Diablo 4's endgame challenges are MMO dailies in disguise

Diablo 4's endgame challenges are MMO dailies in disguise

Difficult dungeons and open-world PvP reward powerful gear.


Blizzard's latest Diablo 4(opens in new tab) Endgame Preview makes MMO comparisons(opens in new tab) even easier.





Diablo 4 starts out as an action RPG where you click through dungeons and collect rare loot. But once you reach level 50 and complete the story, you'll have a list of MMO-like activities to complete as you progress through the remaining 50 levels. It's no different than previous Diablo games, but the open world and repeatable quest systems bring it closer to an MMO experience.


World of Warcraft players can read between the lines of the features explained in the video. Many of them reward currency or a chance at rare loot, and you can seemingly repeat them on a daily or weekly basis.


Here's how Diablo 4's MMO-like endgame systems work:

• Nightmare Dungeons: After collecting a Nightmare Seal in the open world, you can unlock an existing dungeon's Nightmare difficulty, which introduces tough monsters, new objectives, and powerful loot.
• Helltides: Powerful demons will appear around the world for you to defeat for shards. They then take these shards and spend them to roll for loot at the Curio Supplier.
• Whispers of the Dead: A large ancient tree sends you around the world to complete short quests or bounties and reward you with loot.
• Fields of Hate: In the areas surrounding the map, you can PvP to find and clean shards that you can spend on loot in a nearby town.

As in the last beta (opens in new tab), the higher difficulty settings, or world tiers, of Diablo 4 strengthen enemies and increase the value of your gold and loot rewards. To unlock larger world stages, you must complete the main story and then survive a capstone dungeon. These dungeons will test your skills so you are prepared for the whole game to get progressively more difficult.


After you reach the bottom of the skill tree, you start earning Paragon points instead of skill points. Diablo 4's Paragon system progressively increases your base stats like Diablo 3, except there's an additional layer of complexity to the layout, a grid of nodes that can be claimed for bonuses like five more dexterities. Legendary Nodes offer more specific bonuses like a 5% increase in your damage for each nearby enemy under the effect of a crowd control ability. And glyphs can be found in the world and placed on the board to strengthen the nodes around them.


All of this is in addition to the normal loot-based progression that was available in the beta. Legendary items can provide affixes that completely change the way you play your class by introducing unique interactions between your abilities (opens in new tab). And you can craft your own legendary items by imprinting an aspect - earned in difficult dungeons - on each item. Aspects are essentially legendary item affixes that you can specifically hunt down.


Diablo 4's endgame isn't a complete copy of a typical MMO endgame, but there are a surprising number of similarities. If you stick with the story after the credits roll, you'll likely find yourself engaged in a daily routine of leveling up your character and roaming the open world, with other players occasionally joining you. There are even world bosses to defeat. You can't fool me, Blizzard. I played your other games before.