With Diablo himself defeated in the recent Shattered Sanctuary expansion, it’s time forDiablo Immortalto begin its next long-term narrative arc. The Epoch of Madness will kick off with Patch 3.3, introducing a year-long romp in the Sharval Wilds where players will navigate the complex dynamics between the inhabitant’s competing factions. In the Epoch of Madness, players will be faced with various choices that have longer-term consequences than typically seen in aDiablogame, marking a shift in Blizzard’s approach to action RPG storytelling. Of course,Diablo Immortal’s future also holds an all-new crafting and gathering system, a new class, and plenty more content.
In an interview with Game Rant,Diablo Immortalsenior narrative designer Ryan Quinn went into great detail about the team’s approach to this unfolding narrative, and particularly how they’re navigating the challenge of working on aDiablogame where Diablo has been defeated. While he was understandably tight-lipped about the new class on the way, he did offer some insights into the new crafting system arriving shortly, along with some other content teased in the recently revealedDiablo Immortal2025 roadmap.This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
Overview of Diablo Immortal’s Epoch of Maddness
Q: The Epoch of Madness is about to kick off. Can you give us the broad strokes of what this year-long narrative will be about?
A:So, to give a bit of background, Diablo Immortal has historically focused on the story of what happens after the destruction of the Worldstone. What effect does the Worldstone’s destruction have on Sanctuary? One of the key elements we’ve introduced to explore this is the Shardborn, people who have been twisted by the power of the Worldstone. We first introduced them in theTristram Cathedraland then expanded on them in the Southern Dreadlands.
At the end of our last patch, afterthe battle with Diablo, we revealed Albrecht, the first of the Shardborn. He’s a very old figure in Diablo lore. After Diablo’s defeat, Albrecht took control of the remaining Shardborn and led them away from the Worldstone’s crown to parts unknown.
This sets the stage for the present-day story. The power of the Worldstone still lingers in an ambulatory, mortal form, with Albrecht leading the Shardborn to a new region, which we’ll explore during Year 3 of the game. This zone is called the Sharval Wilds. It’s a densely forested area, containing both coniferous and montane forests, located in the center of Sanctuary’s Western continent, south of Ivgorod.
Albrecht is bringing his people, whom he refers to as his family, to the Sharval Wilds for reasons we don’t fully understand at the beginning of the Quarter 1 story. Over the next few chapters, we’ll uncover the details of what’s happening in this region. The forests are beginning to twist and come alive, with nature spirits known as Faye emerging from the forest. These spirits are capturing people and devouring villages, which is a clear violation of the ancient agreements made between the rural hamlets of Sharval and the Faye: “We leave you alone, and you leave us alone.”
This situation is very strange and frightening for the people of Sharval. There’s tension brewing between the rural hamlets on the east side and the more urban centers, like the capital city of Instig. The conflict involves not only taxes but also the broader struggle over who gets to decide what happens in the region. This creates a growing class antagonism, which will be explored in the story as it unfolds.
Over the next few quarters, we will focus on various factions within this region. We’ll spend time with them, getting to know their perspectives and motivations while also uncovering the mystery behind the remainder of the Worldstone’s power.
Q: With Diablo toppled and Albrecht on the rise, is it ever a concern that Diablo Immortal might run out of villains? It sounds potentially difficult to come up with the next big bad guy now that Diablo is down.
A:Yeah, it is challenging when you say that the character whose name is on the box isn’t going to be the focal character. There’s definitely a risk involved in that decision. But, based on our long experience with making Diablo games, we’ve found that Diablo sets the tone for the universe, and Diablo himself establishes that atmosphere. However, he’s not the only thing going on in Sanctuary.
We had a really good experience with Malthael as a focus character. We had agreat experience with Baal, his brother, even though he wasn’t outwardly villainous—he was still a scary character. We also had a successful experience with Imperius as a focus character. So, my take on that is, yes, it’s challenging, but Sanctuary is up to the challenge. It’s a very diverse world. It was a mess before Diablo showed up, and it will still be a mess in the time period when he’s not directly menacing people.
