Diablo 4’s long-awaited Tower and its Leaderboards enter beta today, and there’s no PTR funny business this time
Diablo 4 is about to deliver on Blizzard’s years-old promise to add a challenging, leaderboard-driven experience to the action RPG. The beta for The Tower, and its associated Leaderboards are about to kick off.
As recently revealed, the new experience launches today at 11am PT, 2pm ET, 7pm GMT. This is a beta version that arrives alongside update 2.5.2.
This early launch won’t offer the full experience, and it’s mainly designed to get it into the hands of players early so that Blizzard could get as much feedback as possible and incorporate it into the final version.
The beta is available to everyone, which is a nice change from the usual rigmarole players would have to go through to get the PTR build and play on a different branch. The Tower, and Leaderboards will be available only in the Seasonal Realm, however. Indeed, the plan is to build on what’s there with each future season, so it’s best to think of it as a seasonal experience.
The Tower is about as simple of an activity as you can get in an action RPG. The goal is to climb as many floors as you can as quickly as you can, all while battling increasingly difficult mobs.
You need to reach and beat the Tower’s final boss before you can call it a run. The Leaderboard will then show your time, and let you see how well you did compared to other players.
The Tower is available to anyone who completed Rank 2 of the current Season Rank. Once done, an Obelisk will appear in Cerrigar, letting you access the challenge.
The Leaderboards themselves will operate on a two-week schedule, all of which will take place during a given season. In this case, they’re going to close the day before Season of the Divine Interversion – the game’s current season – ends.
Blizzard published an updated set of patch notes that show how much has changed since The Tower, and Leaderboards first became playable in the patch 2.5.0 PTR.
Though the two new additions have been anticipated for a while, there’s not been much exciting going on in the world of Diablo 4, apart, of course, from the surprise arrival of The Paladin class, which became available in December last year to coincide with the announcement of Lord of Hatred, the game’s next expansion.