Diablo 4 is one of the most highly-anticipated video game launches of 2023 and the latest installment in the Diablo series. The series spans back to Diablo, which was released in January 1997. The game would go on to define an entire genre — what we now know as the hack-and-slash RPG. In this post, we’ll take a look at some of the elements of the upcoming game and answer the question of whether or not Diablo 4 is an MMORPG.
What is an MMORPG?
MMORPG stands for massively multiplayer online role-playing game and is a genre of video games where players occupy a persistent virtual world in real-time with hundreds of other players. The game world in MMORPGs, which the game publisher usually hosts, traditionally continues to exist and evolve while the player is offline, sometimes affected directly by play actions. There is no theme or setting restriction for MMORPGs, though the most popular games in this genre are fantasy.
Gameplay centers around player progression. Players generally pick and customize a character class, level up the character to gain new skills, obtain and equip items to grow stronger, and complete various in-game quests to progress through the story and gain experience.
Gameplay involves a combination of player-versus-player and player-versus-environment content, or sometimes just one or the other. Social interaction is often heavily encouraged in MMORPGs through in-game guild systems, cooperative events like dungeons, server-wide events, and large-scale PvP combat.
Some examples of popular MMORPGs include:
- World of Warcraft
- Everquest
- Elder Scrolls Online
- Final Fantasy XIV
- RuneScape
- Guild Wars
- Ultima Online
- New World
Now for the burning question: is Diablo 4 an MMORPG?
Is Diablo 4 an MMORPG?
Diablo 4 is, first and foremost, an action role-playing game. It does feature some MMORPG elements, such as social interaction, a guild system, and an open world, but players going into the game expecting a traditional MMORPG may be disappointed by the lack of a persistent virtual world.
Though Diablo 4 is the closest game in the series to an MMORPG we’ve seen thus far, we wouldn’t classify it as such. The main reason is that there is no persistent virtual world that is the same for all players on the server — each player’s world is tailored to them. Defeating Strongholds will only unlock things on your map, not for the entire server, and this is a core requirement of MMORPGs.
One might also argue that having a maximum of 12 players in a single zone on a single server instance is too small to fit the general consensus of MMORPG. That said, there is no requirement or hard-set number of players needed to fit the definition, but players have come to expect hundreds or even thousands of players in a single instance in traditional MMORPGs.
Diablo 4’s MMORPG elements include World Events, which are public events that occur on a timer that can be completed cooperatively — a feature that first came to the Diablo series with Diablo Immortal. The game also features a clan system, an iconic MMORPG feature, but the functionality is limited. There is also group play, but it is not required, and the entire experience can be enjoyed solo.
So to sum it up, no, Diablo 4 is not an MMORPG. It’s an ARPG with some interesting MMO elements sprinkled in that make for a unique experience.
