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Diablo 3 Kicks Off Season 13, But Does Anyone Care?

Without any new content or a balance patch, what will bring the Nephalem back to the fight?

Chris Jarrard

February 26, 2018 10:15 AM

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Diablo 3 has had a wild run. From a seemingly endless development cycle, to the shaky launch and beyond the exceptional expansion, the game has seen more ups and downs than the back seat of your mom's car. As time marches on, the addictive loot-driven action-RPG loses some luster. Despite this, new hope and excitement has surrounded the start of each of the seasonal competitive ladder resets, but with the kickoff to Season 13, it feels less like a new race and more like the horse fell out of the starting gate and died.

In the absence of a major patch or item rebalance, Season 13 offers returning players a pair of armor cosmetics, a new portrait frame (that looks just like the other 150 frames), and another evil teddy bear. The gifted armor sets that new seasonal characters can receive have also rotated, but offer nothing we haven’t seen before.

Understandably, Blizzard is probably ready to put the project out to pasture. It is a single-purchase product that saw only one major expansion (and one new character expansion later on) and and offers the company no revenue for any new resources invested. It costs money to keep the servers up and running (and by nature of the game’s design, it is unplayable without these servers). Unlike their steady cash cows WoW, Hearthstone, or Overwatch, Diablo offers Blizzard no steady income. In its early years, the game had a real money auction house where Blizzard skimmed something off the top of every transaction, but it was shut down due to player backlash.

It may simply be time to say our goodbyes and begin hope that a new Diablo experience may be on the horizon. It is extremely unlikely that a Diablo 4 would be a one-and-done purchase offering now that Blizzard has proven that microtransactions are a much better return on their investment. A rumored Nintendo Switch port of Diablo 3 may help them wring out a few more bucks from the project, though.

Maybe Blizzcon 2018 will give series fans the treat they’ve been hoping for.

Chris Jarrard

Contributing Tech Editor

Chris Jarrard likes playing games, crankin' tunes, and looking for fights on obscure online message boards. He understands that breakfast food is the only true food. Don't @ him.