Where's our Diablo 4 review?

You might’ve spotted some Diablo 4 reviews going live right about now, but unfortunately there won’t be one from Eurogamer – yet. We’ve been playing the game a fair bit, but right now we’re just not ready to publish a full review that meets our standards for thoroughness.

There are a few reasons for this – generally, when we hold off on publishing a review it’s because either some key features aren’t available for us to check out; because it’s a game with a significant online component that hasn’t properly been stress-tested yet; or because there’s been some funny business or other awkwardness with getting access to review code in time to hit the deadline.

In Diablo 4’s case it’s actually a mix of all three. The in-game shop wasn’t live during the period of early access we’ve had to the game, and while some official assets have been provided, and some promises publicly made by Blizzard about monetisation in Diablo 4, including a cosmetics-only focus and the inclusion of a more palatable ‘battle pass’ system, this feels like something we had to see in action as part of our review. Diablo 3 players will remember the hoo-haa about the auction house when it launched, while Blizzard’s mobile take on the series, Diablo Immortal, has at times been under major scrutiny for its monetisation, so it’s one we’d like to check on live servers first.

Speaking of, Diablo’s also had some trouble with server stability on launch in the past, and while our time with the test weekends and the full game so far have been completely painless – and live service games seem to have, touch wood, got past that awkward era of consistently launching to a few weeks of server woes – it’s another thing we’d like to see in practise.