For the first time in over a decade, Blizzard is adding an entirely new class to a mainline Diablo game. And according to Diablo’s franchise manager, this new playable archetype wouldn’t have been possible if the series mobile game, Diablo Immortal, didn’t prove players were ready for such a bold expansion on the existing lore.
The Spiritborn are the biggest addition included in Diablo 4’s upcoming paid expansion, Vessel Of Hatred. While Blizzard hasn’t revealed much about this mysterious new class, we do know that the Spiritborn are warriors who seem native to the Nahantu region, the setting of the upcoming DLC set to drop later this fall. Blizzard will give a full breakdown of this new class during a Diablo livestream on July 18.
This week, however, Diablo boss Rod Fergusson told GamesRadar that the Spiritborn may have been scrapped if players hadn’t immediately embraced some of the new classes introduced in Diablo’s iOS and Android spinoff.
“I was more nervous when we did the Blood Knight for Immortal,” Fergusson said. “When I saw how the Blood Knight went over, I was like, ‘Oh, OK.’ People are open to new ideas and new ways of doing this. And then we released the Tempest, and the Tempest was hugely successful too.”
Last summer, Blizzard announced that the Blood Knight, a gothic vampire race with red eyes, black veins, and a fashion sense that wouldn’t be out of place in a Castlevania game, was the newest class being added to Diablo Immortal. Before the Blood Knight, the last time Blizzard introduced an entirely original class was 2012’s Diablo 3.
In May, the developer would follow up with the inclusion of the Tempest, an agile, dual blade-wielding warrior capable of duplicating themselves like a rogue.
“I’m feeling good about bringing something that’s not instantly understood as a classic archetype of the D&D world,” Fergusson said about Diablo 4’s Spiritborn. “You’re having stuff that’s a little bit more nuanced in terms of what you’re doing, but it’s new and fresh.”
While the addition of an all-new class has been received well by fans, Fergusson acknowledged Diablo fans clamoring for the return of the simple but effective Paladin class, adding that he hears them “very loudly.”
Diablo Immortal, the mobile spin-off of the action RPG series, launched in June 2022. While it successfully replicated the Diablo experience on phones and tablets, its excessive, predatory microtransactions made it a tough game to recommend sticking with, especially with Diablo 4 set to release just a year later.
To Blizzard’s credit, the company stuck with the game, providing updates, the aforementioned classes, and seasonal content for mobile players to engage with, despite its reputation with fans. While it may get overshadowed by its console and PC counterpart, it is cool to see Blizzard use the game as a sort of testing ground for features and ideas that can later be implemented in Diablo 4.
For players interested in jumping back into the spooky, open-world antics of Diablo 4, now might be a better time than ever to check back in. The game’s latest update completely overhauled how loot works, making unique drops more frequent and drastically reducing the grind.
