The VGAs have come and gone. Diablo 4 made a pretty big splash and Blizzard unveiled the June 6th 2023 release date. So, I was wrong about the April release, but I imagine I’ll be playing a beta by April at the latest if not sooner like many of you reading this.
After watching the recent live stream interview, I knew the next article I wanted to write about was the Diablo 4 Battle Pass and how it’s handled with the information we have now. Before I dive into Diablo 4’s, I want to cover how Diablo 3 handled their battle pass first so people understand the difference.
The first difference is a season in D3 had a variable length and not a set number of days. The way Diablo 3 handled seasons was relatively simple for those that didn’t play it. Diablo 3’s seasonal content takes about 1-3 days to complete. It isn’t a time-gated experience, just do a,b,c, and d then you’re complete. A pet and a different graphic surrounding your name are what you get. The best part of the season was the theme they introduced. These themes often changed power levels and builds due to how impactful the changes were on some builds. That is where Diablo 3’s seasons were quite beneficial. In some seasons I played because I enjoyed the theme, others I didn’t touch because I didn’t enjoy the theme.
How is Diablo 4’s different?
The first change is that the seasonal journey and theme are going to still be in the overall battle pass, but they do different things. The season journey provides rewards that are in-game focused and not cosmetic such as items or buffs to characters. These are unlockable only through playtime and only benefit if you have a character that meets the requirements. The battle pass provides cosmetics for your characters, so you can buy it if you need to, but it provides no benefit other than visuals as character boost and such have to be earned.
Diablo 4 is setting timelines specifically of 3 months per battle pass. This is very common with games nowadays that last a set amount of time. The other keynote mentioned was time to completion. In the interview they stated it would take roughly 75 hours to complete the battle pass and season journey based on play time. This is an impressive amount of time compared to Diablo 3’s seasons. It does a couple of things: Keeps players engaged playing, but also provides a short enough time frame that you can power through in a couple of weeks, or less if you want.
Overall Value
With consistent updates to the game with new content (allegedly, as we’ve heard this before) with the only real benefit to it being the number of cosmetics you get, the battle pass should be a no-brainer for players who want different cosmetics.
I’ll be honest, in Diablo 3, cosmetics have no sway over me. Diablo 2 had the badass chat lobbies that allowed you to shine like a diamond in your sweet color-coordinated garb. I would be interested in that way for sure. If the looks are minor and don’t have a lot of sway, I can say I am not going to be super excited, but if they go the route of Path of Exile and make a lot of variety cosmetics, that could entice me personally. At the end of the day, I’m probably paying the $10 to support the continued development of the game. If they are looking at this game as more of long roadmap until the development and release of the next installment, then I’m all onboard with them expanding the options to play this game while adding content.
Happy Holidays and wishing everyone a Happy New Year
I want to wish everyone and their families the best this closing week+ of 2022. I hope everyone has a fantastic time with friends and loved ones until the new year and after. I myself am taking a bit of R&R and just hanging out with the family and playing some games with my kids hopefully (Heroquest is calling!)
I want to thank Rush and Elly for providing me with the opportunity to be a writer for PureDiablo. I am glad I got the opportunity to do this and hope everyone has enjoyed some of the content I’ve been able to provide throughout the year. Even though I think I ruffle some of Blizzard’s feathers. I’m not here to make friends with them, just to provide honest feedback for a game series I have invested quite a significant amount of my life in, from my perspective and play style.
See you in 2023!
Will you take the Diablo 4 Battle Pass?
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