14 DAY TRIAL // Blizzard Entertainment seems ready to get started with the second season in Diablo 3, announcing that players will be able to compete as early as February 3.
Diablo 3 got a lot more exciting with the launch of the Reaper of Souls expansion, when the action role-playing game also made its debut on the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One home entertainment systems, mainly due to the introduction of a more satisfying endgame, enabling users to grind for better gear in a variety of challenging ways.
One of the more recent additions was the game's first season, which is concluding at the end of the month, and by the looks of it, Blizzard is anxious to get things moving and start with the next one.
The first season debuted four months ago, enabling players to start over fresh and compete against each other, with the best having the chance to be immortalized in the leaderboards.
Granted, Grinding Gears Games did all of this way before Blizzard for its own free-to-play action role-playing game Path of Exile, a brilliant refuge for those seeking an alternative to Diablo 3, but nonetheless it's nice to see the company listening to the community's requests.
Season 2 preparations
An official post on the Battle.net forums informs that current seasonal characters will be transferred to the non-seasonal pool, and that any items or Paragon experience accumulated by the players will also be carried over, in preparation for season two.
However, be mindful of the fact that only the amount of Paragon experience is rolled over, and not the number of levels, as higher Paragon levels take much more experience to earn.
The rewards for Season 1 have also been announced, and all players who managed to reach level 70 on a hero will unlock an exclusive Helm and Shoulder transmogrification appearance, activated immediately upon hitting level 70, and available account-wide.
In addition to this, Patch 2.1.2 is also in the cards, currently undergoing testing on the Public Test Realm. The company demoed the contents of the patch at last year's BlizzCon event, but for the time being, there is no clear release date for it.
One of the hurdles the dev team has to face is plugging the numerous exploits uncovered during Season 1, and trying to discover as many of the ones in Patch 2.1.2 ahead of its launch.
There are, however, several other issues that Blizzard could address, such as showing players their position in the race to whatever objective they set for themselves. Sure, those who use exploits impact the competition as high echelons of play, but players who already know that they can't be in the top should still have something to look forward to.
Shorter seasons would also help, as would announcing a clear conclusion date right from the get-go.
