Diablo IV’s First Season is As Fun As A Sad Old Fisherman

You owe it to yourself to play a better game

Alex Rowe
5 min readJul 22, 2023

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The seasonal progress checklist in Diablo IV.
PC screenshot taken by the author. The subtitles from the game bleed into the seasonal progression screen, and I thought this one was funny as I imagine it reflects how the most bought-in Diablo fans are feeling right now.

Earlier this week, Blizzard launched another huge patch for Diablo IV to get things ready for the launch of the “Season of the Malignant,” but instead they set their own community on fire.

The patch brought with it tons of nerfs and slowdowns, from arbitrarily lengthening the time it takes to exit a dungeon by two seconds, to knocking down the effectiveness of many popular Barbarian and Sorcerer builds, to dramatically increasing cooldowns for most skills that operate on them.

It was a total mess. It kicked off dozens of think piece articles, rant videos, and angry forum posts. And then into the middle of that nightmare, the new season and paid battle pass content launched. Blizzard tried to control the damage this morning with an awkward livestream, but all they did was further confuse the hardcore community.

Right now, it feels like Diablo IV is in a deep dank hole. It’s like an old guy whose boat doesn’t work anymore but he still needs to catch some fish to eat. Yes, I’m still running with this whole fisherman thing.

I’ve played several hours of the season over the last couple of days, and it’s nothing special in the ever-crowded world of live service video games. It…

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Alex Rowe

I write about gaming, tech, music, and their industries. Audio producer, video editor, and former magazine critic. Look mom, I’m using my English degree!