The Diablo franchise has seen a lot of MMO-style iterations in its most recent entry, Diablo 4but Blizzard stays away from one of the genre’s most frustrating features: time-gating.
For those not in the know, time-gated content refers to in-game features or missions that don’t appear until a real-world date. No matter how much a player plays, the next mission in the story won’t be unlocked until the following week. Or the harder version of an activity that is already playable will only become available weeks or even months later. Lot 2 And World of Warcraft both do this several times a year.
But in a group Q&A session with Blizzard developers about Diablo 4‘s first season – Season of the Malignant – Assistant Game Director Joe Piepiora confirmed to Polygon that the team has no plans to add time-gated content to Season 1 or future seasons. Players will be able to jump into Season of the Malignant on July 20, play as hard or as many times as they like, “beat” the season, and come back when the next season begins. Equivalent to Diablo 3 seasons you don’t have to wait a few weeks for all content to be in-game.
However, Piepiora added two caveats to his answer. The first is that while players don’t have to stop playing and wait Diablo 4, there are certain seasonal mechanics that players must unlock by playing the game or reaching a certain level. So the entire season of Malignant will take many hours of leveling and in-game progression to actually discover.
Piepiora also said possible in-game events could launch at a different time than a season. He speculated that an in-game holiday event, for example, would appear around the actual holiday it’s based on, rather than around the start of a season.
For example, if Diablo 4‘s second season kicks off October 12 – 12 weeks from July 20 – it’s not hard to imagine that Blizzard could launch a Halloween event a few weeks later, closer to the 31st. But while players would have to wait for the event itself, the season content would be fully playable on the 12th.
Piepiora has not specifically confirmed Diablo 4 Halloween event or any other holiday event. Blizzard hasn’t announced any special events for it yet Diablo 4.