Blizzard has provided an update on Diablo 4 Season 4’s mid-season patch, and has also outlined the upcoming Season 5 Public Test Realm.
Over on the Blizzard forums, the Diablo 4 development team published a note saying that it wanted to “provide some clarity and updates” on aspects after the Diablo 4 DLC, Vessel of Hatred, announced its release date last week. Specifically, this is relating to more immediate additions for Diablo 4, including the upcoming Season 4 mid-season patch, and the Season 5 PTR.
“As you all know, mid-season patches include a ton of significant updates to the game related to class balance and more,” the forum post reads, adding that the full mid-season patch notes will be dropping tomorrow, June 14. Blizzard usually does a livestream to address players with each mid-season patch, but this time the next catch up is delayed slightly to the following week on Friday, June 21.
This is so Blizzard can tackle the upcoming Season 5 PTR. The current Season 4 was the first Diablo 4 Season to get a PTR server, simply because it was so big, but in the weeks following, Blizzard was pretty non-committal on whether there would be any other PTR servers for successive seasons. The original Season 4 PTR patch notes were 10,000 words long, so there’s plenty to tackle here.
“Originally we had our mid-season update coming after this PTR concluded, but we agreed releasing the mid-season update prior to the PTR would be better for all players,” Blizzard continues. “Why is that? Well, the Season 5 PTR would have some of these changes coming with the mid-season update, and we didn’t want to create any type of whiplash for players as they go from finishing the PTR back to Season 4.”
Diablo 4: Vessel of Hatred is the action-RPG’s debut expansion, and it’ll be out later this year on October 8. Right now though, Diablo 4 pets have just debuted in the game thanks to a new update, and they sort of tie into the upcoming expansion – you can get more pets by pre-ordering the DLC.