Thanks Mike.
So to be 100% clear, 1.0 won’t have the full 12 chapters, correct?
Yes, 1.0 won’t have 12 chapters.
This isn’t news, I’m not sure where the info is but we have said it many times.
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Brilliant, finally a straight answer. That’s all I was looking for.
You are now officially Dev of the Year!!! 
At least next time the subject comes up, I can now point people to an official answer!
PS: and sorry for the tagging, didn’t know we weren’t supposed to do that.
TBF, this isn’t the first time they’ve said it.
For some sure, but I think the general consensus on this genre is that the campaign is secondary. Most players don’t care about PoE’s story and almost everyone skips D3s campaign completely, so not finishing the story to prioritize other things seems reasonable as long as the endgame is coherent with the story as is (which is largely the case right now).
I’m no developer, but I’ll do my best to provide you with as much developer information about the campaign as I can find.
History of Chapters 10-12
But before that, lets remind ourselves about the history of Chapters 10-12. First, they were not part of the original early access roadmap for the game. These chapters weren’t added to the roadmap until July 20, 2021, though Mike does talk about them on Discord prior to this reveal.
https://i.imgur.com/djOM3sx.png
In the dev blog that introduced this new roadmap format, Judd had this to say about it:
The key words from this being that some items on this roadmap may come after 1.0, with these additional chapters falling under this category.
Developer Statements
June 28, 2021
August 24, 2021
June 30, 2022
July 16, 2022
September 14, 2022
September 15, 2022
October 14, 2022
November 11, 2022
The video should start at the correct time, but if not the question begins at 1:43:20 and answer ends at 1:43:55.
November 17, 2022
December 2, 2022
The video should start at the correct time, but if not the question begins at 5:18 and answer ends at 6:06.
January 20, 2023
Mike briefly talks about future changes coming to the campaign.
TL;DR
There’s a lot of changes coming to the campaign to bring all the chapters up to the level of Chapter 9. This includes the environments, voice acting, NPCs, etc. with additional items like cutscenes, quests, dialogue, and more be added or changed.
Chapter 10 was originally planned to release by 1.0, but that may or may not happen depending on how things go leading up to launch. Chapters 11 and 12 are definitely coming after 1.0.
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Everyone who plays D3 NOW.
At launch, I am pretty sure many, many people bought Diablo 3 JUST to play the campaign. Millions, probably, as Blizzard catters to a much wider audience than PoE or LE, and a more casual one (casual often meaning, more interested in the campaign than in endgame min-maxing).
But anyway I agree with the general idea of your post.
I just don’t feel like investing time in any kind of endgame before completing the game itself, but I am aware I am weird.
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This is absolutely amazing!!!
Many many thanks Andrew.
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I personally am against total campaign skips because it removes a huge chunk of content from the gameplay loop, so I definitely get your frustration with the current state of D3 campaign. It’s interesting to me that the more hardcore game (Poe) chose to keep their campaign mandatory while the casual one effectively removed it.
Fortunately the current plan for LE is to use dungeons to take ‘shortcuts’ in the campaign so we shouldn’t have the same issue as D3.
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Yes, but at launch that was the only thing you could do (adventure mode & bounties were added with RoS).
But the writing for the campaign was so phenomenally bad.
That butterfly really tilts you. 
The butterfly was annoying, act 3 was just (appropriately) diabolically bad writing.
Maybe that’s why they decided to make it skippable.
Out of shame.
One can only hope.
I have a friend who is getting d4 just to play the campaign once. Thats it.
its crazy, he does not actually play arpgs either, he does not play PoE, actively makes fun of it even. He does not play diablo games other then for the campaigns.
its kinda crazy how different the community can be in this genre for topics like this. Hardcore players dread the campaign and want to just get to the blasting monsters part of the game. And casuals are like “but what about the emperor? what happened to him, we got blessings for the spear, what happens next?”
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Diablo is a bit special. One of the most iconic words in computer games history.
I know several people like your friend, more “RPG” than “ARPG” players, who will always play through a Diablo game’s campaign at least once, for a walk on memory lane. But would never touch PoE or other too technical ARPGs.
[Edit: it just occured to me that we are supposed to walk DOWN memory lane, not ON it. Shame on me.]
I believe Diablo 4 will sell more copies just to these casual “tourists” than the total number of players of PoE and LE put together.
The big question is, who is the target audience?
Releasing without a coherent story risks cutting off these casuals you mention.
But to be honest, targetting the hardcore ARPG players who just care about endgame and will come back season after season probably makes more sense in the long run, in financial terms.
That’s a good question. I haven’t followed D4 development closely but afaik you have an open world with other players in and even pvp. I don’t know if this changes if you are in a group or not but that rather mmoish design will most likely alienate a lot of diehard isometric hack and slay players.
That’s another thing people might be not happy with in D4 seeing a bazzillion of people actively doing the same quest as you and talking to the same npc about the same stuff should be the most imersion breaking thing for story players.
Then again Diablo is written over the product so most people will go the “Shut up and take my money!” route anyway.
I have played for the campaign. I do not enjoy endless grinding anymore where there is little connectivity or meaningful change in what I am experiencing.
Games like SWTOR set a benchmark for me. I like the story in LE and had hoped it would be more of a central focus for the developers leading toward an official release.
I am concerned the “Target Audience” for Diablo 4, will be anyone susceptible to addiction and gambling with an open wallet. I believe Corporate Gaming has had its hand in that, seen the massive available bounty and is now unwilling to turn from it regardless of the damage to creators, individual gamers and the “gaming world” (I don’t mean the gambling world).
I applaud the Devs of LE for taking the course they are, and being considerate in how MTX mixes with the game.
An opinion on “beta” vs “released”. In the world of professional design and engineering, milestones matter; Payment, implementation, legal boundaries… and lots more.
Being “in beta” is largely an innocuous statement in today’s market of “early access” and to me is more about a funding model that uses a high number of small (and small control) investors, instead of large Capital investors who can get a hook into you if you produce a turd and try to run off. Extracting maximum early (broad) financial support from a group of investors who won’t have the same say as large scale corporate investors. It’s a great strategy to get a LOT of money, deliver on your terms without significant accountability, and get away at the end with a chunk of it.
In some instances “Beta” is an excuse to not have a marketable standard that meets expectations, or a thin protection against those who call your product inadequate (not just a gaming thing).
What does the gamer get?
For me as a consumer, it means I am a small time investor with total loss potential on promised product not financial return, and depending on when I enter the arrangement and the product I may actually have a lot of quality (fun!!!) I gain along the way (LE is a good example of this. Star Citizen in many ways is becoming this… though many arguments about scale of $ etc are very fair!).
Undoubtedly, I suspect they can’t help themselves and are addicted to it as much as (some of) the players.
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