This opens up space for all these other, often offbeat or unusual factions to shine—things we wouldn’t normally focus on. This approach allows us to strike that balance for Diablo fans that’s so important to us: 50% familiar, bridging thegap between Diablo 2 and Diablo 3, but also 50% new. We want to show players some fresh, novel content from perspectives that haven’t been explored before in Diablo games.
Q: How does the team approach executing a year-long narrative? What leads to the decision to go with a long-term story, and what goes into preparing for that?
A:The decision was pretty straightforward. In the past year and a half, two years of Immortal’s live experience, players have been telling us they want more content and more story. When we’ve done side stories like the Elite Quest orthe Tempest Origin Questwe did early in 2024, people enjoyed them, but they wanted to see a more connected and continuous main story. That feedback largely pushed us to create this four-quarter main quest story with the Epic of Madness. It’s something the players wanted, and it’s something we wanted to write.
The more time we devote to an area, like the Sharval Wilds region, the more we can flesh it out. We can bring it to life and make it feel like a real, immersive part of Sanctuary. Since we hadn’t been to Sharval before, it seemed like a really exciting opportunity. It’s a place we’ve talked about a lot, but we hadn’t yet played our way through it.
As for the design process, it’s a lot of research and a lot of talking. It involves a lot of “Wouldn’t it be cool if…” moments, and then it’s digging into the old archives, like looking at an old flavor text note about Sharval from anitem in Diablo 3from a patch in 2016. What does that say about the world we should be building? It’s both an excavation process and an imagination process. It’s us asking, “What should make this place different from other locations we’ve gone to?”
Q: As a narrative designer, how does Diablo Immortal’s setting help foster interesting ideas for you? Are there aspects of its world that bring out your creativity?
A:Yeah, I’ve always been really attracted to this universe, even as a fan before I joined Blizzard. It’s often lonely, haunting, and a little claustrophobic. In some ways, that feels like a very real reflection of the world we live in day to day. It makes those more frightful experiences that people go through feel real and shared.
I also think there are thematic elements in Diablo thatgo beyond the horror side, which are really exciting to me and to other writers and designers who work on this game. At the risk of sounding like I’m talking about Overwatch for a second, I think that universe’s big tag is “a future worth fighting for.” For Sanctuary, though, the way I see it is, “What if this is the best we can get?” The people who fight for Sanctuary aren’t fighting for a proud, brave, utopian world that aspires to the greatest ideals. They’re fighting for a crapshoot because that’s what Sanctuary is. And I don’t mean that in a negative way. I just mean that Sanctuary isn’t comfortable; it’s a scary, hostile place to live. And yet, people still feel the need to protect themselves and their neighbors and to define what they’re about. They’re willing to defend their perspectives and support each other out of necessity.
I think that’s braver in a world of duress—where demons, angels, and every conceivable threat want to obliterate you. If you’re willing to fight for purgatory, how awesome is that? That’s something I’ve always found kind of inspiring about the heroic side ofthe Diablo universe, and I don’t think I’m the only one who feels that way.
Q: What kind of story did you want to tell with Epoch of Madness? Were there certain notes you wanted to hit?
A:I think if I tell you all of them—or most of them—it might spoil some of the surprise and the joy of experiencing it. But let me try to give you a high-level overview. One of the things that’s pretty omnipresent in Sharval is that it’s this wild, untamed land, where the vines twist in on themselves, and the forests are dense and lightless. Everyone who lives near them has to make peace with the dangers of nature. If they don’t, they’ll just go around feeling disappointed and dejected, only to end up getting eaten by a bear.
You also have these hamlets in the rural areas on the outskirts of the forest and Entsteig, the capital city, with its attendant towns on its outskirts. They disagree about how to share the land as well. How much should Entsteig direct? How much should the hamlets be left to govern themselves? And into this already tense situation, we throw in the player, the Shardborn, and some other forces that I’m not necessarily going to talk about just yet.
But at its core, the question is: how can people who disagree, sometimes violently or vituperatively, live in the same place? Is that even possible? And that, to me, is a theme that feels ripe for exploration, and it feels like it can be best explored in this new region, in this new south.
