For gamescom 2024, there was plenty of fresh information about Vessel of Hatred, the first DLC for Diablo 4. As part of an announcement, it has now been revealed that you will soon be able to test the simultaneously launching Season 6.
What kind of announcement is that? On the platform X.com, Adam Fletcher, the Global Community Development Director for Diablo at Blizzard, announced a livestream. During this “Campfire Chat,” there will be new information about the changes to the progression system in Diablo 4.
A few hours later, Fletcher announced in a repost on X that they will also talk about a PTR for Patch 2.0, which is the DLC Vessel of Hatred.
In the Diablo 4 forum, Community Manager Lyricana provided a clarification: To clarify: There will be a PTR for Season 6, but not for VoH content, rather for permanent features that will be added to the base game.
It could involve the group search feature that will be permanently added to Diablo 4 with the expansion. Also, the changes to level progression and player progress in general are according to Blizzard permanent.
During gamescom 2024 in Cologne, there were also a whole series of new announcements regarding the expansion. The video introduces some of them:
What is a PTR? A PTR is a so-called Public Test Realm
. This is a publicly accessible version of a later-released video game content with limited functionality. For example, cutscenes, certain NPCs, or features may be blocked.
The goal of a PTR is to identify bugs and issues early, possibly gauge server capacities, and provide developers with proper user feedback. So this is similar to alpha and beta testing, with the difference being that PTRs are generally used for live-service games that have already been released.
Originally, there were no PTRs for Diablo 4. Seasons 1 to 3 were therefore released to players completely untested. However, for Season 4, a PTR was announced. This was well received by the community, and the developers claimed to have learned quite a bit from it. After a period of uncertainty, a PTR for the currently ongoing Season 5 was finally announced.
When will you be able to test the season? Vessel of Hatred will be released on October 8, 2024 – so in just about 1.5 months. Season 6 will start simultaneously, making Season 5 the shortest so far. The PTR will surely go live with some delay from the release so that developers can process the feedback.
However, a specific start date is not known yet. According to Adam Fletcher, more detailed information will be provided on August 29 during the aforementioned livestream.
As soon as there are new updates on this, you will read them of course at MeinMMO. As already mentioned, there were a whole series of announcements for Vessel of Hatred during gamescom, including Blizzard showing you your 4 new best friends in Diablo 4.
