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Diablo Immortal's closed beta goes live today, and brings with it a stack of new features, such as the addition of controller support and the debut of the Necromancer as a playable class. Elsewhere, the game now has set items (but they're a little different to what you might expect), a ladder system for its Battlegrounds mode, and more collaborative raid-style end game content, among many other changes.
Before we get into all that, however, as with the closed alpha, not everyone will be able to access the closed beta. It's running on Android only and is restricted to players in Australia and Canada for now, with access for Korea, Japan and China in the coming weeks. Now, let's go through what players can expect from the closed beta, with a little help from Diablo Immortal's game director Wyatt Cheng and production director Caleb Arseneaux.
We'll start with controller support given that's been one of the most requested features for Diablo Immortal. Indeed, the team had said on numerous occasions that controller suport was not something they were really looking at, because Diablo Immortal was being developed very specifically to make the most of touch screens. "After we did closed alpha, the feedback for controller support was overwhelming, I would say," explains Caleb Arseneaux, regarding the team's change of heart. "We anticipated that there would be some feedback for it, but we didn't anticipate the volume... feedback we get from these tests matter to our development. So our plans changed and we pivoted so that we could put some resources toward doing an early test of controller support with our next milestone. This one here - closed beta."
As Arseneaux alludes to, that "early test" is just that - an initial implementation to give players a taste of how a controller will feel with Immortal. Thus, for the closed beta controllers will only work for navigation and combat, with all menus still requiring touch inputs. The Diablo Immortal team will continue to iterate on the feature, but does not have a timeline for full support.
For the closed beta, players will be able to use the Xbox One Wireless Bluetooth Controller, the Xbox Series X / S Bluetooth Controller, the Xbox Elite Controller Series 2, the Xbox Adaptive Controller, the Sony Dualshock 4 and the Razer Kishi. The default bindings will allow players to move and aim separately using the analogue sticks, with basic and ultimate attacks assigned to face buttons along with use potion and interact. Your character's four skills will be fired off with the bumpers/triggers. Players will be able to change the bindings in the beta if they'd prefer a different layout.
All Rise
With the closed beta, Diablo Immortal's roster of playable classes is expanding once again. In addition to the Barbarian, Crusader, Demon Hunter, Monk and Wizard, players will now be able to check out the Necromancer. As has been the case for all the other classes, the Necromancer will have some familiar abilities, but will still feel distinct from previous iterations.
Corpse Explosion, for instance, is an iconic skill, but the team has made some changes so that it works seamlessly with Diablo Immortal's twin stick shooter-style movement and targeting. Instead of targeting a specific corpse, players now point in a direction to create a cone that the skill will encompass, "and every corpse in that area blows up," enthuses game director Wyatt Cheng. "And it's awesome because you cast the spell once and like five corpse explosions will go off, chain one after the other."
That's not all though. "It's tough when you don't have any corpses to explode," he states. "And so... a number of other skills can generate corpses. There are some legendaries that'll help you generate more corpses, but we realized we don't want people to have to wait until they get legendary items to generate those corpses. We want players to just have corpses from the beginning. And so some basic skills will generate corpses as well. For example, there's an ability called Grim Scythe that you get very early on and when you hit enemies with it, it just generates corpses as an additional effect of the scythe so that you actually can power your corpse explosion without necessarily having to wait until enemies fall, which is really helpful for fighting bosses."
It's going to be fun to see how other skills have been reinvented, what new abilities have been added and how they can all change based on legendary gem affixes.
A number of other changes are also debuting with Diablo Immortal's closed beta. The end game PVP, for instance, has changed drastically. The set-up is still the same - there's a group of players known as Immortals who earn the right to be the protectors of Sanctuary, but they only stay in that position as long as the Shadows - a rival faction any player can join, comprised of sub-guild groups known as Dark Houses - can't overpower them. In the closed alpha attempting to overthrow the Immortals culminated in a series of 8v8 battles that would determine if a new group would become Immortals - and crown a new leader, but that's all changed.
"During closed alpha," says Caleb Arseneaux, "it was a numbers game to determine who was going to be that one ruling Immortal on the server, but we've made some changes to this system for closed beta. We now have a new mode called Challenge of the Immortal. In the faction war between the Immortals and the Shadows, if the Shadows get into a position of trying to overthrow the Immortals, it climaxes now in a 30 on one PVP battle. And it's the one [top] Immortal player on the server is transformed into a giant raid boss... And they are going to face off against 30 of the top Shadow players on the server. So in this battle, the Immortal, if they defend and defeat all of the Shadows, then their reign continues. But if the Shadow players overcome and defeat the Immortal player, then something also new happens.
"The Final Battle is where the Immortal has been defeated - if the Shadows get that far - and all 30 Shadow players, they're resurrected, and then all of a sudden there's a timer... and all the names turn red. And it is a battle royale amongst the top Dark Houses that are present for the battle to determine who is going to be the next Immortal and to claim the crown... for themselves. So it's no longer just a numbers game or trying to grind certain values up before the climax. The climax itself has a lot of say about who is the next Immortal... And it really focuses on a good combat experience."
The idea of the top Immortal becoming a giant and turning into a raid boss is an interesting idea, but impossible to judge without playing. It sounds, however, like the Immortal will have some serious power. "We've designed new skills for the Immortal to utilise when they're in that raid form," says Arseneaux. "And so they'll... one shot you if you're standing in the wrong place. It is a hard fight."