At BlizzCon 2023, Diablo 4 developer Blizzard Entertainment pulled out the big guns and announced the game’s first expansion pack. Players won’t be learning more about Vessel of Hatred until later next year, but Blizzard did give fans a sneak peek at other pieces of content that’s coming much sooner. The most notable of which is a few details about Season 3. While we still don’t have a name for the upcoming season, Blizzard did talk about a new endgame activity called The Gauntlet which should excite Diablo 3 fans everywhere.
Again, Blizzard didn’t dive too deep into The Gauntlet as it’s not ready to fully pull the curtain back on Season 3 in Diablo 4, but it did describe them as a weekly challenge dungeon where players will compete to rank up on the new leaderboards. If you hit certain milestones, you’ll earn cosmetic rewards and top players will have their names “cemented into the Seasonal Hall of the Ancients for all of time.”
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If you played Diablo 3 for a significant time, this might remind you of that game’s Challenge Rifts, though these let players use their own character to take on the challenge. That said, just like Rifts, you’ll be racing through the same seed dungeon as everyone else, trying to kill enemies efficiently and earn a top score. To speed things up even more, loot is only dropped at the end of a run, meaning you won’t have to slow down to pick up your new gear. Importantly, there will be separate leaderboards for each class, as well as for hardcore characters, solo players, and groups. That should make it a little more fair since everyone isn’t using the exact same character.
When Will We Learn More About Diablo 4: Vessel of Hatred and Season 3?
Blizzard will have to start talking about its upcoming projects, particularly Season 3 relatively soon. The next season is due to launch in January 2024, meaning we only have a few months before it hits the servers. Of course, the team is also planning to kick off a limited-time holiday event called Midwinter Blight on December 12. Most likely, we’ll start to hear more about Season 3 in Diablo 4 a bit after that.
As for the Vessel of Hatred expansion, it sounds like next summer is the best guess for when Blizzard will give fans a true deep dive into what’s coming, including the reveal of a brand-new character class. The expansion is currently slated for late 2024, making next summer the logical starting point for the hype machine. We’ll likely get a tease here or there beforehand, but six months out seems like it would make sense for Blizzard.
Diablo 4 is available now on PlayStation, Xbox, and PC platforms. The Midwinter Blight event starts on December 12, and Blizzard will follow that up with the start of Season 3 early next year.
