Blizzard has detailed its plans for the post-release period diablo 4 experience in a fresh Live broadcast And developer blogwith a focus on Seasons, Battle Passes (including prizes) and the Shop.
The bottom line is that this all sounds pretty standard for a live service game, with one twist: the focus is heavily on seasonal content, which, per Diablo tradition, can only be accessed by starting a new seasonal character. Oddly enough, Blizzard doesn’t bother to explain this, perhaps assuming it will be considered read by the Diablo community, but it has been confirmed previous interviews.
seasons in diablo 4 will be released quarterly, with the first arriving “mid to late July” – just a few weeks after the game’s release on June 22nd. You must complete the game’s campaign on a character before you can access it. The season will introduce new quest lines that are separate from the campaign story, as well as new gameplay features that will transform the experience of leveling up and developing your new character – all of which are exclusive to the season and will no longer be available by the end of season three Months. However, your seasonal character will be moved to the Eternal Realm at the end of the season, where it will still be playable. Each season will also bring standard patch content such as balance changes and quality of life improvements.
A kind of “seasonal journey” will take you through each season Diablo 3is basically a set of achievement-like goals to be accomplished, divided into chapters. One change here is that you no longer have to complete every single objective in a chapter to progress to the next, allowing you to pick something based on your playstyle. Objectives reward you with things like crafting materials and legendary aspects for the Codex of Might (which improve your character’s abilities in a similar way to legendary loot items) – and also Favor, the resource that levels up diablo 4
Linking Seasons and Battle Passes in this way is noteworthy, because while Favor can be earned in other ways — completing quests, crushing monsters, participating in world events — it seems to clarify the seasonal playstyle of them to use as rewards for goals in Season Journey Launching new characters repeatedly (as opposed to grinding the endgame) is at the heart of the game’s long-term post-launch reward structure and optimal playstyle.
There will be three versions of the Battle Pass: Free, Premium and Accelerated. The free version has 27 tiers and rewards players with cosmetic items and smoldering ash, a resource that can be spent on XP and gold boosts and other bonuses for your seasonal character. These boosts come with level requirements and are only available in the free Battle Pass.
The Premium Battle Pass has 63 additional tiers that reward you with cosmetic items unique to each season and platinum currency to spend in the game’s shop. The accelerated passage is the same, but allows you to jump forward 20 levels and comes with a special cosmetic. The Premium and Accelerated Passes cost the platinum equivalent of $9.99 and $24.99, respectively.
The shop only sells cosmetic items that allow you to customize your character’s appearance. These are all anchored diablo 4The game’s dark fantasy aesthetic is often class-specific, unlike the cosmetic rewards available in the Battle Pass, allowing you to “further enhance the fantasy of your choice for your character,” as Blizzard put it. Blizzard showed examples of purchased armor cosmetics, which had a different vibe than legendary armor earned through gameplay, but weren’t necessarily more impressive (or less). The store stock is constantly changing and your purchases are available for every character of this class in your account as well as on different platforms.
I’m not mad that Blizzard seems to be pushing players to develop new seasonal characters by giving them so much attention in post-launch content and Battle Pass rewards – developing new characters to suit different classes and builds Exploring is absolutely one of the most fun ways to play Diablo. But with the focus elsewhere being a persistent MMO-style world and a rich endgame, there seems to be a tension between two playstyles here. It will be interesting to see how that works diablo 4 Developers resolve this conflict.
If you want to try the game for yourself, there’s one final open beta test this weekend – what Blizzard calls Server Slam. Here you can find out when the server slam will be available.
