Long-Awaited Diablo 4 Feature Just Got Delayed to 2026

With Season 11 just around the corner, Blizzard has confirmed that Diablo 4 fans will be made to wait until 2026 for the addition of the long-awaited leaderboards feature. Leaderboards have long been confirmed for Diablo 4 Season 11, as they’re planned to release alongside a new game mode called The Tower. However, both features have been pushed to next year ahead of the Season of Divine Intervention’s release on December 11.

Leaderboards have always been an important element of the Diablo franchise, with previous games including them to let players measure their builds and skills against those of other players. They were first added to Diablo 4 in Season 3 before being removed in Season 6. The previous implementation of leaderboards was too exploitable, giving players a false impression of how quickly they were completing The Gauntlet. Despite this, Blizzard has consistently confirmed its intention to bring back leaderboards in the future if it can find a fair way to do so. As the seasons have passed without leaderboards, fans have continued to clamor for their return.

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Leaderboards and The Tower Won’t Be Present at Diablo 4 Season 11’s Launch

During Blizzard’s recent reveal of Diablo 4 Season 11, it was announced that leaderboards and The Tower won’t be available at launch. According to associate game director Zaven Haroutunian, “This is to make sure we have some stability with the season launch, and then when The Tower shows up, it’s online and people are ready to tackle it.” Instead, the feature is now set to arrive in Patch 2.5.2, coming in early 2026. As well as stability, it was noted that the delay will allow Blizzard to implement feedback on leaderboards and The Tower from the Season 11 PTR, which ran in late October. According to the developer, it plans to initially launch The Tower in Beta, giving it the chance to improve it across multiple seasons based on further feedback. Because of this, players can expect frequent changes to The Tower when it launches as Blizzard continues to refine the feature.

Some community feedback on The Tower from the Diablo 4 Season 11 PTR is that it plays too similarly to The Pit, and Haroutunian addressed this during the livestream. “The Tower is going to start very similar, because it’s starting at the same foundation,” he said. “Over time, it will change, it will morph, it will be its own thing. And The Pit will suddenly have all this space it’s freed up to occupy. It doesn’t have to be this pseudo-competitive mode anymore; it can just be whatever it needs to be. It can be as crazy as we want.” So it seems that when The Tower and its accompanying leaderboards arrive in Diablo 4 next year, it will have the knock-on effect of improving The Pit, too. More details about these features will be shared by Blizzard closer to their release.

So December 11’s launch won’t bring The Tower and leaderboards, but there’s still plenty for players to get excited about with the Season of Divine Intervention. There are some massive overhauls coming to Tempering and Masterworking, intended to remove some of the RNG involved in both features. This has been met with some controversy, so it’ll be interesting to see how it pans out. The new seasonal mechanic is called Divine Gifts, which offer passive powers with effects that are active while in and out of combat. There’s also the new Sanctification seasonal gear upgrade system, which will give players the opportunity to provide one final upgrade to their items. This can have different effects, such as upgrading an Affix to a Greater Affix, applying a Legendary Aspect, or even adding a random Mythic Unique Power. Given the popularity of Season 10 and its Chaos Armor mechanic, Season 11 has a lot to live up to.

Released

June 5, 2023

ESRB

Mature 17+ / Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Language, In-Game Purchases, Users Interact