I was wrong: there actually was one thing that I wanted to see in Diablo IV and Blizzard will not be giving it to me.

From PC Gamer:

Diablo 4 will not have an offline mode and will require an internet connection to play, Blizzard said during an interview at BlizzCon today.

We asked lead designer Joe Shely if it was possible to play Diablo 4 offline. "There's a large, seamless, connected, and shared space in the world, going down into dungeons, being able to group with your friends, trading and PvP. We feel that the best way to experience that is in a world that is online," Shely responded.

The "shared open world" essentially gives Diablo 4 the form of an MMO, so it's not surprising that it will require an always-on internet connection in order to populate the world with other players. You'll be able to play solo, but not offline.

And just like that, Diablo IV has become even less interesting to me.

D3's "always online while solo" bullshit literally broke the game; why Blizzard would repeat that in D4 is beyond me. Maybe they're thinking that their main competitor in the genre, Path of Exile, is also an online-only mainly PvE joint, but PoE is free to play; unless D4 is also going to be F2P, it needs to be playable offline to be even remotely interesting.

Not to mention that I don't want to be sharing my game space with other players while playing solo, and don't believe that the ARPG and MMORPG genres hybridize at all well. Does "seamless" mean that we'll never see a loading screen, Dungeon Siege-style? If so, then that's the only interesting feature that Blizzard has yet mentioned for D4.

The single biggest hurdle that D4 has to clear is that it's a sequel to the hugely disappointing D3; they absolutely needed to avoid making the same mistakes again with the new installment that they made with the last one. So far, I have to say that it's not looking good on that front. Once again, I expected nothing, and wanted nothing, but have nonetheless been disappointed once again by Blizzard.