Spot on leak from months before the announcement of Diablo IV leaks ALL 5 classes

[Deventh]

I think it's pretty interesting to see this.

• Official Title - Diablo IV (No sub title)
• Camera View and Genre - Isometric MMOARPG
• No Load Times (except loading in the game for the first time or logging in and out)
• New sophisticated Engine with a ton of improvements over Diablo III and new functionalities for new gameplay systems and visual design
• Made for consoles in mind from the get go
• Art Style is VERY dark, gory/bloody and gritty - think Diablo II days mixed with Dark Souls and Bloodborne but much more modernized obviously. The new engine is able to create atmospheric visuals and dark tones that immerse the players. Picture the world of Sanctuary as if it was in the Dark Souls or Bloodborne universe. Super dark and gothic.
• Blizzard are happy with the many systems and improvements they've made over the course of Diablo III: Reaper of Souls such as the Kunai Cube, Wardrobe loadouts, Seasonal Journeys, Rifts/G-Rifts and so on.
• Blizzard learned a lot from their Diablo III and Reaper of Souls mistakes/lessons and used the feedback to create and design new and improved systems for Diablo IV
• Music is going to harken back to Diablo I and Diablo II. It will feel very very familiar to the old-school Diablo fans but also have it's own unique twist to it and sound that is catered specifically to Diablo IV
• Blizzard will be treating Diablo IV as a reboot of the franchise. Those who wanted a Diablo II Remake and a brand new Diablo game will be pleased. Basically, it's a combination of both made for the modern era. Best way to think of this is the latest God of War that was released in April for the PlayStation 4 in 2018.
• Diablo II Remake/Remaster was planned, but they later realized that it would be much better to give the franchise a complete reset and put majority of the fans requests into 1 giant package.
• The demo we've seen lasted about 20 to 30 minutes. I am not sure if this is the same demo they will be using for Blizzcon later this year or if they have a new one in the works specifically created for the fans and press too see.
• The demo showcased core elements of Diablo IV such as the Loot, Barbarian Class (a bit of Druid as well), Combat and the most interesting (in my opinion) how it all comes together as an isometric MMO and blends in with a brand new eco-system and creates a next-generation Diablo experience
• The world of Sanctuary is MUCH MUCH MUCH larger than before due to the game going the MMO route. The space is necessary to accommodate the players.
• A server will hold around 100 or so people at a time as of now.
• Tristram will be one of the Hub cities in the game. (This was one the one we saw in the demo) Blizzard has stated there are more hub-cities, but did not show or told us what they are.
• You can trade items in the game with other players such as gold, basic crafting materials (special crafting materials are soulbound and cannot be sold) and any kind of loot ranging from grey quality and all the way up to rare yellows. Blizzard is not sure yet what to do with Legendary items/weapons yet and if they should be tradeable or not as far as the game's economy goes due to competitive fairness and end-game systems that have a lot of functionalities with the legendary loot.
• The class that was showcased in great detail to the employees was a Barbarian- signature moves such as whirlwind return and many other favorite skills. Druid was also part of the demo, but for extremely short time and only used as an example for their new combo combat system.
• Combat system will have combos. You will be able to use a combination of skills in succession to do more damage or create larger area of effect attacks. As a Barbarian you can chain pull into an enemy and then jump over them and then you have a choice of either throwing them into another demon or grabbing them and then pummeling them into the ground with your bare hands or simply stunning the target and then use an execution move to chop their head off. You can ONLY do execution moves when the enemy is near death.
• The demo showed how a druid player can use the combo system. In the clip the player was able to morph into different animal forms (including wolf and bear) during mid-combat flawlessly without any weird transitions or awkward attack animations using different sets of moves and skills from each of the forms in a matter of seconds. It looked very impressive.
• The combo system was created to evolve combat for the Diablo franchise. Blizzard wanted to make sure that if they're going dark and gritty, the combat had to be dark and gritty as well.
• Paladin, Barbarian, Sorcerer, Amazon and Druid are planned for launch with more coming later. Blizzard wants people to feel like this is Diablo II all over again but in a completely new era of the franchise. Blizzard were also debating whether to include the Druid or Necromancer class at launch of Diablo IV. Blizzard decided put the Druid for launch of Diablo IV and Necromancer for later, since the Necromancer was released already for Diablo III.
• Crafting will return in Diablo IV and will be a very important system and part of the entire game and its economy. If you enjoy crafting in MMOs or in games in general then you are in for a treat according to Blizzard.
• Blizzard is well aware of games such as Path of Exile, Grim Dawn and Wolcen and their current skill systems. As a matter of fact, they have a whole special team dedicated to playing those games extensively for research and game development purposes. Blizzard are creating something new unique of their own for Diablo IV as far as character progression goes and yes stat allocations are back as well.
• No word on PvP yet or anything of that sort. However, Blizzard did say that since they're going the MMO route, the PvP factor is kind of important to a lot of players. Although, right now they're strongly focusing on creating a fantastic PvE Diablo experience. They do not want to promise anything in regards to PvP ever since with what happened to PvP in Diablo III only to later disappoint the fans. PvP is something that will be looked at in the future once the game is in a stable place and the playerbase is happy.
• Diablo IV will be the new era for Diablo and will be a game as a service. New free content patches will come out that will add quality of life changes, new additions, items and so on. Paid expansions are also possible, but right now its still undecided and Blizzard won't know until the game is launched and until they see if its successful or not. They do not want to announce anything that's regarding to paid content until they are 100% sure of their plans and what they will be adding next post-launch.
• Right now the goal is to get the game ready playable demo for Blizzcon's 2019 and of course all the marketing material as well. After that, it will be preparing for the beta in 2020 and then the release.
• Release is being debated between late 2020 or early 2021 depending on how things go, but as of now it seems early 2021 is more likely. Will be coming to PC PlayStation 5 and Project Scarlett.

