Diablo 3 introducing Seasons and Rifts this summer

Diablo 3: Reaper of Souls just came out, but Blizzard is already looking ahead to patch 2.1 this summer, which will introduce ladder-like Seasons and special Rift challenges.

Ozzie Mejia

March 25, 2014 12:30 PM

4

Diablo 3: Reaper of Souls just released late last night, but Blizzard is giving players something to look forward to in the months ahead. Game director Josh Mosqueira jumped on Diablo's Twitch channel to announce that ladder-like 'Seasons' and 'Rift' challenges will debut with the game's first major post-Reaper of Souls content patch, set to deploy this summer.

"One of the features you guys have asked about a lot, that we have done a lot of research for, is something called ladders," Mosqueira stated on the stream, transcribed by Diablo Fans (via Eurogamer). "I'm happy to say that as part of our first big content patch in a couple of months, we will be releasing Seasons, which will include a ladder-like aspect to them. We're still working on them, but the general gist is that you'll level up a new character, we'll have specific ladders for Seasons, and also some goodies that will drop along the way. There's more information of that to come, and we're not making an announcement of when, but that's coming in the first major content patch - not the first patch, but the first major content patch.

The upcoming 2.1 patch will also introduce Rifts for Adventure mode, which introduces intense tiered challenges with the goal to try and progress as far as possible. Rifts will get progressively more difficult and will continue until the player falls or until time runs out. Both Seasons and Rifts will feature rare, exclusive loot, including new Legendary items for completing Seasons. Leaderboards will also be attached to Seasons and Rifts, allowing players to compare their runs to those of other Diablo 3 players.

Ozzie Mejia

Senior Editor

Ozzie has been playing video games since picking up his first NES controller at age 5. He has been into games ever since, only briefly stepping away during his college years. But he was pulled back in after spending years in QA circles for both THQ and Activision, mostly spending time helping to push forward the Guitar Hero series at its peak. Ozzie has become a big fan of platformers, puzzle games, shooters, and RPGs, just to name a few genres, but he’s also a huge sucker for anything with a good, compelling narrative behind it. Because what are video games if you can't enjoy a good story with a fresh Cherry Coke?