To say that the launch of Diablo 3, one of 2012's most anticipated games, didn't go quite as Blizzard planned would be the understatement of the year. Despite Blizzard's awareness that their games tend to sell like gangbusters, and earlier lessons learned from the World of Warcraft launch, Diablo 3 suffered one of the more disappointing launches in a long time.

Gamers were experiencing problems logging into the game's servers — a problem only created because the game requires an always-on connection — starting from moment one. Since then Blizzard has worked out some, not all, of the kinks from the Diablo 3 back-end, but they are still reeling.

As such they have issued a statement, or rather an apology, regarding the launch's failures, and the "humbling" enthusiasm that has overwhelmed their game's servers. It's all standard procedure for Blizzard, and should do well enough to placate some of the fans that have been struggling to log in.

Blizzard also revealed that they plan to hold off on the unveiling of their much maligned auction house as a result of the Diablo 3 launch problems. Though the service — where players can sell in-game items for real world currency — isn't directly impacted by the current slate of Diablo 3 problems, it's probably best they work everything out before real money gets involved.

Just the announcement of the auction house stirred up quite a bit of controversy, including getting the game almost banned from South Korea, so it's probably best that the poor launch doesn't get folded into the issue.

Diablo Players:

We'd like to extend a very sincere thank you to everyone who joined the global Diablo III launch celebrations this week, as well as to everyone who was ready to jump into Sanctuary the moment the game went live.

To that end, we'd also like to say that we've been humbled by your enthusiasm – and we sincerely regret that your crusade to bring down the Lord of Terror was thwarted not by mobs of demons, but by mortal infrastructure. As many of you are aware, technical issues occurring within hours after the game's launch led to players experiencing error messages and difficulty logging in. These issues cropped up again last night for the Americas and Europe servers. Despite very aggressive projections, our preparations for the launch of the game did not go far enough.

We've been monitoring the game 24/7 and have applied several optimizations to help our systems better weather the global rush. As of late last night, specifically 11:50 PM PDT on May 15, all systems have been online and running relatively smoothly. We're continuing to monitor performance globally and will be taking further measures as needed to ensure a positive experience for everyone. This includes some maintenance to implement additional improvements for each region.

In order to make sure everything is continuing to run as it should, we've decided to move out our target launch for the real-money auction house beyond our original estimated date of May 22. We'll post further updates on that in the near future.

Aside from the tremendous number of players simultaneously logging in to the game, one of the launch-day service issues was linked to the achievement system. Some players began to notice early on that achievements were either not being earned properly, or not being saved between multiple logins. We're investigating this issue and will provide a specific update as soon as possible.

We greatly appreciate everyone's support, and we want to sincerely apologize for the difficulties many of you encountered on day one. Please visit the Battle.net Support site or Support forums for the latest service-related updates or for help in troubleshooting any technical issues you may be having downloading, installing, or while playing the game.

Thank you again for your patience while we reinforce the gates of Sanctuary and further strengthen it for your onslaught.

Respectfully,

Blizzard Entertainment

While an apology doesn't outright forgive Blizzard's lack of due diligence when it came to accounting for their game's fan base it does acknowledge they are making strides to fix the problems. It will most likely be some time before everything runs as smoothly as it should, and players are able to log in without hassle, but at least we know somebody's working around the clock to make that happen.

Are you still experiencing problems logging in to Diablo 3, or have the issues resolved themselves for you? Have you been waiting for the launch of the auction house?

Diablo 3 is out now for the PC and Mac.

Source: Kotaku