D3 UPDATE! S7 ends October 14-- S8 Begin October 21

[NoLongerAwayBoss]

Season 7 will be ending on the following dates and times:

North America: Friday, October 14 @ 5:00 p.m. PDT
Europe: Friday, October 14 @ 5:00 p.m. CEST
Asia: Friday, October 14 @ 5:00 p.m. KST

Season 8 will begin about one week afterward on these dates:

North America: Friday, October 21 @ 5:00 p.m. PDT
Europe: Friday, October 21 @ 5:00 p.m. CEST
Asia: Friday, October 21 @ 5:00 p.m. KST

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/blog/20275888/season-7-ending-soon-9-30-2016

I wonder why the are ending the Season 7 early and not 3 months as usual?

 

[TwoCigars]

I wonder why the are ending the Season 7 early and not 3 months as usual?

This is kind of what I have been wondering. There is already a lot of speculation around the community as to why...

With so many rumors about Diablo 4 going into production, it's really fueling the flames to not have a PTR and have such a short season.


No PTR makes me think several things could be happening....

1) There could be no major balancing or items/changes that would require a patch and they are just going to reset the leaderboards.

2) Changes planned for the last season that didn't make it in are going to be added and they have already been tested.

3) There are going to be a lot of changes, or a really big change that they do not want to reveal to the community.

4) They are sick of their PTR servers getting datamined early and builds being published globally before a season even starts.

5) The DDoS attacks were really secret testing going on and we will find out why on October 14th or the 21st...

6) They actually paid more beta testers to actually test their product completely internally.

7) Perhaps there was some bug or exploit that people used to jack up the leaderboards which somehow never saw the light of day (not likely) so they are resetting it early.

8) [Put on your tinfoil, boys] Maybe they are resetting the boards to coincide with a Blizzard Super Hack to ban all botters



Option 1 seems most likely to me... The early end to the season is what's really strange. They have kept us at 3 month seasons for so long now that they wouldn't change shorten S7 without reason... Which kinda kills option 1. Yet D4 is possibly on the development horizon, so server maintenance mode seems inevitable. Which makes option 1 more likely, but why end the season early?

If they are adding new content, I can't imagine that they wouldn't take advantage of the PTR, since it spikes logins and promotes traffic for the next season. Before the PTR, every patch was laced with bugs and exploits. However, last few PTRs have really only served to fix balancing issues, not really exploits/major bugs. Maybe they have it handled?


Only other factor I can see is Blizzcon, which isn't until November so starting a new season in October makes no sense... Blizzcon is exactly 2 weeks after the new season starts.

 

[NoLongerAwayBoss]

Only other factor I can see is Blizzcon, which isn't until November so starting a new season in October makes no sense... Blizzcon is exactly 2 weeks after the new season starts.

This ^^.

Wyatt Cheng is the only Dev working D3 now. So the D3 team that actively can influence the game and make changes is small.
Being that Blizzcon is about the presentation of the new Diablo game coming out. So the D3 team is busy with that. Nothing to overshadow this big new start about to be announced!

I have a pretty strong feeling there is no Expansion for D3 NOR is there a Diablo4 coming out.

BUT, I believe there is a completely different style of Diablo game in the works that is not like D1/D2 nor D3 like a "Diablo Nexus" or "Diablo Worlds".

 

[TwoCigars]

If its first person, they are really going to have to sell me on it. I play Diablo because it's the best ARPG series ever made.

And despite resorting to botting to save time, I still play by hand and really enjoy the experience.

Lately I have been working on unlocking my stash slots... YaY Set Dungeon Mastery (They are actually pretty easy).

 

[Hoschy]

Maybe we will see... "World of Diablo" for a 10€ monthly membership & pay to win system

 

[NoLongerAwayBoss]

If its first person, they are really going to have to sell me on it. I play Diablo because it's the best ARPG series ever made.

And despite resorting to botting to save time, I still play by hand and really enjoy the experience.

