Most of Diablo 4's players "haven't finished the game yet"

Diablo 4 Lilith
(Image credit: Blizzard)

Yet to make it through Diablo 4? You're not alone. In fact, according to Diablo 4's game director, the "significant majority" of us have yet to finish the game.

That's right: despite the hundreds of hardcore players who have worked through the campaign on the game's toughest difficulty setting, it seems most of us are taking the scenic route and taking our time.

"First off, the significant majority of our players haven't finished the game yet," explained Diablo 4's game director Joe Shely in a recent fireside chat

"But many of the people who are watching this stream, and our dedicated players, play through content much more quickly and have been experiencing this situation with the dungeons."

As for what he means by "this situation with the dungeons"? Well, as spotted by PC Gamer, it seems like most of us would prefer to grind in the game's normal-difficulty side dungeons rather than take on the Nightmare dungeons… even though that's kind of what they were designed for.

Consequently, we'll soon see that the Nightmare dungeons' rewards and XP buffed to make them more attractive to endgame players and entice them back.

Diablo 4 players recently discovered that once you've completed the campaign on normal or "softcore" difficulty, you can skip the entire campaign when you boot up in hardcore.

And did you see that this Diablo 4 player has managed to beat the Butcher despite being incredibly underlevelled? The Butcher is – as many of us have learned the hard way – a meat-hooking nightmare that turns up at random in dungeons and has killed off many a hardcore run. 

Here, however, it seemingly became stuck behind a wall of minions who beat the Butcher whilst the player idles quietly at the bottom of the screen. 

We gave Diablo 4 a notable 5 out of 5 stars in the 12DOVE Diablo 4 review, calling it "a diabolical assault on the senses". 

"The ARPG has come a long way since Diablo 2 set the bar for the genre, and since Diablo 3 fractured the playerbase, and there's some out there who will undoubtedly feel as if Diablo 4 hasn't gone far enough in its expansion – that its class-balance and endgame could be more distinct, particularly given the strength of contenders like Grim Dawn, Pillars of Exile, and Torchlight 2," Josh wrote. "But the truth is, there's simply nothing quite as entertaining as Diablo 4 when it's firing on all cylinders."

Diablo 4 is out now on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S. 

Yes, it's true: nearly 2% of all Diablo 4 player deaths are to a single boss.

Vikki Blake
Weekend Reporter, 12DOVE

Vikki Blake is 12DOVE's Weekend Reporter. Vikki works tirelessly to ensure that you have something to read on the days of the week beginning with 'S', and can also be found contributing to outlets including the BBC, Eurogamer, and GameIndustry.biz. Vikki also runs a weekly games column at NME, and can be frequently found talking about Destiny 2 and Silent Hill on Twitter.