Most of us remember the horror of Diablo 3 – and we don’t mean the game’s themes or blood, or demons. The franchise’s third installment had a legendarily bad launch. Players were unable to log in for hours, with the dreaded Error 37 even getting its own meme. That was all mostly due to Blizzard not expecting the sheer amount of players that arrived, but it seems things are different with Diablo 4.
Blizzard Really Confident for Launch
In an interview with Eurogamer right after the recent Server Slam beta, Art Director John Mueller and Associate Game Director Joe Piepiora talked about the stability of the game on launch. Here’s the headline, from Mueller, talking about the three betas:
“Each one, it’s a tonne of work to put them on,” Mueller said. “It’s not a trivial thing for us to do. But we see the value as being worth it. And again, it’s not a marketing thing. It’s really about getting that information so we know day one is going to be as good as we can possibly make it, and that we just feel confident going in.
So, currently right now we feel really confident.“
Piepiora also talked about the success and value of the Server Slam specifically:
“And we learned a tonne. Even this last one where it was really smooth – people didn’t have long queues leading into getting into the experience – we still found things happening in the back end that if left unresolved, would have resulted in some issues during the launch experience. We caught those only because we did this extra weekend.”
We have seen the Server Slam work really well already, with basically no long queues. That was a huge improvement over the initials two betas, so if launch will be even better than that, Blizzard’s confidence isn’t unwarranted.
Hopefully that confidence translates into a smooth launch, as there will be many players itching to get in! We won’t have to wait long to find out, as the game’s Early Access releases tomorrow!