Lately I have been working on unlocking my stash slots... YaY Set Dungeon Mastery (They are actually pretty easy).

I have one more stash tab left on America's for a number of accounts to get Season 8.
You really have to play manually to do certain things. I have no problem with that.
Mainly I use the bot for mats and paragon leveling.

 

[TwoCigars]

I guess we are the only two speculating on the topic of S8

I did manage to rummage up this article:
WoW Patch 7.1 PTR - Build 22578 shows Diablo 20th Anniversary Items

Looks like they took the time to add Diablo 2 items into World of Warcraft for the Diablo 20th anniversary.


It would be REALLY WEIRD if they took the time to add special Diablo content into WoW, but not Diablo 3.

I anticipate something to mark the event, and perhaps that is the reason for the early season end???

 

[NoLongerAwayBoss]

I guess we are the only two speculating on the topic of S8

I did manage to rummage up this article:
WoW Patch 7.1 PTR - Build 22578 shows Diablo 20th Anniversary Items

Looks like they took the time to add Diablo 2 items into World of Warcraft for the Diablo 20th anniversary.


It would be REALLY WEIRD if they took the time to add special Diablo content into WoW, but not Diablo 3.

I anticipate something to mark the event, and perhaps that is the reason for the early season end???

Well WoW is a paid subscription as you well know. And any new mini content into WoW is kinda cool being D2 or D3 kind of nerdy stuff!

But I had a dream where Wyatt Cheng was in a meeting with the higher ups in a Blizzard Family Meeting and they were discussing the state of the Diablo 3 game and what they should do.
Wyatt started to say something about the class balancing and what we need to do to bring that about and one of the big dogs said, "Enough of this shit!"
"End season now and don't tell those miscreants anything!" "No PTR, no Patch, no patch notes."

Wyatt Cheng said, "But wait we have to tell them what the haedrig gift will be!" So big dog said, "Okay, tell them that and nothing else!"

"They will have to be happy with the bones we throw them on November 4th."

Bottom Line: by keeping us in the dark, and really giving us nothing good for quite some time, but the game we're left with, tells me you and I, may not be playing D3 they way we used to, for much longer.

 

[qvazmir]

Bottom Line: by keeping us in the dark, and really giving us nothing good for quite some time, but the game we're left with, tells me you and I, may not be playing D3 they way we used to, for much longer.

The blizzcon diablo thingy said "future epic content for diablo 3" right? So they have to give us something that is not transmogs, since those aren't epic at all.

 

[TwoCigars]

I still feel like Blizzard always likes creating hype before big releases or changes...

I don't know a way they could create more of a fuss than ending a season early with no defined reason... With blizzcon around the corner and not giving us a PTR... And having the Diablo 20th anniversary on the horizon.

I think they let Blizzcon and the anniversary create some diablo hype and then give us the only clue by closing the season early.

+1 about transmogs being useless qvazmir, wings and pets too. I just looked at a list of all of the transmogs, wings and pets that you can unlock in game. Run a tons of basic maps to try and find mysterious chests? No thanks. Same with running a bunch of whimsydales. Master all set dungeons for all classes? Definitely no. Maybe if I had one account, but I have 4. Thats almost 100 dungeons to hit mastery.

 

[NoLongerAwayBoss]

Hey TwoCigars...I truly hope all this hype does pan out to blow us all away.

So many of us are truly afraid that Diablo 3 with it's ARPG base is falling into the past fairly quickly and off Blizz's view finder.

So with the 'No PTR', 'Ending S7 early', && Blizzcon just over the end of month and on 4th day of Turkey month for American's with Xmas in our view port once again, I say Blizz will not let us down and we will be so happy on the 4th!

I am going to nod in the direction of we will all look back on all the weird decisions from Blizz cause of what happened on Nov. 4th.

I personally ran for about a week, one or two hours a day for the pets etc. All my America's accounts have a bunch of pets, even the Euro and Asia accounts have some pets too.

