. That's the barrier that game passes get rid of. You have this opportunity and you can see new game pass players coming all the way because they're like, 'Oh, I just got the game pass. Oh, cool, that's there? They're gone. So it's fun to maintain a constant new player.”

All Time Diablo

As we finished the conversation, I asked Fergusson what he was playing lately, hoping to get his inspiration. I asked him if he picked up the path of Exile 2 and how he felt about comparing it to Diablo 4. Ferguson disagreed with the comparison. “They are very different games,” he said.

But he is still trying to get those who keep these two games in mind for future updates. “Actually, a lot of people told us, 'Do what you want to do, but please do us a favor and don't put your seasons above each other. Let me play for three weeks for another season, let me play for three weeks. Don't let me choose and choose. So I get it. As someone who plays a lot of games, I totally understand.”

so what yes Ferguson is playing now? He told me about his first three games in 2024 at Playtime. In third place, NHL 24. Second, Destiny 2.

First, this is Diablo 4. He told me that he is currently playing Druid's companion, but he also just rolled a bunch of knife rogues. He only likes Diablo. There is always.

“It's about gaming habits,” he said. “I was interrupted from half of Cyberpunk, I've been in Witcher 3, I've been in Space Marines 2000. But I have this habit, I have to do my free cards every day in the NHL, I have to play Destiny 2 with my brothers because it's the game we played together. And then I just… The reason I came to Diablo five years ago was because it's my favorite game to play the most. So just because I work and work doesn't stop me from going home for hours.”

Rebekah Valentine is a senior journalist at IGN. You can find her post on bluesky @duckvalentine.bsky.social. Is there a story tip? Send it to [email protected].