Most fans of Diablo IV primarily absorbed general manager Rod Fergusson’s talk at this year’s DICE Summit as the point when he announced he would be putting the kibosh on releasing yearly expansions, but there was more he had to say in an IGN interview while at that same summit, specifically about live service game management and transparency in comms to players.

When asked about whether D4 would be around “forever,” Fergusson remarked how he wanted the game to be around for years but also pointed out how looking too far forward can be a particularly nasty double-edged sword. “I don’t know if it’s eternal. I think Destiny tried and did that like, ‘This is a ten-year game,’ and then they quickly were not,” he said. “I learned my lesson about calling the shot too early. So I think giving, ‘Hey, you can relax for the next 11 months,’ is about as far as I want to go in this right now.”

Part of making sure D4’s lights stay on for a long time is an effort to keep communication transparent between Fergusson’s team and players, which he believes is far more beneficial than to withhold details in the interest of surprising fans. “It’s better to ruin the surprise for 10,000 people so that millions of people have a great season. I would much rather have a bad week of a PTR than a bad three months trying to recover from putting in something that we were surprising players with and it turned out to be wrong,” he contends.

Meanwhile the patch notes for March 4th’s update are online with details about changes to classes, items, and Season of Witchcraft mechanics.