Rob Pardo helped design World of Warcraft at Blizzard and was the executive producer of Diablo III. His studio sends Arkheron into its crossplay beta on September 25. In our interview, he explains why Diablo III never got real PvP, and confirms that Arkheron will not be free-to-play.
Rob Pardo spent 17 years at Blizzard. He was a designer on StarCraft, lead designer of Brood War and Warcraft III, later lead designer of World of Warcraft and Vice President of Game Design, and from 2013 the company’s Chief Creative Officer. And he was the executive producer of Diablo III.
That last line explains why his new game looks the way it does. At gamescom 2026, I sat down with him to talk about Arkheron, the first game from his studio Bonfire Studios. Its crossplay beta starts on September 25.
- Crossplay beta at a glance: Starts September 25, 2026. For the first time, PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X and S play together. Sign-up runs through a waitlist on the official site, invites go out in waves by email, and participants of the closed beta from July are given priority. There is no NDA, streaming is expressly allowed. Bonfire has not announced an end date.
“We want PvP”, the line Pardo heard for years
Anyone who worked on Diablo III at Blizzard knows one particular piece of community feedback very well. Pardo tells it like this:
I used to be on the Diablo III team. You know, I was the executive producer. So I remember how often the community would come to us and go, “We want PvP, and we want PvP.” Rob Pardo, CEO and co-founder of Bonfire Studios
Blizzard never delivered it in a form the team itself was happy with. In our conversation, Pardo explains why, and the reason is not an oversight but a decision made long before.
Why Diablo III never got real PvP
Everything about the game, the systems, the classes, the abilities, were all designed PvE-first. So it’s like these big abilities and area-of-effect and lots of crowd-control sort of abilities, which are really fun when you’re playing against monsters. A lot of those things don’t work so well in PvP.
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That is the core of the problem. An ability that knocks down half a screen of enemies is a joy against hordes of monsters. Against a single other player, it is a nuisance. Then there is the gear: in an action RPG with that many items and stats, fair balance is nearly impossible to achieve, which is what I told Pardo during the conversation as well.
Blizzard tried anyway. Pardo’s conclusion is sober:
We always experimented with modes. We just didn’t feel like we could ever do it justice with just the core foundation of what Diablo III was.
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What Bonfire built from that
What came out of that experience was not an improvement but a reversal:
We started experimenting and talking about, what if you reverse the world? Or if we’re going to actually make sure all the abilities and combat are designed with PvP first. Rob Pardo
Bonfire Studios was founded in 2016, and the team has been working on Arkheron since 2018. It did not start with a finished concept but with an ideation process. The team discussed a whole range of possible games and in the end picked the one that suited it. According to Pardo, the starting point was a game for action RPG and Diablo players that puts PvP first, built on the battle royale formula.
The result is a game that runs from an isometric perspective but controls like a shooter. Aiming is free, the way it is in a shooter. Teams of three climb a tower, and your character is not defined by a fixed class but by the relics you loot along the way. There are two modes: Spires, three against three, and Ascension with 45 players.
I took part in an earlier playtest myself, around a year ago, and played a few rounds of Arkheron with a friend back then. Our conclusion afterwards was that we should keep an eye on this game.
Tested for years, most recently twelve days straight
Bonfire has not just started testing, and the order says a lot about the studio’s priorities:
- First a small group of highly skilled players, before anything was public. The goal was to push how deep the game goes, whether the mechanics work, and what high-level play looks like
- After the reveal, Steam Next Fest
- Then playtests with the community
- A series of weekly tests that Bonfire itself calls its beta round
- Most recently, a twelve-day beta test
Asked about a release plan, Pardo answers accordingly:
There is a plan, but we always change the plan based on what we learn from the community. Rob Pardo
When I remark that in the best case nothing needs to change after the beta, I get the driest answer of the conversation:
That would be great. I don’t think that’s ever happened in my career. Rob Pardo
I do community management myself and know it almost never goes that way.
