Diablo 4 community falls in love with lead developer after one livestream

Diablo 4’s most recent developer livestream was all about revealing the game’s upcoming Season 4, and discussing all the lessons learned from the first Public Test Realm (PTR).

The show was long, and though it did offer a deeper dive into all the changes players will see in the transition from PTR to the live build in a couple of weeks, it also revealed a very anaemic seasonal quest for Season 4.

Regardless of your opinion on the stream or Season 4 itself, however, one person emerged victorious.

As with every Diablo 4 developer stream, last week’s also had a rotating panel of Blizzard developers, each responsible for a different part of the game. Most faces were familiar, except when it came to lead live game designer Colin Finer.

Finer was responsible for covering a few points of feedback received during the PTR, and how Blizzard has addressed them for the start of Season 4 proper. It was their natural and friendly delivery, however, that was immediately felt.

As I watched the show, Finer’s cadence and choice of words stuck out to me. They didn’t fall into the trap of using rigid, often pre-approved language to describe content, discuss changes or respond to questions. They instead relied on casual, everyday language, which came across a lot more friendly than you’d typically get from those streams. Clearly, I wasn’t alone in those feelings, because the response to Finer’s mannerisms has been incredibly positive.

Immediately following the show, many of the video's top comments directly praised Finer for their no-nonsense way of speaking. “Let Colin control the future of the game, he knows what players want,” one comment reads.

“The best change of this patch in one word: COLIN,” exclaimed another. “I [realised] he was really a Diablo player after [three] words. LET COLIN COOK!”

The same feelings were also echoed by plenty of players on Diablo 4’s subreddit. “Holy crap, just let Colin talk about everything from now on,” one Reddit user wrote. “Colin said ‘Fu**’ and ‘God Damnit’ so he's one of us now,” celebrated another.

If you’re curious to see why everyone was happy to see Colin Finer on the livestream, you can watch the archive yourself at the link. Finer is on from the beginning of the show. As for what’s next for Diablo 4, the big Season 4: Loot Reborn launch takes place Tuesday, May 14.