[Update]: After a small delay, Diablo 2: Resurrected's Patch 2.4 has now been unleashed.

In an effort to increase the amount of endgame viable builds, as well as to make messing around with new characters a more enjoyable time, the Diablo 2 Resurrected team is currently getting ready to release the chunky Patch 2.4. Unfortunately, instead of the update launching later this month as previously announced, Patch 2.4 has now been delayed until April 14th.

"So, what happened here? As you may recall, we have been working through extensive updates on the backend and database services for the game," explains the developer update. "Last week, we had some extended downtime for D2R which was to implement the final batch of changes from our PTR to our production environments. During this update, we unfortunately ran into quite a few showstoppers that did not appear on PTR but were present in production environments."

"Since last week’s maintenance, the team has been able to identify and address all these issues—we will be doing another maintenance for D2R to implement these changes to production on March 29. These updates will allow for us to have an improved experience during high load times where we would otherwise need to rely on longer queue times and higher rate limiting on game sessions during very high traffic situations."

In order to ensure nothing goes wrong, the start of the competitive ladder has also been pushed back to April 28th. This way, if any sort of problems arise, they won't ruin the integrity of the very first and probably most important ladder season.

While it does suck having to wait a few more weeks to play a serious version of the previously meme-tier throwing barbarian build, it's quite hard to complain when the end result is not only going to be a more polished update, but less server queues as well. So with a bit of luck Season 1 will manage to avoid the whole 'endless queueing' mess that happened during the initial launch of Diablo 2 Resurrected and we'll all be able to play without a hitch!

Once Patch 2.4 arrives I'll make sure to let you know what's happening. Until then, you can read a little bit about the technical details behind the delay over at the Blizzard website.