Diablo Immortal designer reveals key new class details in exciting update

The senior narrative designer of Diablo Immortal has revealed some exciting details about the upcoming new class coming to the game and how Blizzard developed a brand new area coming up in an imminent expansion that's long been mentioned in the series but never previously visited.

Diablo Immortal is a free-to-play massively multiplayer online action role-playing game (MMORPG) on mobile and PC. It started in June 2022 and there have been continuous expansions and updates to it ever since.

A roadmap has been revealed showing what players can expect over the next year called Epoch of Madness and the next expansion,The Writhing Wilds, goes live on March 20.

It features a new quest, crafting system (where players can find ore and visit a blacksmith to create and upgrade gear in a similar way to World of Warcraft), zone PvP update and a new battlegrounds map.

Loads more was revealed beyond that, including a crossover event, third anniversary celebrations and during the Flesh Harvest update between July and September, players will be able to sink their teeth into a brand new class.

Speaking to indy100, senior narrative designer Ryan Quinn revealed what fans can expect from the new class.

Blizzard revealed a year-long roadmap for Diablo Immortal with a brand new class coming later this year / Screenshot from Blizzard

He said: "We want this class to feel like 'only at this time, only this year, only during this window of story' where it feels the most right.

"We're trying to really deeply ground our ninth class in the narrative. Also I think in terms of how we get to it, from my perspective, that's even more interesting.

"When we're talking about what the next class should be, and I've been on Immortal since 2020 and a part of a lot of these conversations, it's always different but there are pillars that help us determine what direction we want to go in.

"It's sometimes as big as what the gaps are in playstyle and what people are asking for but it's also about tone.

"Looking at the classes we launched with, they were all familiar, so we then wanted to think about brand new stuff which led to Blood Knight and Tempest classes in updates.

"The story is important, the world building is important, but ultimately the most important thing is we want to make a class that players want to play and has a big fantasy where players go 'I want to be that, I'm on board'."

The imminent expansion, The Writhing Wilds, takes players to Sharval Wilds, a location that's long been mentioned in the Diablo series but has never been developed before.

And Quinn revealed having free rein to develop this location while still retaining the essence of a Diablo title has been incredibly challenging but the creative process has been massively fun.

The Writhing Wilds update in Diablo Immortal takes players to a new location called Sharval / Screenshot from Blizzard

"The Sharval Wilds is a densely forested region in the centre of the western continent," he said. "We've talked about it a lot in the past but we've not gone there in a Diablo game.

"In Sharval, players will find things are different to what they'd expect. They've come on the trail of Albrecht, Diablo's former human host, but something is happening to the land itself at the same time, it's twisting and changing.

"When you are doing a familiar zone that has a visualisation, there's a cool part to it and a constraint - there's a topography that's already laid out.

"But when things are a bit looser and, in this case, people are talking about dark forests and nature spirits, the things we have to go on are more about the mood, the feeling.

"It's more liberating but it's much more challenging, it gives us the opportunity to stretch our legs and to see if the things we create can measure up to the really already visually defined stuff."

For more from indy100, check out our best 100 video games of all time and how a recent patch in World of Warcraft shows "commitment" to a new mode, according to its developers.

How to join the indy100's free WhatsApp channel

Sign up to our free indy100 weekly newsletter

Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.