Image: Blizzard Entertainment
Diablo 4 has officially gone gold, but are fans convinced that it’s worth playing on release day?
Blizzard Entertainment has announced that Diablo 4 has ‘gone gold’, an industry-wide term used for games that have been deemed ready to ship. While the term doesn’t mean that work on the game is complete by a long shot, it is a heartening sign that things are running smoothly on the road to release day.
These days, most games end up going gold weeks or even months before their release date, and still get ‘Day One’ patches later on to fix a variety of bugs and other issues that inevitably get dug up afterwards. Diablo 4’s general manager Rod Fergusson said:
Going gold is a landmark milestone for the incredible Diablo 4 team, who have all worked so hard crafting the next-generation instalment of this iconic franchise. This is a concrete, meaningful step toward our June 6 launch. Whether players are veterans of the franchise or jumping in for the first time, we can’t wait for everyone to experience the full game: taking part in the incredible storytelling, experimenting with character classes and builds, and exploring what the endgame and the dark world of Sanctuary has to offer.
While ‘going gold’ once meant that a game was finally getting pressed into discs after long development cycles, these days it refers to games that are more or less ready for release. Diablo 4 is a live service game, which means that it will get constant content updates, balance changes and bug fixes starting from now until the day Diablo 5 releases (hopefully), so going gold is really just the start of a very long process of maintaining the game on Blizzard’s end.
This is also a good sign that Diablo 4 won’t be delayed from its current release date, seeing as Blizzard seems confident enough to ship the game out as is. The question then becomes: after everything we’ve seen from the massive marketing machine pushing Diablo 4 to the masses, are you convinced to pick this game up as is? Is this the action-RPG sequel fans of the franchise have clamoured for since Diablo 3: Reaper of Souls?
Blizzard held two open betas for the game in March, and we came away from it with plenty of excitement for a full launch - but a few concerns as well. The company has already addressed some of the criticisms players levied following the open beta, but some problems might be too big to fix in just the few months left until release day. For example, the game’s slow-moving story campaign, MMO features and quality-of-life woes like the lack of a map overlay could become pain points after tens of in-game hours.
That being said, the game’s core gameplay loop is fun enough to get us pumped for release day, so we have our fingers crossed. Diablo 4 launches on June 6, 2023.
