Diablo hardcore bro explains why season one is good, actually… till he dies mid-explanation and decides it sucks

You probably won't get a better name for a Diablo 4 streamer than Darth Microtransaction (DM), and indeed this guy has turned out to be one of the most fun to watch, for my tastes anyway. He's chill, super-knowledgeable, and doesn't rant and rave when things go wrong like the game's just insulted his mother. Good thing, too.

On a recent stream DM was, like all Diablo 4 players right now, discussing the changes brought by season one. While plenty of folk are down on season one, DM seems to quite like a lot of what it's done, and set about building a hardcore Necromancer to show off the kind of skill synergies that appeal to him.

It's while demonstrating the build and explaining the skills that DM kinda somewhat slightly maybe takes his eye off the ball big-time. As his hardcore necromancer moves away from killing a few forgettable mobs, he moves downscreen and is hit by a fiery explosive. No big deal, things are fine, the enemy's dead now anyway. As DM continues to talk over the top about a "blood mist explosion", however, a second fireball lands.

The hardcore necromancer keels over, dead forever. There's a slight pause.

"I actually just lost my hardcore character while trying to explain this to you," says an admirably composed DM. "I changed my mind. I hate this season."

I don't think he does, really. Though perhaps the funniest thing here is that his character has just been killed by an enemy that's already dead. And this is more of a mini-tragedy than an out-and-out disaster: DM had put around six hours into this particular hardcore build, so we're not talking about losing days' worth of progress here.

Diablo 4's first season brought with it temporarily long queue times, an utterly lousy legendary, and a whole bunch of corrupted monstrosities whose hearts make very nice jewellery. Despite the grumbles it's also gone down extremely well, and is now Blizzard's fastest-selling game of all time though, frustratingly, it won't put a number on that beyond saying over 10 million people have "experienced" it.

Rich is a games journalist with 15 years' experience, beginning his career on Edge magazine before working for a wide range of outlets, including Ars Technica, Eurogamer, GamesRadar+, Gamespot, the Guardian, IGN, the New Statesman, Polygon, and Vice. He was the editor of Kotaku UK, the UK arm of Kotaku, for three years before joining PC Gamer. He is the author of a Brief History of Video Games, a full history of the medium, which the Midwest Book Review described as "[a] must-read for serious minded game historians and curious video game connoisseurs alike."