Diablo 4 Season 4 faces unprecedented delay to test massive rework

Diablo 4 Season 4 has been delayed to mid-May marking the first time Blizzard has held back a major content drop for the ARPG.

Diablo 4’s Season of the Construct had been skirting dangerously close to the end of its three-month lifespan with no sight of the recently announced Public Test Realm (PTR) for Season 4. We’d been quietly concerned that there may not be enough time to properly implement feedback from the pre-release testing.

It looks like Blizzard reached the same conclusion and has announced a delay of Diablo 4 Season 4 and an extension of Season 3 in the latest Campfire Chat. “Season 3 is now going to end on May 14, and of course with that, Season 4 also starts on May 14,” Community Lead Adam Fletcher revealed.

“We’re pushing it back a few weeks to ensure that we get all the feedback from this PTR, and we apply it to season 4 to make sure that all these new system changes that we’re doing are right and work for the community,” Fletcher elaborated.

Ordinarily, delays for anything video game-related are a cause for ire in fan communities but players want Blizzard to take as much time as possible with Diablo 4 Season 4. The game’s Subreddit is flooded with posts praising the move as developers have promised a complete overhaul of multiple itemization mechanics.

These include changes to drop rates and a facelift for the Legendary Aspect mechanics to reduce the frustrating amount of resources required to grow your character’s power. These new features will be front and center in the PTR and Blizzard wants to ensure they’re working properly. Hence the Diablo 4 Season 4 delay.

The PTR will launch on April 2, 2024, and run until April 9, 2024, allowing players a full week to gather and give their thoughts. Fletcher revealed that Blizzard will be moderating a dedicated PTR forum to streamline the feedback process.

At present, the Diablo 4 Season 4 PTR will only be accessible on PC via battle.net but the devs are looking at options for console launches down the line. “We are going to try to explore other ways of being able to bring PTR, when we do have a PTR, to [console] players in the future,” Fletcher qualified.

The dev team revealed that complete instructions for how to access the PTR would be made available on Blizzard’s blog “sometime next week”.

Hopefully, the huge volume of changes that have been detailed will be enough to justify the Diablo 4 Season 4 delay.