Here’s something that many probably saw coming. According to a post on Blizzard’s Diablo 3 Battle.net forums, microtransactions may be coming to the loot-hoarding action RPG. They’re planned to be introduced through the upcoming patch 2.2.0 which will soon be hitting the PTR (Public Test Realm), but not everywhere.
In the post, Community Manager Nevalistis was quite forward in noting that “we have no immediate plans to implement such purchases or the aforementioned features anytime soon for the Americas region”. That means if these microtransactions do stick, they won’t be available to players in North or South America for at least the foreseeable future. Blizzard got in early on this before players do a little data-mining (the practice of digging into a patch’s code to pull important information out before release) and cause a ruckus as their arms go flailing up in rage.
There are a bunch of features confirmed to be arriving for everyone in Diablo 3, including improved Legendary Armor Sets, new layouts for Rifts, additional Bounties added for Adventure Mode, and even a complete change of the file system when patch 2.2.0 hits.
The features that will not be available everywhere are as follows:
- A new currency called “Platinum”
- Timed experience boosts
- New cosmetic items including wings, non-combat pets, and character portraits
- References to stash space and character slot expansions
- A new UI interface that references the above information
On the user interface, there’s a new one of those coming too that will make cosmetically changing your armor easier than ever before.
These updates are unlikely to reach the console versions of Diablo 3 any time soon, but the release of Patch 2.2.0 is likely to land sometime soon if it’s already coming to the public testing area.
Are you still playing Diablo 3? Would you actually like to have microtransactions added into the game? Let us know in the comments.
Updated: Feb 23, 2015 05:01 pm