Diablo 4 Needs A PTR - Here's Why
It has been just over seven months since the release of Diablo 4. In an incredible year for gaming, the launch of Blizzard's newest title has been a successful one according to critics around the globe, resulting in a Metacritic score of 86.
Since its launch and overwhelmingly positive reception, Diablo 4's development road has been rocky for the game's community. Season 1 and its very first significant content Patch 1.1.0, which included a plethora of controversial nerfs, was met with waves of community criticism. Diablo 4's development team apologized and promised to do better — and the following patches, including Season 2's Patch 1.2.0, indeed showed promise with significant changes to defenses and underperforming classes.
One of the latest content additions to the game, however, perfectly showcases one of the core issues of Diablo 4: The Abattoir of Zir, a seasonal endgame mode introduced with Patch 1.2.3 in early December of last year, was expected to pose a genuine challenge to those who have «done everything else» in Season 2. However, the new endgame content was released with many groundbreaking bugs and exploits, like conjurations counting towards monster progression or players being able to create infinite amounts of Sigil Dust.
Most of these things have been fixed by now — but one burning question, which has come up after every single patch since Diablo 4's release, remains: Why in the High Heavens does Diablo 4 not have a Public Test Realm where players could test upcoming content and help Blizzard to increase the game's overall quality?
PTRs in Diablo 3 and D2R
A quick glance at the history of Blizzard's ARPG franchise shows that multiple Diablo development teams have used PTRs to their advantage in
