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Another rung closer to perfection: Diablo III to get ranked ladder support “in a couple of months”

Reaper of Souls

The first Diablo III expansion has been unleashed; read our Reaper of Souls review to find out the verdict.

For the last couple of weeks, Diablo III game director Josh Mosqueira has collapsed into winks and nudges at any mention of a potential ladder system for the interconnected RPG. Nobody’s been sure whether he’s hinting at an imminent release, or displaying an involuntary reaction to a much-requested feature he knows he can’t deliver.

Turns out it’s the former: Diablo’s worst kept secret, season play, will come in Reaper of Souls’ first big content patch in a couple of months’ time.

Asked about features dropped from Reaper of Souls’ release in the latter stages of development, Mosqueira told Diablo Somepage that Blizzard had conducted “a lot of research” for a ladder system.

“I’m happy to say that as part of our first big content patch in a couple of months we will be releasing Seasons, which will include a ladder-like aspect to them,” he said. “There’s more information on that to come, and we’re not making an announcement of when, but that’s coming in the first major content patch.”

Players will need to level up a new character to take advantage of the Seasons system. There’ll be specific ladders for each season, and some unique “goodies” that will drop during ladder play.

Blizzard senior designer Wyatt Cheng specifically mentioned new legendary items as rewards for ladder players.

Other as-yet-unreleased legendary items will drop as rewards for Tiered Rifts – challenge scenarios also due for release in a future patch.

In Tiered Rifts, players will compete to see who can make it furthest in increasingly hard rifts.

“You do your Bounties and get the tokens, then you do a Nephalem Rift. If you clear it, there’s a chance to get a Greater Rift Token,” explained Cheng. “If you successfully do that, you’ll get a Greater Rift Key (Rank 2); if you clear that one, you get Rank 3, etc.”

Both new modes will benefit from a leaderboard, which will list individual player statistics in detail. Do you think you’ll make use of it?