Diablo 4’s first seasonal update, Season Of The Malignant, begins later this month. Though developers at Blizzard have some advice for max-level players who have run out of stuff to do: “Take a break and go play something else for a while.”
The sound advice comes from a Blizzard live stream held this week to dive deep into Season Of The Malignant, gathering multiple developers to talk about the upcoming season’s new content, enemies, and mechanics. One hot topic focused on how players will need to create new characters to participate in any given season. That controversial requirement means that you can’t use pre-existing characters to play through the new quests, for example.
Diablo’s general manager Rod Fergusson explained that the rule lets newcomers jump into the game without feeling left behind, and also means lapsed players can rejoin the game after an extended break. “Seasons allow us to have a fresh start for everybody,” said Fergusson, “and makes sure players have a starting point together,” whether they’ve been playing for a year or an hour.
“When you’ve reached all the goals and done the things you think are important, take a break,” said associate game director Joseph Piepiora, “we do the same.” He continued to explain that “a great time to come back” to the game is when a new season launches “and there’s new things to come check out… that’s exactly when you should come back and check out Diablo 4 fresh.”
“I’ll be honest,” said another developer on the panel, “when the next [World Of Warcraft] expansion comes out, there’s a non-zero chance that I’m gonna be playing [that] for a while. But it’s great to know there’s a point that I can come back to Diablo 4 and everyone’s on an even footing.” You can take your new character back to the base game (the eternal realm) at the end of the season, thankfully.
Season Of The Malignant kicks off on July 20th, so your break spent playing other games is about to be cut short. Find out everything we know about Diablo 4’s first season to prepare.