Source: reddit

[ttylol]

A bow class and a holy-themed class seemed inevitable anyways but, yeah, interesting read. The Barbarian "combo system" description sounds scrapped though?

[Frolk]

A bow class and a holy-themed class seemed inevitable anyways but, yeah, interesting read. The Barbarian "combo system" description sounds scrapped though?

Replaced with 4 weapon system id bet.

[How dare you]

No mention of Lilith? Fake.

[Gungnir]

Replaced with 4 weapon system id bet.

That does sound very likely.
This leak was surprisingly spot on.

[Keyblader]

There was actually load times though when entering dungeons, would show that door.

[How dare you]

Release is being debated between late 2020 or early 2021

Will never happen.

Paladin, Barbarian, Sorcerer, Amazon and Druid

Paladin and Amazon weren't even introduced.

[Ealyssa]

That "leak" is so generic it litteraly says nothing specific about what was announced as DIV.

The only specific gameplay info was wrong... Very nice try tho

[horbindr]

early 2021 release? #doubt.

[Gallahadd]

Paladin and Amazon weren't even introduced.

But they DID say we're getting two more classes, before launch. This leaks is saying that those two will be paladin and amazon.

Now.. How much of that is because he's a leet haxor that has access to forbidden info, and how much is just because those two are a fairly logical guess, i'll leave up to you.

[Beefhammer]

All other titles have started off as Diablo with no subtitle so this was probably going to be true.

Isometric view was already know(heavily rumored when project Hades was cancelled to move forward on project Fernis).

Load times were shown every time you left the overworld too.

New engine capabilities will have to be seen later on. But this was also easy to guess.

Being made for PC and console was a given with the console success of D3 and OW.

Darker grittier direction was also a given considering hte feedback on D3. I do not see how the engine plays a factor in the graphics. I've seen dark, gritty gory games on Unity and cartoonish games on UE4.

Keeping popular aspects of D3 and learning from mistakes, also a given.

Of course the music will be more subdued to fit what is going on on-screen. Second part of that one makes no sense.

The reboot part and replacing D2 remake could have been easily guessed since we have had 0 leaks or credible rumors about anything D2 related.

So now we get to the hard to guess stuff.

No rumors or talk of it having MMO features.

No talk of any classes, especially Druid, but Barb and Sorc were almost a given.

Now at Blizzcon they mentioned the demo there was all they had that was considered ready to go. Maybe that constitutes a different ready than an internal demo for employees. So it is possible that Tristram was shown. However, considering where the game takes place, Tristram will not be available until post launch content.

As for the gameplay, I doubt they started with a combo system and went to the typical D3/MMO cool down based rotations. I have no reason to believe there was ever a combo based system. It was mentioned for both classes that were discussed Barb and Druid, and neither had a combo system. Seems like way too big of a system to change on the fly before Blizzcon.

I doubt the crafting system being hugely important as well. That seems like something they would have talked up at Bllizzcon. I could be wrong.

D4 was built with PvP in mind from the start so that line is BS.

The part about waiting to see how successful it is before committing to expansions or paid DLC is again something that they would not have changed on the fly for Blilzzcon before the game was even out.l They specifically mentioned they are planning for expansions from the start.

So, most of it could have been educated guesses done by anyone, the detailed stuff much harder to guess was mostly wrong.

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That does sound very likely.
This leak was surprisingly spot on.