Diablo Immortal’s New Factions
Q: You’ve touched on this a bit, but can you dive more into the various factions, how players will interact with them, and the dynamic between them?
A:In the first quarter, which I’ll be focusing on, we’re going to be spending most of our time in the eastern part of Sharval. This means we’ll be on the outskirts of the Deep Woods, interacting primarily with rural farmers in the hamlet of Orthrup, as well as the Druids and Witches I mentioned earlier, who consider the untamable Wilds their territory.
The interactions in this quarter will largely revolve around plot and drama. You’ll be working with various people, trying to find allies, gathering information, and learning about the nature of the place. In some cases, you’ll be defending them, and in others, you might be backed up by them or even mediating their disputes.
At the close of this quarter, without giving too much away, we’ll have some light choice-based ambient events. For some members of these factions, you’ll be able to sit down with them and talk about how things transpired in the story of the Writhing Wilds, making recommendations about how things should move forward. This is similar to thechoice in World’s Crownbut on a much smaller scale, though with a longer-lasting effect. As you start participating in the region, even in small ways, we’re setting the flag for how your involvement might influence how these factions behave or view each other.
It won’t be a massive shift—it won’t radically change the course of the story—but I hope that it will let players exert a bit more influence on their relationships with characters in the game. This way, the impact of decisions made months ago can come to fruition in future quarters, something we haven’t really done much of in Diablo Immortal before. When we do introduce choices, players tend to respond positively.
Q: This story revolves around Albrecht, a famous Diablo character. How do you approach his characterization in Diablo Immortal with respect to the rest of the series?
A:Albrecht occupies a very classically Blizzard role in that he’s a person whose life has been completely upended and transformed by a corrupting external force. As a child, he was relatively happy and looking forward to the rest of his life, until he was kidnapped by Archbishop Lazarus and handed over to Diablo, the Lord of Terror, to serve as a host for one of the most dangerous demons ever to walk Sanctuary. That essentially obliterated what was left of his life.
In Immortal, we find that the Bride of Hell, Diablo’s foremost cultist, has taken Albrecht’s body, using him as an anchor to try and locate her master’s soul in Hell. She resurrects Albrecht with shards of the Worldstone, transforming him into the first of the Shardborn. So, what you experience as Albrecht in Tristram Cathedral and World’s Crown is not really the boy who once lived there—it’s a monster wearing his skin, plagued by terrifying visions sent by Diablo. But he still has some of his old memories and inclinations.
When Albrecht asks the player in World’s Crownto kill Diablo, offering to stand aside and keep the Shardborn out of your way, that was an opportunity for us to show the awakening of his consciousness, his desire for freedom, and maybe even some old human memories bubbling to the surface.
Now, Albrecht has assumed control of these Worldstone-twisted creatures, and they’re not all hearing Diablo’s voice in their heads endlessly. They’re not all seeing fragmented visions of terror. Their minds have certainly been impacted by what they’ve endured, both physically and mentally. But Albrecht, now freed from his demonic servitude, might come out of this with a desire to do, yes, some mad Shardborn things—but also some things that recall his past and what matters to him now.
This is something we want to explore over the course of the story this year: Who is Albrecht now, now that he’s, for lack of a better term, his own man standing on his own two feet? What’s important to him? The character constantly talks about his family, this thing he’s lost. If he were to form a new family from the chaos and terror of the Shardborn’s existence, what would that family look like?
We’ve got a pretty interestingcast of Diablo characters, some luminaries, who will join Albrecht and flock to his side. They’ll shape, in many ways, what he does and what he pursues throughout the course of our story.
Q: As a writer, how do you approach making Albrecht a compelling villain?
A:Our approach to character narratives is largely focused on defining characters through their actions. We believe that characters—whether heroes, villains, or a mix of both—are best characterized when they’re given meaningful things to do that create a larger-than-life impression. Albrecht’s journey in World’s Crown is a prime example: he goes from “I will serve Diablo; I’ll do whatever you want, just stop hurting me,” to “Of course, I’ll stand aside while you go kill the boss because I want to be free from his torments.” That’s a huge shift, a big moment for any character.
