What you need to know
- The latest quarterly update for Diablo 4 is all about the game’s live service systems.
- Blizzard Entertainment confirms there will be a Season Pass with paid and free tiers, with Diablo 4 aiming for four seasons per year.
- There will also be a premium shop where players can buy cosmetic-only outfits.
- Diablo 4 is currently slated to launch at some point in the first half of 2023.
Blizzard Entertainment is continuing to provide quarterly updates on various aspects of the next big Diablo game, with the latest entry diving into how the live service mechanics will be handled.
Blizzard Entertainment shared (opens in new tab) that Diablo 4 will have a Season Pass, which has both free and paid tiers that are meant to provide extra rewards as players compete through the post-launch Seasons, which exists alongside any future expansions, and are being worked on by an “army of developers.”
Seasons bring new quests, and are being modeled after the seasonal structure of Diablo 3. The Season Pass does not include any “pay-for-power” rewards according to Blizzard Entertainment. It does feature gameplay boosts in the free tiers which any players can unlock, such as seasonal boosts that make you earn XP at a faster rate. While Blizzard confirms that players can purchase tiers in the Season Pass, any free gameplay boosts require specific milestones to use.
There’s also the premium shop, which Blizzard says will provide cosmetic-only options, adding that “if players choose to buy something, it should be because they want to, not because they feel like they have to,” and that not all of the best looking equipment will be in the shop.
Below, you can see a Legendary Armor set earned by playing the game on the left, with an Armor Cosmetic purchased from the Shop on the right.
Blizzard closes the quarterly update by noting that the team will be listening to community feedback and that the game is being built as a living world with updates to come for years.
Diablo 4 is currently scheduled to launch at some point in the first half of 2023 across Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, Xbox One, PC, PS5, and PS4.
