New Diablo III players could wait up to 72 hours before playing full edition

Blizzard has said new Diablo III players who purchase the game digitally will be restricted to the Act I of the RPG for the first 72 hours at the most.

The review period, as Blizzard is calling it, has been put in place to "step to combat fraud and other malicious activities that can weaken everyone's play experience." The new policy was implemented with patch 1.0.3.

In a statement provided to Shack, Blizzard said the new restrictions "deter credit card fraud, which in turn helps reduce gold spam and other harmful activities that can have a negative impact on the game experience for everyone".

The publisher expects most payments to clear, lifting the restrictions, with a day. Although the original post said players could only complete the game as far as the Skeleton King boss before payments cleared, Blizzard later corrected this information; while payments are being processed, players are free to complete until the end of Act I with a level cap of 13.

Unfortunately, a glitch has meant some of those who grabbed the digital version are stuck at that point for longer than necessary; Blizzard said a fix is in the works.

Here are the restrictions in details:

• No public game access for unverified digital purchasers
• No auction house access (real-money or gold) for unverified digital purchasers
• Unverified digital purchasers cannot trade items or drop items for other players to receive
• Unverified digital purchasers are not able to chat in any public or game channels
• Unverified digital purchasers cannot attach a custom message to friend requests, but they can send/accept friend requests, and play with their friends
• Global Play is not available for unverified digital purchasers

Original article by Stephany Nunneley, updates from additional staff.