Diablo 4’s day one version has “very few changes” from server slam

pcgamesn.com:

Diablo 4 is almost here, and if you’re anything like me you’re busy sizing up your strategies for when the Diablo 4 release date arrives. Whether or not you spent any time with the Diablo 4 server slam, there’s no question that it’s influenced a lot of theorycrafting ahead of launch. If you were wondering just how different the Blizzard RPG game will look in its 1.0 form, it seems like the answer is actually ‘not much.’

Initially, Diablo 4’s associate game director Joseph Piepiora had mentioned that the release build will feature “balance changes and bug fixes” from the 0.9 build used for the server slam, which was itself dramatically altered from the previous beta tests. However, he has since clarified that the server slam build was in fact “a version of our day one build” and that “there will be very few changes between this build and the one players will be playing at launch.”

That’s great news if you were already eyeing up the best builds for all Diablo 4 classes from the server slam, because the chances are it’ll still work at launch. Piepiora does add, however, that “We will be evaluating the game and are prepared to make adjustments as we go to ensure a smooth gameplay experience,” so if something really broken starts to spring up in the endgame (that whirlwind Barbarian build, I’m looking at you) then don’t be surprised if Blizzard springs a nerf on it.

Piepiora also notes that the build reviewers and content creators played – yes, that’s the one we had access to for our Diablo 4 review – is “the version you’ll all be playing.” In addition to this, while there may not be many balance changes from the server slam, community manager Adam Fletcher notes that “there are still lots of performance optimizations and bug