Launch days for games can be a tricky minefield to maneuver through, what with publishers anxious to meet a deadline and ship a product to consumers, sometimes even knowing there will be gameplay issues: Skyrim anyone? While no one at this point can accuse Blizzard of out-and-out negligence, it would be easy to say (even beforehand) that there would be issues with the launch of Diablo 3, such as the issue of giving a shield to a follower.
Except, no one was prepared for this.
Intermittent server issues played all three regions from the midnight launch time throughout the majority of the day on May 15, though most players still were able to play Diablo 3 relatively unhindered. Many of the issues during the day on the Blizzard support forums seemed to deal primarily with downloading and installing the game from the Blizzard game client only (instead of the DVD).
However, approximately 1:30pm EDT, all American servers went down for maintenance, which, according to Blizzard’s Customer Service twitter feed, consisted of “testing and implementing multiple fixes for the current service issues.” Servers were brought back online two hours later only to go back down for more “unscheduled maintenance” at 5:15pm EDT, an event that went surprisingly unannounced on the Twitter feed (I was personally kicked out of my game). The game was brought back online for a very short time, only to be taken down again for “emergency maintenance.”
So what, right? After all, this only affects online multiplayer and online co-op, right? Sorry, what may be the biggest issue fans have expressed outrage over is that the single-player campaign also requires a constant connection to the Internet. Any hiccup in the connection, be it Blizzard’s issue, the player’s ISP, or the dog running behind the computer and ripping out the Ethernet wire, the game will be unavailable.
Far be it from any of us to criticize publishers from protecting their IPs from piracy and theft, but if the events of today weren’t proof enough, a constant Internet connection that is a requirement to play a single-player campaign that has always been considered “offline” is completely asinine. Blizzard VP Robert Bridenbecker was stunned that players felt this way when this decision was first announced, and it’s safe to say this feeling from the players hasn’t subsided. If a consumer purchases a game, they should not be punished by having no outlet to play the game. Server issues should only affect online-only games, such as MMOs like World of Warcraft and Star Wars: The Old Republic.
Players expect downtime to halt their gaming experience with online games. We should not have to expect the same issues to prevent us from playing single player games which should have an offline mode. Blizzard, you have dropped the ball here. Players should be given an offline mode to play the Diablo 3 single-player campaign.
The servers went back online late last night after “emergency server maintenance” but there are still a few lingering issues, including achievements not displaying. On the forums, Vasadan, from Blizzard quality assurance, said they’re simply delayed because of the server load and reiterated that they’re working on it.
“As you can probably imagine, our servers are currently really busy handling all the new players coming into the game… The achievements server in particular is being hammered, which may be why your achievements are not showing up. It is not that they are deleted, but that there is a (very long) delay in retrieving that data.”
“We are working on it.”
On the Diablo III Facebook page, Blizzard provided an update after the maintenance, letting fans know that things should be working and that they’ll be watching closely.
“We will be continuing to monitor the servers for any additional issues. If you are experiencing errors, please visit the Technical Support Forum or the Bug Report Forum for additional information.”
Diablo 3 launched (sort of) May 15, 2012 for the PC and Mac.
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Offline mode would be good. Also they need to compensate everyone affected with a good item or some extra sorage spots in our stashes. Seriously this whole thing got unacceptable after the 4th downtime.
I agree, I mean I’m not going to run around screaming or anything but they should Have planned better for the server issues which your right they should do “something” for everyone to make up for it! And as for offline mode I would think its an obvious thing to include but who am I?
Just gave me more time to have fun with Max Payne last night. They’ll sort it out eventually. I have other games to keep me occupied until then. No need to throw a fit.
For me, I think it’s good that fans are unacceptable of the anti-consumer, always-online DRM.
I’m a longtime WoW player so my ability to draw the distinction has really waned. I know it drives a lot of people nuts but I’m so used to it that I just can’t bring myself personally to get mad about it.
I totally agree! Why have single player with a continual internet connection?! I mostly play single player games such as Skyrim and don’t necessarily need to be connected 24/7! After the connection loss last night, I could play Diablo II just fine!
The game didn’t launch yesterday. Not only did the game not actually launch at midnight, (servers didn’t go up till 12:00am PDT even though CMT and EST are 2 and 3 hours ahead respectively) the servers were immediately impossible to log into. We were obviously frustrated, and when we tried to go look up our infamous Error Code 37, the Diablo website was down for unexpected maintenance… So we had to go to the EU Diablo site just to find out that our error code wasn’t anything fixable. My roommate managed to log in earlier in the morning right before the servers were canned for emergency maintenance, thus fueling our frustration even more.
I don’t think I have ever seen a forum explode in as much fan rage as there was involved in down-time yesterday. And they were almost ALL saying the same thing. “Let me play my SINGLE player game you -expletives-”. Every 30 seconds or so I would refresh the page to see if there was a Blizzard update and find out that there were 4-5 more pages of comments at the end of the thread. And this was the case on almost a dozen threads. Whether those are all individuals commenting or a group of people chatting in downtime, that is insane traffic.
Compound all of this onto the fact that Diablo 3 brings up errors with AMD Catalyst 12.4 and you get a recipe for, “This game has really been 12 years in the making? They actually had stress test events for this game? Really? Are you sure there was a beta?” and many other questions.
A forum poster put it best I think, and it makes me laugh despite all of this hell people have to go through to get to Hell.
“I never thought I’d have an easier time logging into the Beta for Diablo 3 than I would the actual game.”
This is just ridiculous. Do you at Blizzard even understand the word “OFFline”?
First I pay abot 85$ for a non-original, localized language version (german, because original isnt currently available here), and then I cant play because your servers are down for maintenance? What do I need your servers for?? I want to play old-school-single-player-leave-me-alone-with-your-social-media-and-web2.0-c**p!!
Lucky I didn’t manage to buy one last week… Or else I’ll be jumping like you guys…
all this down time sucks but i like that its online only as im sure u would all agree if you realy thought about it. 1. if your ps3 crashes, looses power, corupt data ocurs while ofline then all your progress would be gone and will be harder for hackers to ruin the game as all activity is monitored online.
Also i recon all items found in this game should be serial numbered if not already so if acounts do get hacked and someone try’s to sell stolen gear or items then they will be cought strait away.
Greetings! Very helpful advice within this post! It’s the little changes that will make the largest changes. Thanks for sharing!