Diablo 2 Resurrected Ladder delayed following “showstopper” issues

Diablo 2 Resurrected’s highly anticipated Ladder is finally in sight, but following the 2.4 update PTR it seems like there are still some demons to quash before the final release.

After months of lurking in the shadows, teasing players with its very existence, the Diablo 2 Resurrected Ladder finally appeared on the 2.4 update PTR, finally allowing Sanctuary’s finest to battle it out for a spot at the top of the leaderboard.

Effectively the game’s ‘ranked’ mode, players have been vocal about its lack of availability from release, with constant delays leaving fans channeling their inner Lord of Terror.

Unfortunately, the Ladder has been pushed back yet again following “showstopper” issues on the PTR, but it does have an official release date, and it’s pretty soon. Silver linings, anyone?

Diablo 2 Resurrected Ladder delay & final release date

While you’ve probably rolled your eyes already at the prospect of a delay, don’t worry! Blizzard have confirmed that the Diablo 2 Resurrected Ladder will release on April 28, two weeks after 2.4.

• Read More: When is Diablo 3 Season 26?

Global Community Lead for Diablo, Adam ‘PezRadar’ Fletcher, writes in a March 24 blog post “last week [March 14], we had some extended downtime for D2R which was to implement the final batch of changes from our PTR to our production environments. During this update, we unfortunately ran into quite a few showstoppers that did not appear on PTR but were present in production environments.

“Due to that, we extended the maintenance as we needed to roll back the changes so we didn’t affect users and could get the game back up and running… Since last week’s maintenance, the team has been able to identify and address all these issues—we will be doing another maintenance for D2R to implement these changes to production on March 29. We expect downtime to be around six hours for these changes.”

Concluding “with that maintenance, we should be good to go for getting 2.4 out to users. 2.4 is currently planned for an April 14 release—Ladder will follow two weeks later on April 28,” he clarifies “We purposely want to have a gap between the 2.4 launch and the Ladder launch in order to give the team time to react to any further unforeseen issues that may arise on PC and consoles from deploying the 2.4 patch itself and ensure the smoothest possible Ladder Season 1 start.”

Despite obvious disappointment over the delay, responses have been widely positive. “So hyped for this!” writes one fan, with another commenting “People are gonna be upset with the decision, but the transparency is what’s key here.”

• Read More: Diablo 2 classes tier list: Best characters & builds in Resurrected

“Ignore any hate. You all are making the right calls to support the player base going forward. Thanks again for listening to the community and making commonly requested changes,” reads one final response.

So, as the Ladder finally crawls out of the shadows and allows competitive players to scratch that itch, it’ll be interesting to see how the devs have transformed this classic system into something fresh and modern. Until then, be sure to get into demon slaying mode; the hordes await!