I think your metric is pretty terrible and very poorly thought out if trying to measure interest in the game. People can dust off an old set of gear, run NS once, make the top 1000 and never play in that era again. Since you have many seasons of Paragons accumulated, you probably should run higher GRs in Nonseason than Season. That really doesn't show much about how interested they are in actually playing the game.
In fact, even this late in the season the number of public T13 rift games is 50% higher in Season than nonseason on both EU and NA (no idea about Asia). When you check that metric at the beginning of seasons its often 300% or more.
Season servers take a lot more load than nonseason load, because it attracts more interest from more people.
I'm convinced we play 2 different games. You'd be the first person I ever met who gave a shit about eras in any way, shape or form. Eras and nonseason play in general are pretty much completely irrelevant to everyone I know who plays D3. There is a reason that nonseason play is a complete ghost-town, and it is the lack of frequent DB wipes that seasons bring. Honestly, I could see them going to 6 seasons a year, because why not? The game is so devoid of real content that 2 months is more than enough to do it all. In fact people are often bored with the game after a week or two, so there is nothing wrong with monthly seasons.
ARPG games are about getting stuff. They aren't about having stuff. Seasonal play ends up with everybody having everything and not needing anything and not having any desire to play.
People need to stop saying, "there is a reason you see patches for D2 and SC etc...." because those patches are 1-2 codes changed that created server errors based on current tech. An intern can fix that in 3-4 hours, it is inconsequential.
I agree they will spend small resources to keep people happy, seasons do not make people happy, not at all!
Interns can start new season if there are no code changes, also. It's a pretty trivial process.
I'm pretty sure the start of seasons is the only time you see a lot of people playing D3. You rarely ever see anyone playing nonseason. Start of seasons is the best thing this game has going for it currently.
Whether Blizzard does D4 or lets Diablo lie fallow for a few years while working on D4 or whether they never do another Diablo IP, they'll keep the servers up, and they'll keep changing seasons.
Why? Because Blizzard wisely values customer loyalty. There is a reason that you still see patches to D2 and SC and WC years after they were released.
They will also work on new content, whether or not it is Diablo content, but they will expend a small, reasonable, amount of resources keeping their old customers happy.
Soft resets really don't take much resources though. You can pretty much write a script to do it if there are no PTR changes. Then you just run the script every time you want to change seasons.
This notion that doing that "spends resources when the game is dying off" just misunderstands how databases work. It takes almost no resources to change seasons. It takes considerable resources to upgrade the code and graphical assets.
You could leave a script running that rolled seasons every few months for eternity without additional resources after the script was written and tested, a process much easier than writing new shiny changes and addons to the existing game.
Here's my crazy ass, probably wrong, conspiracy theory on why the season is restarting early.
I think there may be an internal contest or bonus program at Blizzard based on time played in a game in the month before Blizzcon, so the D3 leadership correctly realized the best way to pump up playtime was to release a brand new season, even if there was no new content. Starts of season are very popular, and then it goes back to being dead after a couple weeks.
My proof for this? None. However, I've noticed this week that while playing Heroes of the Storm, I've gotten the "Play 8 games" daily 5 days out of the last 7. That seems pretty statistically unlikely, unless the odds of getting that went way up for some reason, like they were trying to get people playing Heroes more hours per day.
Anyway, I figure it was time for another crazy conspiracy theory, much like Rhykker's d4 theory.
I guess if the game is going into maintenance and there is going to be no new content, you may as well do 2 month seasons instead of 3 month seasons. Paragon grinding for 2 months sounds way better than paragon grinding for 3 months. Lets face it, anyone who isn't paragon grinding is probably doing 2 week or less seasons anyway.
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Lol. The most likely reason for no PTR is nothing to test because there are no changes that are worth testing.
I think your metric is pretty terrible and very poorly thought out if trying to measure interest in the game. People can dust off an old set of gear, run NS once, make the top 1000 and never play in that era again. Since you have many seasons of Paragons accumulated, you probably should run higher GRs in Nonseason than Season. That really doesn't show much about how interested they are in actually playing the game.
In fact, even this late in the season the number of public T13 rift games is 50% higher in Season than nonseason on both EU and NA (no idea about Asia). When you check that metric at the beginning of seasons its often 300% or more.
Season servers take a lot more load than nonseason load, because it attracts more interest from more people.
I'm convinced we play 2 different games. You'd be the first person I ever met who gave a shit about eras in any way, shape or form. Eras and nonseason play in general are pretty much completely irrelevant to everyone I know who plays D3. There is a reason that nonseason play is a complete ghost-town, and it is the lack of frequent DB wipes that seasons bring. Honestly, I could see them going to 6 seasons a year, because why not? The game is so devoid of real content that 2 months is more than enough to do it all. In fact people are often bored with the game after a week or two, so there is nothing wrong with monthly seasons.
ARPG games are about getting stuff. They aren't about having stuff. Seasonal play ends up with everybody having everything and not needing anything and not having any desire to play.
Interns can start new season if there are no code changes, also. It's a pretty trivial process.
I'm pretty sure the start of seasons is the only time you see a lot of people playing D3. You rarely ever see anyone playing nonseason. Start of seasons is the best thing this game has going for it currently.
Lol
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ke5Mr5eCF2U
Whether Blizzard does D4 or lets Diablo lie fallow for a few years while working on D4 or whether they never do another Diablo IP, they'll keep the servers up, and they'll keep changing seasons.
Why? Because Blizzard wisely values customer loyalty. There is a reason that you still see patches to D2 and SC and WC years after they were released.
They will also work on new content, whether or not it is Diablo content, but they will expend a small, reasonable, amount of resources keeping their old customers happy.
Soft resets really don't take much resources though. You can pretty much write a script to do it if there are no PTR changes. Then you just run the script every time you want to change seasons.
This notion that doing that "spends resources when the game is dying off" just misunderstands how databases work. It takes almost no resources to change seasons. It takes considerable resources to upgrade the code and graphical assets.
You could leave a script running that rolled seasons every few months for eternity without additional resources after the script was written and tested, a process much easier than writing new shiny changes and addons to the existing game.
Here's my crazy ass, probably wrong, conspiracy theory on why the season is restarting early.
I think there may be an internal contest or bonus program at Blizzard based on time played in a game in the month before Blizzcon, so the D3 leadership correctly realized the best way to pump up playtime was to release a brand new season, even if there was no new content. Starts of season are very popular, and then it goes back to being dead after a couple weeks.
My proof for this? None. However, I've noticed this week that while playing Heroes of the Storm, I've gotten the "Play 8 games" daily 5 days out of the last 7. That seems pretty statistically unlikely, unless the odds of getting that went way up for some reason, like they were trying to get people playing Heroes more hours per day.
Anyway, I figure it was time for another crazy conspiracy theory, much like Rhykker's d4 theory.
I imagine the sun rising is an indicator to some folks that something big is coming at Blizzcon.
I guess if the game is going into maintenance and there is going to be no new content, you may as well do 2 month seasons instead of 3 month seasons. Paragon grinding for 2 months sounds way better than paragon grinding for 3 months. Lets face it, anyone who isn't paragon grinding is probably doing 2 week or less seasons anyway.