Playing Diablo 4 this weekend? Expect "unprecedented traffic and queues"
Can't say I'm all that surprised.
If you’re planning on jumping into Diablo 4’s open beta weekend today, Blizzard has detailed exactly what players should expect, and it’s “unprecedented queue times and traffic”. It’s not great for those eager to jump into the game, that’s for sure, but I can’t say that I expected any less from Blizzard.
In a post to the Blizzard forums, community manager PezRadar first says thank you to those who have participated in the Early Access beta. “They allow us to test things at a scale that we cannot test on our own, like server capacity, class balance, usability, accessibility, etc.”
He then continues by saying Blizzard intends to learn a lot more during this open beta weekend, and establishes expectations for players. The first is queue times.
“When we opent he gates again this Friday to absolutely everyone, we are expecting a lot of people. There will be lengthy queue times, particularly on Friday when we first launch and during peak regional windows. This past weekend helped us to forecast the capacity this weekend, and we will be using that capacity to intentionally stress our systems in preparation for launch.”
PezRadar continues, “in summary, while we know it can be frustrating, we need queues to properly stress test our services, and we are designing to ensure we have them some of the time.”
In addition to this, there may be times when Diablo 4’s beta is taken offline for maintenance. “As we monitor the population or encounter in-game issues to address, there may be times when we will take the game offline temporarily to deploy infrastructure adjustments or fixes.”
Last, but not least, PezRadar talks of bugs and feedback, and how important it is to hear from players. If you experience any issues with your game whatsoever this weekend — that is, when you manage to load in — the Blizzard team is monitoring its forums, which have dedicated sections for bug reporting and technical support.
There you have it, and it isn’t entirely surprising, although Blizzard did say connection woes will not be present during the games release... If you manage to wait out the queues and jump into Diablo 4’s open beta this weekend, do let us know what you think of it so far!