The crossplay beta on September 25: dates, platforms, sign-up
The next test is the first with crossplay. Officially it is called the Crossplay Beta, and it is the second beta after the closed round in July 2026.
Kind of the next big community playtest is the end of September. For the first time, we’re doing a cross-play test. Now we’re going to actually have both PlayStation and Xbox players playing together along with the PC players. Rob Pardo
| What | Status |
|---|---|
| Start | September 25, 2026 |
| End | not announced |
| Platforms | PC (Steam), PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and S |
| Access | waitlist on the official site, invites in waves by email |
| Priority | participants of the closed beta from July 2026 |
| NDA | none, streaming and video footage allowed |
| Last patch before it | version 0.23.0 from September 15, 2026 |
When you sign up, you link your Steam, Xbox or PSN account, which handles platform and region selection. Anyone who receives an invite also gets extra keys for friends. The Steam page additionally has a button to request access.
There is no NDA, streaming and video footage are expressly allowed. On platform readiness, Pardo says:
There’s another thing that we believe right now: we actually think that it’s going to be ready across all the platforms. Rob Pardo
Early Access still in 2026, and the question of price
There is no release date. What there is, is a target:
Early Access launch will be kind of our first launch moment, and we want to get to it later this year, is kind of the hope. That’s going to be really the next big test for us: how does the cross-play beta run?
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So Early Access hangs directly on the outcome of the test on September 25. More interesting, though, is what Pardo says about the business model, because Bonfire had kept quiet on that so far. When I ask whether Arkheron will be a paid title, he answers yes. That takes free-to-play off the table.
On price, however, he stays guarded:
We haven’t decided on it quite yet. We’re still debating it internally. And when we have an answer, we’ll announce that. Rob Pardo
I think a paid title is the right call for this game. Arkheron strikes me as very polished, and with free-to-play, in my experience the question of how the game makes money comes up immediately. A one-time price answers that question before it is asked.
Why the studio is called Bonfire
At the end, I asked about his favorite moment with the game and its community. The answer starts with the studio’s name.
The name Bonfire kind of comes from this idea: we want it to be a metaphor for the games that we create, because we really want the games we create to be a gathering place for the communities that come here. So that’s always been kind of the fundamental purpose for Bonfire. Rob Pardo
Part of that is a ritual the studio has kept for a long time: morning playtests, as a fixed routine, for many years. It was established shortly before the pandemic, and that turned out to be a stroke of luck.
We were an in-person studio that suddenly had to learn how to be remote overnight, at least in the US. And the thing that actually kept us together as a really tight-knit office was our morning playtests. Rob Pardo
What Pardo is getting at: working remotely, you hardly see the colleagues you don’t work with directly anymore. Through the morning sessions, the team still kept running into different people on the team. The game that is supposed to bring a community together first held its own studio together.
The game is really more than anything about our community. Rob Pardo
For me, that is the point where the conversation goes beyond Arkheron. There are a great many games you go into, play, and leave again without ever having had a community to talk to. I work in community management myself, and the approach of thinking of a game as a meeting place from the very start is exactly what I would like to see more often.
Arkheron at a glance
| Game | Arkheron |
| Developer | Bonfire Studios |
| Genre | Competitive PvPvE, isometric with free aim |
| Modes | Spires (3 vs 3), Ascension (45 players) |
| Platforms | PC (Steam), PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and S |
| In development since | 2018, studio founded 2016 |
| Crossplay beta | from September 25, 2026, no NDA |
| Release | open, Early Access targeted for 2026 |
| Business model | paid title, price not yet decided |
That leaves Arkheron at a point where a lot is settled and the most important part is still open. The game has been in development since 2018, has been tested in several rounds, and has a clear idea of what it wants to be. When it releases and what it costs is yet to be decided. Sign-up for the crossplay beta starting September 25 is already open.
