Blizzard has admitted that the endgame content for Diablo III is not as comprehensive as they might wish, and that "the item hunt is just not enough for a long-term sustainable end-game."
In a post on Battle.net, community manager Bashiok explained that Blizzard are aware of the game's shortcomings: "There are still tons of people playing every day and week, and playing a lot, but eventually they're going to run out of stuff to do (if they haven't already). Killing enemies and finding items is a lot of fun, and we think we have a lot of the systems surrounding that right, or at least on the right path with a few corrections and tweaks."
"But honestly Diablo III is not World of Warcraft. We aren't going to be able to pump out tons of new systems and content every couple months. There needs to be something else that keeps people engaged, and we know it's not there right now."
Bashiok then went on to outline some of the changes being planned for the next update: "We're working toward 1.0.4, which we're really trying to pack with as many fixes and changes we can to help you guys out (and we'll have a bunch of articles posted with all the details as we get closer), and we're of course working on 1.1 with PvP arenas."
The inclusion of PvP arenas will likely do much to satisfy the Diablo community, although Blizzard concede that there is more that they can do: "I think both those patches will do a lot to give people things to do, and get them excited about playing, but they're not going to be a real end-game solution, at least not what we would expect out of a proper end-game."
"We have some ideas for progression systems, but honestly it's a huge feature if we want to try to do it right, and not something we could envision being possible until well after 1.1 which it itself still a ways out."
With PvP still off in the distance, gamers may have to wait some time for the tweaked endgame content. But then, Diablo fans are a patient bunch, Blizzard kept them waiting 12 years for the third chapter in the iconic series.
