It’s safe to say Diablo IV’s early access weekend hasn’t gone as smoothly as Blizzard likely hoped it would. Shortly after the beta went live on Friday, many players found themselves in lengthy login queues. In my case, I had to wait nearly two hours before I got a chance to play the game, only to be quickly disconnected after about 15 minutes.
Blizzard addressed the issue after players took to social media and the official Diablo IV forums to complain. “The team is working through some issues behind the scenes that have been affecting players and causing them to be disconnected from the servers,” Blizzard said in its initial post on the subject. “This is done so we can ensure stability amongst players who get into the game after the queue process.”
If you’re waiting to play, Blizzard asks that you stay in the login queue so as not to reset your timer. The studio said it would have a more accurate countdown in place by the start of next weekend’s open beta when anyone who wants to try Diablo IV before its June 6th release date can do so. “We are actively working on these issues for this weekend,” Blizzard said. “Once these are resolved, we will be able to increase the influx of players and queue times will be significantly reduced.”
Later in the day, the studio shared an update on the situation, noting it was also working to resolve a handful of other issues that players had filed reports about, including a bug preventing some from joining parties. As of Saturday afternoon, the queue to play Diablo IV was much shorter. I got to the character selection screen in under a minute. “Many players have successfully logged in to the game, but we are aware that some have experienced longer than expected wait times,” Blizzard said. ”As we continue to roll out improvements to our server stability, we expect our players to see continued improvements to the queue time.”
Hiccups are expected during a beta, particularly when a studio stress tests a live-service game like Diablo IV. The last thing Blizzard wants is a repeat of Diablo III’s launch when interest in the game overloaded Battle.net’s login servers, preventing many from playing the game at all.
Source: www.engadget.com