Diablo 4 players will need to start a new character to play season one content

Diablo IV has been an absolutely huge hit so far, but an update on the game’s live-service content has been going down very poorly with fans.

While Diablo IV fully launched on 6 June, the first season of post-launch content isn’t set to kick off until sometime in mid to late July. Seasonal content is nothing new to the Diablo series, but this is the first time that the game has incorporated a battle pass, so you’d expect some things (namely, how players can progress through the content) to work a bit differently this time around.

Take a look at the trailer for Diablo IV below.

As IGN reports, this apparently won’t be the case. It’s been confirmed that in traditional Diablo style, players will have to create a new, seasonal character to play through the seasonal content when it launches, and they won’t be able to use the existing character that they’ve been levelling up since launch.

“To take part in the seasonal questline, mechanics, season journey and battle pass, you will need to create a new seasonal character,” Diablo general manager Rod Fergusson confirmed via Twitter. “Playing campaign with [a] seasonal character (if you so desire or need to finish) will also progress the season journey and battle pass.”

However, fear not, your current character isn’t going to be deleted - they’ll be moved to the Eternal Realm, where you can continue to play without any seasonal content. The same will happen to your seasonal character when season one ends.

“You're able to keep playing in the Eternal Realm, just like you are today, if you don't want to participate in seasonal activities,” Fergusson tweeted. “And when a season ends, your seasonal character will move to the Eternal Realm so you can keep playing it there if you want.”

Although the seasonal reset isn’t a new concept to the Diablo series, since Diablo IV is Blizzard’s fastest selling game of all time, there’ll definitely be a lot of players who'll be surprised by this. It’ll be interesting to see how concurrent player numbers change when the first season commences.