D4 is the first time I’ve really gotten into Diablo. I’m hoping the game will have longevity for me. I’ve enjoyed both S1 and especially S2. I can see things like nightmare dungeons getting stale after a while. When it came to D3, did things like dungeon layouts and enemies remain the same for the whole decade? Or did core structures of the game change significantly over the years?
Diablo 3 just has a lot more “Stuff”. Most of it accumulated from seasons. A lot of the core features D4 lacks came out-of-box for D3. Great community features, chat channels, match-making, leaderboards, a million times deeper magic item system, unlimited paragons (at the time), armory that saved skill/gear layouts, and a phone book sized list more.
How it changed from the start? Well, it was pretty vanilla and boring at first. Then eventually they released an expansion which raised the level cap. That’s where it become playable for most. Seasons got stagnant very fast. I lost interest for years. Then around season 15 or 16 the new guys in Albany took over (they made D2R). They started cranking out FANTASTIC themes. Totally new, fresh stuff. Producer Matthew Cederquist and his team can be given a lot of credit for how Diablo 3 turned out in the end. Now it is going on season 30, which will wrap it up by a class balance pass and implementing some cool stuff like the Altar into the core game.
Hopefully those guys will be on the D4 team soon. 
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The also expanded the world by giving us several new zones for free, the cube, the follower revamp.
Stash tabs from completing the season journey. Pets that pick up gold. Legendary gems. You can play 100% solo without ever seeing anyone, Greed’s vault, Cow level. Also if you have D3 you can play the Darkening of Tristram in January which is a call back to the original Diablo.
I am sure as D4 continues to be developed it will surpass everything that D3 took 11 years to implement.
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D3 took a long time before it introduced all of its content.
Vanilla Diablo 3 had a horrible launch, terrible itemization, a real money auction house, and no end game content what so ever. You basically ran the campaign 3 times over on each difficulty setting, similar to D2, except it was extremely difficult until they nerfed it. Rares were BiS at the time, and made a lot of money on the real money AH. Sets weren’t worth picking up, and legendaries were very lackluster.
Seasons themselves weren’t even introduced until after the expansion released. Reaper of Souls came out March 25, 2014, Season 1 didn’t hit until August 29th, 2014 (mind you D3 vanilla came out May 15, 2012). This is also when Greater Rifts (NM Dungeon equivalents in D4) were introduced and endgame was pretty much established for the game.
As far as the core gameplay of the game this in particular never changed. There were additional quality of life changes, more items introduced, various systems implemented, and finally Themed Seasons that came out 4 years later from the launch of RoS, but the core gameplay never changed. You leveled up, completed bounties for as long as you needed to, ran rifts, then greater rifts, and that was pretty much it. That was your endgame until you decided you were bored of it.
To be fair though, D2 had a very similar endgame. When D2 originally came out, and even after its first expansion, all you did was run through the campaign on harder difficulties, then you would just farm bosses to find gear or reach max level or both. Repeat this ad nauseum until you just didn’t want to play anymore, or waited until a new ladder season came out (which were few and far between back then).
Ubers wasn’t introduced until 4 years after Lord of Destruction (D2’s expansion) was released. This essentially added what we have in D4, where you went out to farm materials (keys in D2) to summon bosses, which would drop their own materials to summon a portal to another area to fight even tougher bosses in an area. People complain about farming materials in D4 to get to Uber Duriel, they have no idea what farming these materials was like in D2.
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D3 launch vs D3 today is damn near two completely different games.
I suspect they’ll get there with D4 but it’d be nice if they didn’t have to relearn what made D3 so good. D3 set a few precedents like load outs, infinite scaling, etc., that should just be baseline from now on.
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Most of this list was not something out-of-box for D3. D3 didn’t get seasons until 2 years after launch when RoS released and paragons were after that. Armory skill/gear layouts were even years after that.
Honestly, some of you either have terrible memories, think RoS was the launch of D3, or are just straight up dishonest about what D3 had when it launched.
Remember that D3 was not really advertised as a live service game from the beginning. They started seasons wayyy later in the lifecycle.
I think D4 will change/evolve A LOT over time, much more than D3 did.
This…
D3 launch was really rough, the campaign slapped tho (except Azmodon’s parts, he was corny).
Late D3 is super fun tho.
Another thing D3 had that the others didn’t is a really useful website.
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The D3 we have now is nothing like the D3 that launched. It’s like night and day.
People keep screeching about no end game in D4. D3 didn’t add greater rifts until 2 years after its launch. Before that, it was the campaign on repeat and then adventure mode on repeat when they added that.
There was an entire gear overhaul because gear drops were so terrible you had to almost rely on buying gear off the auction house. And since they removed the AH at some point they had to make it so you could actually find your own useful gear.
D3 is a cautionary tale why the people who control the RNG should not be allowed to “double dip” via also controlling a real money AH.