The first major post-launch Diablo Immortal update arrived on July 7, bringing with it a new Diablo Immortal battle pass for the RPG game – yet many fans are already expressing their disappointment at how similar it appears to be to the previous season’s offering. Aside from a couple of minor exceptions, the rewards on offer in the free-to-play game’s new pass are almost identical to that of season one.
The season two battle pass offers new Bloodsworn weapon and armour cosmetics to players who pay the $4.99 USD / £4.49 GBP to access the premium ‘empowered’ rewards, as well as two new chat emoji. Otherwise, however, the rewards are almost beat-for-beat the same on both the free and premium tracks. Even the two cosmetics and two emotes are in the same slots as previously, so it comes across a bit like a quick copy-and-paste job.
There is actually one other notable difference that players are picking up on. Where the season one battle pass offered four legendary crests – two in the free tier and two in the premium tier – the season two pass swaps out one of those free legendary crests for a lower-value rare crest. That’s before you consider that these aren’t even the more valuable eternal legendary crests, just the regular ones that drop bound, untradeable gems.
Diablo general manager for Blizzard Rod Fergusson says that this update is just a small one, while a patch “scheduled for later in July will be our first major content update.” Nevertheless, the almost identical nature of this second battle pass to Diablo Immortal’s season one offering certainly doesn’t bode well for fans who were hoping for something a little more enticing to keep playing.
Indeed, several threads have been posted to the game’s subreddit expressing disappointment at the similarity and minimal amount of new content offered in the new pass. Also arriving alongside the new update is Vitaath, the second Diablo Immortal Helliquary boss – who many players are already worrying they won’t be able to meet the requirements for.
With many more Diablo Immortal streamers quitting and community site Maxroll shutting its doors on Diablo Immortal coverage, it remains to be seen what, if anything, Blizzard can do to entice their more dedicated community members to stick with the action-RPG’s latest entry. The Diablo 4 release date is still a little way off, and Blizzard says that it won’t feature the style of microtransactions that have proven so divisive in Immortal.