To support that, we scaffold the development through things like overheard conversations, where you may hear one character talking to another. We also incorporate lore books—many of our characters in Diablo, not just in this game, keep diaries. They’re writing late at night about what’s going on in their lives, and we use that to subtly back up big character moments in small ways.
For me personally, I look for the humanity in every character. It’s easier to do incharacters who aren’t demon lords, but even then, it’s about asking: what makes this person a person? What stand-out hypocrisies do they have? What elements can I empathize with? What elements might other characters or players disagree with or even despise? We put those elements on display so that we’re not just creating a one-note character. We want characters to feel multi-dimensional, unpredictable, and believable.
When yousee a character as a real person—or at least see glimpses of their humanity through exceptional voice acting, stunning art design, and the overall experience—that’s when they become compelling. Storytelling isn’t just about the writing; it’s about how you interact with that character, how you experience their world.
Let me take a quick tangent: In Shassar Sea, there’s a smaller-scale NPC named Peth, a cantankerous engineer. The first time you approach him, he says, “Can’t you see I’m busy?” and shuts down the quest dialogue. You have to talk to him again to continue the quest. It’s a small thing, but it speaks volumes. It shows that this character is an individual—they have agency, desires, and priorities, regardless of what the player wants. It breaks the usual flow of “I listen to this character, I kill some monsters, I listen again,” and reinforces the idea that this person is real, not just a quest dispenser. That kind of detail helps make characters more compelling.
New Content Coming to Diablo Immortal
Q: There’s also new content on the way in terms of game mechanics. Can you talk about the new crafting system?
A:The crafting systemin Immortal is a first for us. It’s different from the classic gear upgrade system; it’s more aligned with traditional MMO crafting. You’ll head out into the world, mine ores of various rarities, and bring them back. Then, you’ll visit a blacksmith where you can craft new items. The type of ore you use will influence how deterministic the crafted item is and what magical attributes you can select, especially when using rarer ores.
The idea here is that Diablo, as a game, thrives on that moment when you find something cool and random. We want to preserve that excitement, but with crafting, we also see an opportunity to narrow that randomness a bit. We want to give players more control over their arsenal, allowing them to shape it according to their preferences. This is just our first step into implementing a more robust crafting system, but we’re eager to see how players respond and ensure that it integrates well with all the other drop systems in the game.
Q: What are you most excited or proud of for players to experience in the upcoming content?
A:The thing I’m most excited to share in the long term is what we’re doing with Sharval as a zone. In the short term, we’ll have quests that send you there, and you’ll go about your usual routine—killing demons, tackling bounties, running rifts, and so on. But over the next three quarters, we plan to build up to the full-fledged release of Sharval as a zone. There will still be some areas blocked off for future story exploration, but what excites me about this is that we’re doing something we haven’t really done before. Instead of throwing you into a fully developed zone, we’ll let you explore parts of it, get familiar with different factions, areas, and points of interest before the full zone opens up. You’ll get to revisit it with fresh eyes.
We’re alsointroducing a day-night cycle, which, in the first quarter, will mostly be cosmetic, using lighting effects to showcase the zone at different times of day. Long-term, we want to make the zone feel more dynamic so that your exploration experience changes. Your preconceptions about the zone in Quarter 1 will evolve as we move into Quarter 2, and by Quarter 3, we’ll give you a much larger playground to explore.
This is definitely what I’m most excited about. I love the gloomy, claustrophobic feel of the dark forest. The color palette, the new monster family, the Fey—everything about this zone feels fresh and compelling. I think it will be a great change of pace for players and provide an exciting new experience.
Q: Any last thoughts you’d like to share?
A:Honestly, the most overarching thing I can say, after four and a half years working on this project, is just gratitude. I’m incredibly humbled and grateful—along with the whole team—for you and for everyone else who’s playing and enjoying this game. It’s truly an honor and a delight for us to work on a universe we care about, one that everyone is passionate about, and create content we know people will love. So, thank you for your support, for wanting to talk about all of this, and for playing alongside us. We’re right there with you.
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