My Diablo 3 Launch Woes

Despite Blizzards best efforts to ensure a completely smooth launch for Diablo 3 it just didn’t go their way. They did they best they could issuing a long beta period for a few lucky gamers and also the open beta weekend stress test. Even with all of that combined effort they could not manage the onslaught of anxious Diablo fans waiting to log in at 3:01 AM EST.

Almost immediately there were connection issues and delays. I was unable to log on at all. I went ahead and went to bed and decided to wait until morning. As I was leaving my house around 7:30 AM for work I tried to log on just to see if it was up…AT LAST IT WAS! I let out a sigh of relief as I knew I would be able to play as soon as I got home from work…FALSE.

I got back to the house around quarter to 6 yesterday evening, and battle.net was down AGAIN! As it turns out after reading through several blizzard forums that this had been going on since about 2 pm. They had to take the servers down for emergency maintenance. When attempting to login you would receive Error 3003 or Error 37 for all intent and purposes their meanings do not really matter. All that matters is you cannot play.

Around 6:45 I tried to log back in. AT LAST IT WORKS! I can now begin my journey through the realms of Sanctuary! So I hurriedly created my new character. I chose the Wizard class and named him Destructo. Now let the questing begin. I went ahead and played until about 9:30 PM and decided it was time to get off for awhile. Around 11:30 I decided to get back on and continue my way through the world of Sanctuary. DENIED! It seems in my two hour absence Blizzard once again had to take all the servers offline for maintenance. They weren’t restored until after 2 AM and I was fast asleep.

I logged on around 9 AM this morning and all seemed to be well again. I was able to quickly log in and start a game with no issues at all. Hopefully Blizzard worked out all the kinks yesterday and we now can all enjoy Diablo 3. The real test will come tonight when people return home from school and work and start logging in en mass. 

All these issues did not come without a price for Blizzard. I learned most of what was going on through the forums. The community was quite angry, some to the point of absurdity. It was suggested to boycott the game and spread the word. Many went on to MetaCritic and slammed the game out of pure anger without having even clicked the mouse yet in Sanctuary. This is unfortunate; troubles like these should almost be expected with such a massive launch. People tend to have unrealistic expectations, especially hardcore online gamers.

Though there were many issues at launch it shouldn’t deter people from purchasing the game. Blizzard always gets things right in the end and typically does so in a reasonable amount of time. As far as I can tell the game is excellent and I look forward to many more hours spent enjoying Diablo 3.