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Diablo III Reaper of Souls Friends and Family Beta Test has begun, PTR soon

Posted By: November 20, 2013


It has arrived everyone. Put the tinfoil hats away on beta start up, and get them primed for release speculation. The Diablo III Reaper of Souls Friends and Family Beta Test has begun and the closed beta is shortly on the way. I think it’s safe now to say Flux was wrong on his late 2014 Reaper of Souls release date prediction, but I don’t want to jinx it.

Here’s the official news from Blizzard:

In the past, participants in this particular phase of public testing usually only include friends and relatives of Blizzard employees. With Reaper of Souls, however, we’ve decided to buck that trend and extend invites to valued media contacts and key members of the Blizzard community. We’re also inviting 3,000 of our most active Diablo III players from around the world who’ve opted in for beta testing—something we’ve never done for any Friends and Family Beta test before!

Participants in the Reaper of Souls Friends and Family Beta are not required to abide by a non-disclosure agreement (NDA). As a result, you may see coverage in the form of articles, videos, streams, and forum posts appear over the next few weeks regarding various features and changes in the expansion. When reviewing this coverage, please keep in mind that the Friends and Family Beta is still an early glimpse at Reaper of Souls, which means that all content is subject to change before release. We also encourage you to be mindful of story spoilers, as the Friends and Family Beta includes the entire expansion, excluding the final boss fight.

There doesn’t seem to be any NDA so we can post screenshots, full info, stream gameplay, etc, and we’re all furiously-downloading and installing the RoS demo right this moment. Expect Diablo IncGamers to be filled now with heaps of reports from all of us on our new experiences and feel free to let us know what you’re eager to hear more on.

Our Friends and Family Beta is just the first step of public testing, and by the end of the year we will be moving into Closed Beta. Since our Reaper of Souls Closed Beta test will also feature all content in the expansion (again, excluding the final boss fight), invitations will be extremely limited. However, we’ll continue handpicking community members to invite to the Closed Beta and bringing in additional players through opt-ins to ensure that all of our features like the Crusader, Mystic, and Adventure Mode get the testing they deserve.

If you’re interested in participating in the Reaper of Souls Closed Beta, please make sure you’ve opted-in for beta testing. You can do this by adjusting your Beta Profile Settings under the Account Management section of your Battle.net Account. Please note that opting in to the Reaper of Souls Closed Beta will not guarantee you access, but it will at least give you a chance at joining our beta test.

In tandem with all this good news is wait for it….more good news. The PTR will be coming soon for loot 2.0 and as we know it the last patch before the xpac!

Around the same time we begin our Reaper of Souls Closed Beta, we will also be launching our Public Test Region (PTR) for Patch 2.0.1! This patch will feature updates including Paragon 2.0, Loot 2.0, our new difficulty system, the addition of Clans and Communities, as well as balancing and tuning for all five Diablo III classes.
Anyone with the Battle.net Desktop App and Diablo III license will be able to participate in PTR testing.

We’ll have more information on how to access the Public Test Region when it launches.
We’re incredibly excited about kicking off our public tests for Reaper of Souls, and look forward to collecting your feedback. The End of Days is coming!

Okay take a breath, take it all in. What are your thoughts on this huge news? Bummed you didn’t get in yet? Excited for the open beta? Sound off in the comments!

Update: Install pictures if you want to live vicariously.

Tagged As: | Categories: Adventure Mode, Diablo 3, Diablo 3 Beta, Game Features, News, Reaper of Souls beta test

Comments

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  1. Great news! The Beta started just about the same time as for Diablo 3 vanilla. We just got our beta keys. To bad the servers are down for maintenance 🙁

  2. I’m really surprised they didn’t make any announcements or predictions at Blizzcon, if they were this close to going F&F Beta?

  3. “There doesn’t seem to be any NDA so we can post screenshots, full info, stream gameplay, etc,”

    I thought everything was soul-bound, so you couldn’t share it…

  4. Looking forward to some massive analysis and updates as only Flux can do.

  5. Kripp didn’t get an invite, it’ll be interesting to see if Moldran or other D3 streamers got one

  6. Good news, wished I could exchange my Heartstone beta for this 😛 . Still at least we have an idea of the timetable Blizzard is working on and what to expect in the coming weeks. Keep the Blizzcon momentum going!

  8. wishing i had a hs beta key.sucks they selling them on ebay if not more would have got it….also recieved and downloading ros as i type 😉 cant wait!!!!!!! oh yeah if anyone has extra hs key please hit me up i need it so bad ty 😉

  9. Tons of really great streams on twitch already! That hammertime looks absolutely fantastic, especially when that level 57 rune will come into play…. love it! =)

    I am more confident than ever with my prediction now.. game will beout by April-May 2014. Guess sometimes it DOES pay off to be an optimist, Flux 😉

  10. (to litl to late bliz huehuehue)

    Man, this is exciting news. The 2.0.1 news is probably the most exciting for me, since I’m not banking on getting invited to the beta (as my currently ignored applications for betas in TES Online, Hearthstone, WildStar and Everquest Next all support).

  11. WOOOOOOOOOOOHOOOOOOOOOO I GOT IN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
    :)))))))))))))))))))))))))

  12. First: this is awesome, great to hear and can’t wait!

    Second: does this mean loot 2.0 for items up to level 63 will be released with the AH still active? And does that mean you could now stock up on cheap awesome items for twinking and for hardcore rerolls before expansion release? Or will they make new legendaries BoA as soon as the patch hits?

    • Seems odd that Loot 2.0 items could trade on the AH if it goes live before it shuts down. So maybe that date is really their release date? Guess it really depends on how well the beta goes; D3 went very poorly.

      They could just say “all items from the new patch are not tradable on the AH”.

      • maybe after you install RoS which will have patch 2.0, it will have the AH disabled?

        And AH will be disabled for D3 vanilla players in march?

  13. What worries me a bit is not mention of Nephalem Rifts in 2.0 patch.

  14. I remember shortly after Gamescom there was a poll on this side when to expect the beta. I predicted the beta would start shortly after Blizzcon. I was right dammit .. Where is my KEY? Gimmie gimmie

    ps: glad i was right ..the release cannot be far away now …

  15. O M G, hype overload.

    Then reduced again, because this might very well mean they are feature complete, and all the other datamined features wont be happening 🙂

  16. UGH the update looks so good. Been watching streams all day!

  18. I’m sure the beta will last for a year! They still need to make a decent itemization system after all…
    I’m so going to win this.

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