Characters move over.
Stashes require attention.
Somebody reaches level 90 approximately seven minutes after you have finally decided on a character name.
But starting with Season 15, Blizzard is changing the rhythm of the reset itself.
Instead of treating the patch and new Ladder as one closely connected launch moment, Diablo II: Resurrected will now have a gap between the end of the old season, deployment of the new patch and the beginning of the next Ladder race. Blizzard says future seasons will follow a similar schedule.
Season 15 Has Three Different Dates
The important thing this time is not to remember one date.
It is to remember three.
- August 17: Ladder Season 14 ends at 11:00 a.m. PDT, which is 8:00 p.m. CEST.
- August 18: Patch 3.3 begins rolling out.
- August 21: Ladder Season 15 begins at 5:00 p.m. PDT.
For European players, that final launch happens on August 22 at 2:00 a.m. CEST.
So when Patch 3.3 arrives on Tuesday, do not immediately create your new Ladder character and wonder where everyone is.
The race does not begin until Friday evening in North America and early Saturday morning in Europe.
This Is the New Model Going Forward
The most important sentence in Blizzard's announcement is easy to overlook.
The developers describe this as a “slight adjustment” to Patch and Ladder timing and explicitly say that future seasons will use similar timing.
That means Season 15 is establishing a new pattern:
End the old Ladder.
Deploy the update.
Then open the new race several days later.
Blizzard has not given a detailed explanation for the change, so we should not invent one for them.
But separating a major patch rollout from the competitive Ladder start does have one very obvious practical characteristic: the game update is no longer arriving at exactly the same moment thousands of players are attempting to begin a fresh race to level 99.
Whether that is the specific reason Blizzard made the change remains unconfirmed.
Patch 3.3 Arrives Before the New Ladder
Patch 3.3 is not enormous, but it contains several changes players will want installed and understood before Season 15 starts.
It adjusts Terror Zones and Colossal Ancients, changes Sunder Charm drops, fixes several Warlock issues and updates a collection of old items including Bloodletter, Pluckeye, Bane Ash, Gravenspine, Blinkbat's Form, The Ward and Manald Heal.
We have already covered Blizzard's last-minute change to Manald Heal, which switched from Faster Run/Walk to Faster Cast Rate.
There is an important restriction, however.
Blizzard says the newly changed versions of these items will be available only in the Reign of the Warlock Ladder. Previous Ladder-only items, meanwhile, become available in Non-Ladder with the new season.
So Patch 3.3 arriving on August 18 does not mean you can immediately start collecting every new Season 15 item outside the new Ladder.
Season 14 Characters Move to Non-Ladder on August 17
The old character transition still works as expected.
When Season 14 ends, its Ladder characters move into their corresponding Non-Ladder groups.
The Season 14 Shared Stash becomes a new set of Withdraw Only tabs, allowing players to retrieve those items during Season 15.
But there is another deadline hiding inside that reset.
Anything still sitting in the older Season 13 Withdraw Only tabs will be lost when Season 14 ends.
We covered that deadline separately because it is exactly the sort of small administrative detail capable of deleting an item you spent six months refusing to throw away.
The Actual Season 15 Race Starts August 21
Once the new Ladder opens, the usual four modes return:
- Pre-Expansion Ladder
- Pre-Expansion Hardcore Ladder
- Ladder with Lord of Destruction content
- Hardcore Ladder with Lord of Destruction content
The goal remains wonderfully unchanged.
Start with nothing.
Race toward level 99.
Acquire far too many items.
Promise yourself that this season's stash will remain organized.
Lose control of it by Sunday afternoon.
Remember the Gap
The practical takeaway for Season 15 is simple.
August 17 is the reset.
August 18 is the patch.
August 21 is the new Ladder.
And Blizzard says this separated schedule is the model players should expect again in future seasons.
It is not a dramatic redesign of Diablo II.
It will not change your build.
It will not make Baal drop the item you want.
But it is exactly the sort of scheduling change worth remembering before you take Friday off work on the wrong day.
Source
Blizzard Entertainment: Diablo II: Resurrected Ladder Season 15 Coming Soon
