Diablo 4's Map Could Hint at its First Major Expansion

Summary

Diablo 4's Season of the Malignant marks the beginning of the game's live-service content, despite the controversy surrounding gameplay changes made in the seasonal update.
The open nature of Diablo 4's world allows for a less rigid story structure and more secrets for players to uncover, but there is still room for the map to grow and take players to iconic Diablo 2 locations.
The southern region of Diablo 4's map, adjacent to Kehjistan and Hawezar, seems like a prime candidate for a future expansion setting, potentially featuring the ancient city of Kurast and its surrounding jungles, which were a significant part of Diablo 2's Act 3.

Diablo 4's Season of the Malignant is underway, and while it has sparked some controversy due to the gameplay changes made in the seasonal update, it marks the beginning of the game's live-service content. The Diablo series has historically provided players with consistent content updates over the course of an entry's lifespan, typically with one major expansion bringing new classes, a new story act, and new region for players to explore. With Diablo 4 likely to follow this trend, one location on the game's map could point towards where this expansion will take players.

Diablo 4 already contains six Acts spread across Sanctuary's five regions accessible in the base game. The Season of the Malignant's new quest line will take players back across these regions in search of a cure for Diablo 4's Malignant affliction that has affected many of Sanctuary's inhabitants. The open nature of Diablo 4's world makes its story structure a lot less rigid than past entries, and its map is full of even more secrets for players to uncover as a result. However, there is still room for the map to grow and take players to an iconic Diablo 2 location.

How Diablo 4’s Map Could Expand in a Future Update

The Season of the Malignant is likely just a taste of what's to come for Diablo 4 as previous entries in the franchise have revitalized seasonal gameplay with major expansions a few years into the games' lives. Diablo 2 built upon the base game with the Lord of Destruction expansion releasing a year after the base game and Diablo 3 did the same with the Reaper of Souls expansion two years after it initially released. In addition to the new classes and story quests, both of these expansions included new locations featured in their main quest lines, so it is likely D iablo 4 will do the same.

The Lord of Destruction expansion for Diablo 2 added Mount Arreat as the primary setting for its new story quest which saw players take down Baal, Lord of Destruction. Similarly, Diablo 3's Reaper of Souls campaign was set in the newly accessible region of Westmarch. However, Diablo 4's open world means it will most likely need to feature a new location that is already connected to the existing map so that players can contiguously travel between this new location and the base game's map.

Players who have already uncovered all of Diablo 4's map may already have an idea of where a future expansion could be set. There is a noticeably empty region depicted on the southernmost part of Diablo 4's map, just below the regions of Kehjistan and Hawezar that seems like a prime candidate for an expansion setting. Diablo 2 fans might recall that the ancient city of Kurast is located on the southern border of Kehjistan and the Torajan Jungles, an overgrown region that is home to the Umbaru and Opaya tribes, as well as a host of dangerous flora and fauna left unexplored even by inhabitants of the neighboring Kehjistan region.

The city of Kurast and the surrounding jungles were the primary setting for Diablo 2's Act 3 that involved the player venturing into this ancient jungles to destroy Mephisto. Not only would this connection to Mephisto potentially tie into the ending of Diablo 4, but the jungle setting of the region would act as a new type of biome not yet present in Diablo 4's map. Given all of these connections and Diablo 4's clear Diablo 2 inspiration, it seems very likely that players will head to Kurast and the southern part of Diablo 4's map in a future expansion for the game.