Diablo 4 Delays Major Season 3 Feature

Blizzard GM delays Diablo 4's biggest Season 3 feature.

By Ricky Frech

At last year's BlizzCon, the Diablo 4 developers officially announced that they were working on a major new feature for the game called The Gauntlet. This is planned to be a reimagining of the popular Challenge Rift dungeons and has long been slated to release during Season 3. The feature wasn't able to make it into the season's launch lineup, but recently, fans got what they thought was good news. Diablo 4 GM Rod Fergusson announced on the Offical Xbox Podcast that The Gauntlet was coming on February 13. Unfortunately, he announced today that the Diablo 4 team is pushing that release date back a bit further.

Diablo 4 Delays The Gauntlet

In his new announcement on Twitter, Fergusson says, "Great seeing the excitement about the Gauntlet & Leaderboards. We're still on track for S3 but decided to take a bit more time to polish a few things up, so it won't be launching on Feb 13 as I mentioned on a recent podcast. We'll share more details and the new date soon."

The good news is that it doesn't look like The Gauntlet has been pushed back to Season 4 yet. Remember, seasons in Diablo 4 last about three months, so Season 4 won't drop until around April 16. That means Blizzard still has plenty of time to add The Gauntlet during Season 3 and meet its original goal. That said, it might hamstring some of the excitement around the feature if it doesn't launch near the start of a season. At that point, many players are going to come back to try out whatever the next story is, and having The Gauntlet launching around the same time would be a good way to get players funneled into the end-game content.

Blizzard may use this as something of a testing ground before going all out with Season 4. After all, most features added to Diablo 4 have needed some tweaking after launch. With something as significant as The Gauntlet, Blizzard will likely need to tune a few knobs once it's in the wild.

What is The Gauntlet is Diablo 4

As mentioned, The Gauntlet is similar to Challenge Rifts from Diablo 3. However, there are a few important differences. The most notable is that players will be able to take their characters into the dungeon regardless of class or gear. In D3, players used standardized characters, making everyone play under the exact same circumstances. With The Gauntlet in D4, players will be able to get a leg up on the competition if they're able to build their character around the parameters of the dungeon.

That also means there will be several different leaderboards for players to track their standing within the community. The leaderboards will also break up into various categories, including solo players, groups, and even hardcore characters. 

Diablo 4 is available now on PlayStation, Xbox, and PC platforms.

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