I have no desire to get Set Dungeon Mastery. Maybe after getting all stash tabs for America's I'll go for it.

 

[TwoCigars]

I think we are just keeping the hope alive. I wish there were published usage numbers that would let us see how many people are really playing the game.

The set dungeons are not particularly hard, some of them are challenging in really annoying ways. Some of the ones I completed in season 7 forced me to take off my rings and other gear because my DPS was too high to complete them. I even equipped a yellow weapon for one LoL. Seems kind of counter intuitive to have to do such a thing. It's almost like they are telling us "We are going to force you to get 6-10 pieces of gear, but they can all be garbage. We just want you to have to grind in order to grind out a ridiculous task for mastery. We don't really expect you to actually use the set, but this gives them a reason to exist in the game."

Goes back to the issues that have caused so many people to leave.

I am going to put it out there: If they put D3 into maintenance mode, they are doing so to promote more users to play their newly released WoW: Legion... A game that requires a subscription.

 

[NoLongerAwayBoss]

I am going to put it out there: If they put D3 into maintenance mode, they are doing so to promote more users to play their newly released WoW: Legion... A game that requires a subscription.

Oh my, what a bummer. If D3 falls into the toilet I will not play any game I have to pay for a monthly fee.

I am still addicted to D3 and no doubt I will get the last stash tab for all my accounts in America's.

After that is done. I am not sure about my plans if there is still silence from Blizz with no more patches etc!

 

[TwoCigars]

Oh my, what a bummer. If D3 falls into the toilet I will not play any game I have to pay for a monthly fee.

I am still addicted to D3 and no doubt I will get the last stash tab for all my accounts in America's.

After that is done. I am not sure about my plans if there is still silence from Blizz with no more patches etc!

That reminds me of so many past season where I decided "I don't need another damn stash tab" and now I wish I would have always gotten them lol.

I guess we will find out in a couple more days whether or not we will really see no changes for the season... Then we have a last chance that Blizzcon might have a good announcement in their short 1 hour of stage time. Second week of November we should have an answer.

 

[NoLongerAwayBoss]

That reminds me of so many past season where I decided "I don't need another damn stash tab" and now I wish I would have always gotten them lol.

I guess we will find out in a couple more days whether or not we will really see no changes for the season... Then we have a last chance that Blizzcon might have a good announcement in their short 1 hour of stage time. Second week of November we should have an answer.

After Blizz took away Season only legs, that left the stash and of course Ladder reset mania from D2, as the reason we play Seasons.
During first season I got stash tabs for all 8 America's accounts and Euro Accounts. I found that was way too much energy given by me, so it's been America's only since.
I've no doubt we'll all get the free opportunity in time for all stash in one way or another. But for now I use the stash as my season goal.

And yes, Blizzcon is our only hope for a D3 future. So we'll see.
I know we both want to see some awesome stuff.

 

[TwoCigars]

It has begun!

I am over para 400 now. What class did you end up using? I am monking it for my first bot, will start others after I get GG on monk.

 

[NoLongerAwayBoss]

It has begun!

I am over para 400 now. What class did you end up using? I am monking it for my first bot, will start others after I get GG on monk.

I always go WD. Can't help myself.
over 800 para last I checked. Running 4 man team. Having a lot of fun.
Will work on last stash in a few weeks.
HT/Garg is my main.

 

[TwoCigars]

I am running 4 monks for now. I am not sure what might be coming at the blizzard announcement so I decided to just go with one class to focus some testing.

I am building gear/itemlist to use these builds:
Inna's Mystic Ally (general and exploding palm variants)
Uliana Exploding Palm
Raiment Generator
SWK LTK
LoN LTK

...and while I know that it's not the highest GR set, mantras dont stack and unity passive caps at 20, I really want to see 40 allies running around in a 4 man group! Pushing GRs is great, but I think I want to see some fun stuff for a season.