There’s been a lot of discussion about the possibility of a Public Test Realm (PTR) within the community and Blizzard has decided to bite the bullet and get it done. The news was dropped in tonight’s dev chat.
With the launch of each Season, there have been many different problems that needed addressing not long after launch. These problems tended to cause dissatisfaction within the community, most recently in Season 3 with the Vaults.
We’ve run numerous polls on this topic and it was apparent that a PTR was one thing the community wanted to see. However, who should have access to it? As with previous Blizzard PTRs for Diablo 2 and Diablo 3, everyone will have access to the Diablo 4 PTR which will launch before Season 4.
To get more constructive feedback pre-season, do you think a Diablo 4 Public Test Realm (PTR) would improve a Season at launch and its content.#diablo4 #diabloIV #diablo @Diablo
— PureDiablo (@PureDiabloCom) January 25, 2024
I am a little torn on this. What concerns me is the vocal minority. As we saw with Season 3, Blizzard was really quick to make changes to Vaults without really giving enough time for the community to accept the way they were designed. Simply put, all jeopardy when running Vaults was removed. I may be in the minority but I do like a real challenge, it makes me want to keep playing. I am not a huge fan of just annihilating everything in sight with the push of a mouse button. You may as well just have an empty dungeon with a big chest of loot at the end.
Whatever side of the fence you sit on, we know that everyone will have the opportunity to provide feedback before the Season launch and hopefully a good mix of skill levels will take part in the testing when the PTR drops.
The dev team will be holding the next Campfire chat on 14 March which will be specifically about the Diablo 4 PTR so watch out for that.