Blizzard has just released Reaper of Souls, the first expansion to Diablo III, to great acclaim, but they aren't resting on their laurels anyime soon. Game director Josh Mosqueira announced during the Reaper of Souls Release Event that the game will be adding a new system that offers new seasons and ladders opportunities in an upcoming patch to the game.
"One of the features you guys have asked about a lot, that we have done a lot of research for, is something called ladders," said Mosqueira (via Diablo Fans). "I'm happy to say that as part of our first big content patch in a couple of months, we will be releasing Seasons, which will include a ladder-like aspect to them. We're still working on them, but the general gist is that you'll level up a new character, we'll have specific ladders for Seasons, and also some goodies that will drop along the way. There's more information of that to come, and we're not making an announcement of when, but that's coming in the first major content patch - not the first patch, but the first major content patch."
Sounds amazing, especially for a free update to the game.
The patch will also come with a new feature called Tiered Rifts that gives you increasingly harder Rifts as a challenge that you can attempt, and gauge yourself against other players via a leaderboard.
"There is another major feature in the patch 2.1, which is going to be what we're internally calling Tiered Rifts. The idea is a challenge scenario, where players do increasingly hard Rifts, to see who can get the farthest. You do your bounties, you do a Nephalem Rift. If you clear it, there's a chance to get a Greater Rift Token. If you successfully do that, you'll get a Greater Rift Key (rank 2), then Rank 3, etc.. Much like seasons, we're going to have a leaderboard as well, so you can see who got to the highest tier Rift, and what time were they able to obtain on that."
Gamers will also find new legendary items in the future, both as rewards for completing ladders and the Tiered Rifts. They're going to add new ones rather than revisit the old ones.
Reaper of Souls is available right now and is apparently terrific. Check it out at their official site.