Sounds very unlikely. I'm no dev, but completely changing a combat system sounds like no small task. Also, the leak said the combo system was to improve upon D3s gameplay and even talked about how the druid had combos too. You don't just change something like that on the fly.

As mentioned above, most of the correct stuuf we mostly knew from bits here and there or could have inferred from what has happened with D3.

[Absintheminded]

Only thing I could see that is flat out wrong is Tristram being a hub. At Blizzcon we saw the game would take place near Kehjistan.

[Coldkil]

There was actually load times though when entering dungeons, would show that door.

I suppose it's "mandatory" - the world is a persistent istance that will likely use the "sharding" thing that's in place in WoW. Basically you get in a zone with players, once the max number of players is reached a new shard is created and people will go there.

On the other side, dungeons are private istances. So when you enter one, a new istance is being created for you and your party.

[Cairhiin]

I suppose it's "mandatory" - the world is a persistent istance that will likely use the "sharding" thing that's in place in WoW. Basically you get in a zone with players, once the max number of players is reached a new shard is created and people will go there.

On the other side, dungeons are private istances. So when you enter one, a new istance is being created for you and your party.

I think they said no load times inside dungeons when you move from floor 1 to floor 2 for example but I don't think they claimed there would be no load times at all. In Diablo 3 you have a load time between dungeons levels. I think it's probably also not feasible, if there's really hundreds of dungeons like they claim, to not have load times but I'm no expert.

[Mendzia]

A lot of these statemets are confirmed but honestly most of them are really, really generic and were not hard to deduce.

No mention of Lilith? Fake.

This is also my biggest concern.
No single word about main villian seems suspicious.

[thilicen]

Most of the points above would fit almost any actual D4 game

Tristram a hub city, even though Tristram is not in D4 at all if you go by the map they showed

No mention of actual plot points like Lilith

No specifics on classes, only the "no shit" stuff like Druids and shapeshifting

That leak is 100% bullshit and guesswork. Nothing more, nothing less.

[Dracullus]

99% it's legit, it just has too many things that were confirmed on Blizzcon and nothing that would disprove this. Paladin and Amazon looks legit, but I think we are missing "evil" class, unless Druid will fill that spot.

And how could they know about Lilith from 30 minutes demo? Most likely she was mystery even for most people already working on D4.

Early 2021 (my guess is spring) also looks legit since they mention Xbox One/Playstation 4 release. Most likely we will see release date and pre-order on next Blizzcon.

Sadly looks like no DII Reforged for next few years. I wonder what they'll show next Blizzcon. Shadowlands 9.1/9.1.5 panels won't be excited for general audience, they generally go to "next Hearthstone expac or HoTS/Overwatch hero". D4/O2 will get update as well (maybe O2 will be even released at this point).

Only reveal I can think of is Burning Crusade Classic. I hope they have something from Starcraft or even new IP to reveal, otherwise we may see repeat of Blizzcon '18 fiasco.

[Coldkil]

I think they said no load times inside dungeons when you move from floor 1 to floor 2 for example but I don't think they claimed there would be no load times at all. In Diablo 3 you have a load time between dungeons levels. I think it's probably also not feasible, if there's really hundreds of dungeons like they claim, to not have load times but I'm no expert.

IIRC they said the world was completely seamless in exploration, and then they explicitly showed the no load times thing for the dungeon. The load time happens when you actually change istance (from the outworld to dungeon and the opposite). Otherwise, you don't get anything.

It's like WoW - you have a load screen at login, then you have them when you enter/exit istances.

[Cairhiin]

IIRC they said the world was completely seamless in exploration, and then they explicitly showed the no load times thing for the dungeon. The load time happens when you actually change istance (from the outworld to dungeon and the opposite). Otherwise, you don't get anything.

It's like WoW - you have a load screen at login, then you have them when you enter/exit istances.

That's actually what I meant but didn't word it correctly. Both world and dungeons will be seamless, but they never said there wouldn't be load times between world and dungeon transitions. So indeed like WoW.

[Beefhammer]

Only thing I could see that is flat out wrong is Tristram being a hub. At Blizzcon we saw the game would take place near Kehjistan.

Combo system that was meant to evolve Diablo's combat that was inexplicably changed at the last moment for a Blizzcon demo.

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Most of the points above would fit almost any actual D4 game

Tristram a hub city, even though Tristram is not in D4 at all if you go by the map they showed

No mention of actual plot points like Lilith

No specifics on classes, only the "no shit" stuff like Druids and shapeshifting

That leak is 100% bullshit and guesswork. Nothing more, nothing less.

To be fair, if all they were shown was a small 20-30 min gameplay demo, it is quite possible Lillith or any major story point was ot revealed.