Diablo 4 Season 4 looks to be bringing a major overhaul to the game. So much so that Blizzard is launching a Public Test Realm for players to test them ahead of time.
Diablo 4 is still firmly planted in its third major content update, the Season of the Construct. That doesn’t mean the development team isn’t looking ahead, however.
Diablo 4’s story so far has been one of the player perception pendulum swinging back and forth wildly. A lackluster first season drew major criticisms before Season 2 knocked players’ socks off and Season 3 is currently sitting somewhere in the middle.
In a recent Campfire Chat, Diablo 4’s development team announced their plan to ensure that the upcoming Season 4 hits the right notes for players. Blizzard will launch a Public Test Realm (PTR) for Diablo 4 Season 4 so that they can tune the experience before launch.
Associate Game Director for Diablo 4 Joseph Piepiora explained that the move was due to a massive overhaul of multiple systems coming in Season 4. “Season 4 goes well beyond the scope and scaling changes that we made in Season 2,” he elaborated.
“While Season 3 is still active, the Season 4 PTR will go live and players will get a chance to check that out and give us feedback,” he continued. The goal is to ensure that Season 4 hits the ground running based on direct input from players.
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“Season 4 is gonna be responding to a lot more of the reward concerns that people have and things regarding itemization,” Piepiora explained. It looks like those elements will be present in the PTR for players to test as well as some class-balance changes.
What the team at Blizzard is describing as a “mini beta test” will only be available via PC Battle.net so console players will, unfortunately, miss out. It also doesn’t appear that a PTR will be available for every incoming season of Diablo 4. We’ll see them on a case-by-case basis that “will depend on the scale of changes” coming to the game.
“We’re going to have another Campfire Chat, specifically focused around the PTR and the content that you’ll be playing in PTR,” Community Manager Adam Fletcher teased. “So it will be a little bit of a reveal for what you’ll be experiencing in Season 4.”
The date and time for that particular Campfire Chat hasn’t been revealed as of yet but we’ll be sure to cover it when it drops.
