News - Blizzard apologises for imperfect Diablo III launch

[HEXUS]

Warcraft developer responds to customer complaints and puts auction house on hold.

Read more.

[Grey M@a]

So they did projections on copies that would be sold and server load on launch? Let me guess, cost saving is the key here, or pure skimping on infrastructure! As if Diablo 3 was going to sell sub par, of course it was going to be one of the biggest titles of the year and people have had this thing on pre-order for years.

Just another half baked excuse for them trying to cut costs and offer a system on a shoe string instead of putting the money into it in the first place.

[Sacred]

I've only experienced minor problems with the EU servers I'm pretty sure its mainly a US issue.
I was even able to purchase a copy at my local GAMES launch night, get home install and start playing instantly no error codes, no servers down messages etc.
As far as the game goes its great really addictive and brings back the feelings of starting Diablo II all over again!
Now if only I can get my hands on a collectors edition without breaking the bank!

[Scribe]

I've only experienced minor problems with the EU servers I'm pretty sure its mainly a US issue.
I was even able to purchase a copy at my local GAMES launch night, get home install and start playing instantly no error codes, no servers down messages etc.
As far as the game goes its great really addictive and brings back the feelings of starting Diablo II all over again!
Now if only I can get my hands on a collectors edition without breaking the bank!

Amazon didn't send out copies for the 11pm release, which made us have to buy a digital download which is at the ridiculous price of £45 for something that doesn't even have a physical component and is sold directly by Blizzard. When attempting to play the game, it took half the night to get on, making us realise we'd completely wasted the £15 extra and then, on-top of regular lag and occasional D/C even in single player, the servers for the EU were down for around 6 hours yesterday, peak gaming time.

Factor in that Blizzard has received billions of pounds from WoW users over the years, where it should have gained experience with regards to server load, that it had a chance to BETA test Diablo III, that the development took longer than expected, that the auction house and PvP aren't even ready and that record pre-order counts were a good indication and financial incentive to invest in more servers, I'm massively disappointed and, again, on top of this, I expected a little more from the game itself.

[MSIC]

Dear Blizzard,

Talk to the Error 37, 'cause this face ain't listening.

[TheBuZZard]

Amazon didn't send out copies for the 11pm release, which made us have to buy a digital download which is at the ridiculous price of £45 for something that doesn't even have a physical component and is sold directly by Blizzard. When attempting to play the game, it took half the night to get on, making us realise we'd completely wasted the £15 extra and then, on-top of regular lag and occasional D/C even in single player, the servers for the EU were down for around 6 hours yesterday, peak gaming time.

My CE copy arrived from Amazon on the 10th.
Anyone thats played the last few WoW expansions at launch will know that the servers never cope with demand, Im not saying they shouldnt do better but I can understand the business reasons for not paying for server capacity that will meet launch night needs then sit unused 99% of the time. Week or 2 after launch all the problems get forgotten.

[Terbinator]

My CE copy arrived from Amazon on the 10th.
Anyone thats played the last few WoW expansions at launch will know that the servers never cope with demand, Im not saying they shouldnt do better but I can understand the business reasons for not paying for server capacity that will meet launch night needs then sit unused 99% of the time. Week or 2 after launch all the problems get forgotten.

I think the annoyance is that it's a game that could be played without online before they went into full retard mode and whacked an 'always on' DRM in the game.

[kalniel]

This seems to be the release they put out last week. Since then there have been more problems at the weekend, notably the EU server was unexpectedly down for a few hours on Sunday.

[dfour]

well if they hadnt got this stupid idea of making the single player online they might have had a chance of pulling it off. All they had to do was make it so a single player character cant be used online and all the cheating they are trying to stop would be cured. Most people will create multiple characters anyway so what would have been the problem??

[Hicks12]

yup, i wouldnt be annoyed if singleplayer was seperate, i simply wanted to play D3 while my mates werent able to and i had free time but the servers were down.

If it was an MMORPG then i wouldnt be annoyed either as it happens and i know it HAS to be online, but blizzard has just been silly with this launch.

[Lord Midas]

I must be in the rare gamer bracket, as I've not had a single problem with playing this game. Everytime I want to play I simply log in and away I go. I have no complaints whatsoever. I've not tried to play muliplayer, only singleplayer, either way the game needs to be online and it's fine for me

If I could ask one thing of Blizzard (which I think they'll be far to busy fixing all the other issues) is that I would like to use the mouse wheel to zoom in and out, rather than have 2 zoom levels (far way or close).

Oh, and I've equiped the Wizard with magical swords and other weapons, but cannot use them. Am I doing something wrong?

[Terbinator]

Oh, and I've equiped the Wizard with magical swords and other weapons, but cannot use them. Am I doing something wrong?

In terms of animation, he doesn't *use* them but the effects are still in play.

[Hicks12]

if you run out of arcane power then he will use the weapons standard attack if you try to right click again, so basically with a wand it will send out a very tiny power attack and with a bow he will shoot arrows etc.

[Lord Midas]

Right, so whatever I have equiped gets used when I run out of arcane power. Cheers lads.

[taowu]

I thought initially that the launch would be fine. I got a digital copy, downloaded the installer a few days before. Installed it Monday evening, then was playing by 11.20 and everything was fine other than spending 10mins trying to login. (EU servers btw)

Compared to the beta, the game was running smoother, latency was greatly improved (in the beta my average ping over the 3 months of playing it was 160-190 on my 60Mb BB) being around 30odd and I wasn't disconnected for the 6 hours I played it.

Roll on Tuesday and Wednesday night, though I didn't have time to play much, Tuesday I couldn't login and gave up. Wednesday I managed to login pretty much straight away to then back disconnected an hour later. Since then it was ok until yesterday when the servers were down for 6 hours, even when they wasn't friends were telling me they was being disconnected randomly.

So I think with the experience Blizzard has with online games(wow), this launch should have been much smoother.

[Noxvayl]

There is no excuse for releasing the single player (and co-op) part of a game requiring an internet connection, this is why I refuse to give them my money.