Good news for Diablo 4 players who picked up Vessel of Hatred: future seasons will have content exclusive to players who own the expansion, Diablo franchise boss Rod Fergusson told Polygon in an interview earlier this month. The goal, Fergusson said, is for expansion owners to continue to feel they’re getting value from their purchase beyond the current season.
Typically, each season of Diablo 4 has been self-contained, so players can enjoy starting new characters (the game’s Seasonal Realm requires a fresh start) and power through the new seasonal content. Sometimes, a season’s content and features are shared with the game’s Eternal Realm, where non-seasonal characters and characters from previous seasons live.
Fergusson, the general manager of the Diablo franchise, explained that Blizzard launched season 6 alongside Vessel of Hatred so players could start fresh with the expansion’s new Spiritborn class — but then worried the expansion could feel too much like “a single moment in time” that future seasons might move beyond.
“Because we know that the beginning of a season is sort of a fresh starting point, we wanted to launch the expansion at the same time as the beginning of a season,” Fergusson said. “That’s why we launched at the beginning of season 6, so you could roll a Spiritborn as your new thing. So it can feel like a little bit like this expansion is just a single moment in time, and I just wanted to highlight that that’s not the case. We’re going to continue to develop features that will be, essentially, exclusive to Vessel of Hatred owners.”
Fergusson mentioned that Blizzard thinks of Diablo 4 as being divided into “chapters,” which are chunks of seasons in between major expansion releases. Season 1 to Vessel of Hatred was “chapter one” of Diablo 4, he said, and “season 7 to the future” is chapter two — the “future” presumably being the game’s second expansion.
“As we continue chapter two, as a Vessel of Hatred owner, you’ll get access to other stuff in chapter two as part of your ownership,” Fergusson said. “So we’re going to continue to have [Vessel of Hatred] be valuable beyond season 6 as well.”
Fergusson didn’t mention what these exclusive seasonal features might look like. Vessel of Hatred has plenty of elements that are ripe for modification and expansion, including customizable companions in the form of Mercenaries, new build customization options via Runewords, and new dungeon playstyles in Kurast Undercity and Dark Citadel.
Blizzard is on a promotional push for Diablo 4 through the rest of November. The base game and Vessel of Hatred are currently on sale on Battle.net and Xbox, and starting Tuesday, Nov. 19, a selection of free-trial and character-boost options go live to tempt new and returning players to dive in.
From that date, players can select one character on the Eternal Realm to boost to level 50 with a Welcome Back Booster. A boosted character can pick from three preset builds for that class, each of which comes with a full set of Legendary gear. All Altars of Lilith (stat-boosting collectables) are unlocked, and some currency and other useful items are thrown in. Vessel of Hatred owners can select two characters to boost to level 50.
From Nov. 19 to Dec. 2, players who haven’t bought Vessel of Hatred yet can try the Spiritborn class for free up to level 25. There’ll be a free trial for the base game over the same period, also capped at level 25.
Fergusson said that the booster and free trials were motivated by a desire to show off the many changes and improvements to Diablo 4 over its first 18 months, including the game-changing itemization update in season 4, Loot Reborn, and the overhaul of character progression released alongside Vessel of Hatred.
“We were looking at ways of creating a boost for players to be able to say, Hey, welcome back, Eternal player. Maybe you haven’t played in a while. Let’s get you cleaned up. Let’s give you a shave and haircut here. […] So you don’t have to do all the, I got to spend two hours just cleaning up before I can go and play,” he said. “In the last 18 months, so much has changed. But if you’re an Eternal player who played the campaign and then stopped, you don’t know. You haven’t felt this 18 months of evolution.”
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