Diablo 3’s Public Test Realm Patch 2.1.0 has released, bringing with it a batch of changes
The patch brings four major additions to it:
Seasons are optional, but are a great way to break up gameplay. Whether your character is Normal or Hardcore, you can choose to play a Season, starting with zero gold, resources, and Paragon experience from scratch. When the Season ends, any of this things that you do earn can be given over to your non-Season characters. Season also offer unique rewards, as well as a new set of achievements called Conquests.
Greater Rifts are a unique kind of timed Nephalem Rift, with different levels that offer progressively harder difficulty. To progress, you need to finish in a certain time, but if you finish way early, you could skip some levels. Greater Rift gameplay ends when the timer does end without you finishing a level, and subsequently, your best times go up on a leaderboard.
Speaking of Leaderboards, they are a new addition to the game as well. The boards will cover a variety of data, including Seasonal achievement points, Seasonal completion ranking, and as we already know, Greater Rifts clear times. These boards will be about more than numbers, as the data will give you enough data to compare yourself with players in your friends list, clan roster, and in your region.
Finally, Cesspools, which were intended to be added in the Reaper of Souls expansion, are finally in. This gives players a chance to enter new levels within a Nephalem Rift or Greater Rift.
Of course, there are a lot of changes added in as well. You can get all the detail on that here.