Has Blizzard given an official start date for season 1?
I’m seeing conflicting dates from non-Blizzard sources:
http://www.vhpg.com/diablo-4-updates/ - Claims season 1 starts June 20, 2023.https://blizzardwatch.com/2023/02/09/diablo-4-season-1-start/ - Claims season 1 starts September 8, 2023.They really should announce this before release. Seems fairly relevant for what people might want to do from release to the first season, when/if Blizzard design their game around seasons being the place you are meant to be (which of course should also not be the case).
Unfortunately we have very little confirmed information in regards to seasons.
Sept 8 seems more reasonable. They’ve previously stated that there would be some time between launch and season 1. They wanted to give people enough time to have a first playthrough as well as get the game stable.
June 20 is silly early for everyone but the neck bearded no lifers.
I would say September because it wouldn’t make much sense for them to release the game, then ask for you to start all over 2 weeks later.
This is why I decided to refund and get the standard edition. I’ll upgrade to digital deluxe or ultimate once they actually come out and say when season 1 is considering the battlepass that comes with pre-orders is only for season 1.
It’s a really shady business move to sell season 1 battlepasses with pre-orders and then not give any clear indication of when season 1 will even be. They should either make the battlepasses that come with the pre-order good for a one-time redemption in any season or announce the season 1 date ASAP.
Since Blizzard is being completely ambiguous about the season 1 release date, some people won’t know this far in advance if they’ll even have time to play season 1.
Some time for gamers, and especially the kind of Diabo players that play through every season is a relatively small amount of time. The veteran season players and kind of Diablo players that seasons will attract should have little to no problem beating the entire game and getting to max level in under 2-3 weeks imho.
The timeline won’t be built around these players. The initial timeline will be built around the average player who won’t even be to level 50 by June 20. I realize that for a hardcore player this may be difficult to relate to but this is how it will work.
The only official word so far is “Some weeks after launch.” Anything else is people assuming or guessing. I’d imagine between 2 weeks and 2 months because I can’t imagine using weeks as a measurement if it was months away.
Maybe some more slow/casual players would like to try out seasons as well. I think it makes sense to give folks some time to experience the base game. Personally 2 weeks would feel really rushed to me. I wanna read stuff and stop to smell the flowers at least the first time through.
The more slow/casual players are in all likelihood not pushing leaderboards or anything like that. Even if season 1 started 2 weeks after release, casual and slower players could still start halfway through the season and get all the rewards and experience all the content without worrying about rushing.
I’m not trying to gatekeep and say that casual players shouldn’t play seasons, just that they probably don’t need to start a season from day 1 to experience the season the way they want to.
September 8th seems a lot more plausible than June 20. And it aligns with what some content creators have been saying, that the first season will be 3 months after release.
This is the date they should realistically start Season 1. Seasons are meant to refresh old content. Having seasons right out the gate is like saying you have made a bad and boring game that cant keep the players interested for 2 months. I don’t think this is the case though. I think there is plenty of stuff to do in D4 to keep people interest in it for at least 2 months. Even daily active players.
Seems Sept is likely the right date. Two months seems like it’s enough for blizz to iron out the kinks players found out before an actual season starts. Just expect lots of tuning until the first season starts.
I think Launch being considered season 0 and give 2-3months of getting game experience is important.
both dates make no sense to me. somewhere in the middle sounds better.
June 20 actualy doesn’t sound too unreasonable given their “a couple weeks after launch” comment, plus in the US at least that’s roughly around the summer break at schools? Not sure.
They basically just want time to fix the release bugs and issues, and the season is probably all already to go.
It’s more likely that it’ll be late July instead, but they may even do it +3 months from launch so that launch feels like a season in itself. That would put it squarely in the first week of September, at the latest.
Whatever it ends up being people are going to complain. I would prefer it to be two to four weeks after launch but if it isn’t until September that won’t kill me. I do hope they let us know fairly soon though in case I decide I want to take a little time off work to just chill and play video games. I haven’t done that in a while and it would be nice.
They said in the February live stream that the 1st season would start “a little after launch.”
They will have more information on seasons prior to the launch. No need for speculation.
D2Rs first season was significantly pushed back so if something isn’t perfect stability or exploit-wise, I’d expect to see the same. I wouldn’t count on a definitive date for seasons until past the game launch.