Diablo 4 Dev Reminds Players What A Beta Is In Comments Over Server Issues

Diablo 4 held its early access beta last weekend, and things didn’t go so great for a lot of eager Diablo fans. Long login queues and unstable servers throwing random disconnects at players were the chief complaints, but there were also complaints of a memory leak on PC and some players found their saved characters had disappeared. The server problems got so bad that Blizzard had to limit the number of players in order to bring some stability, resulting in even longer login queues.

For an actual release, these issues would have been an unmitigated disaster. But according to Diablo general manager Rod Fergusson, this was exactly what Blizzard was expecting.

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"The word beta nowadays has kind of been misconstrued, where people start calling things beta that’s [actually] a marketing beta, and it’s just another term for a demo," Fergusson explained to NME. "That’s not our case at all. Our beta is actually us testing our Technology – especially on the server side. We had a little bit of a rocky start on Friday."

"We put out six hotfixes over the weekend, we solved dozens of issues and all of that work is going to pay off next weekend and then pave it for launch," he added. "Sometimes as a player it can be a little frustrating, but they have to recognize that they’re helping us make the actual launch of the Game that much better."

One could perhaps criticize Blizzard for not warning Diablo fans that a beta would likely mean frustrating bugs and server disconnects, but we can't really argue with Fergusson's point. Diablo 4 will hold its open beta next weekend. Hopefully many of the issues players contended with last weekend will be resolved by then.

One thing players might want to prepare for is the Butcher, a fan-favorite Diablo boss that has been repurposed in the beta to be a random spawn. Because the Butcher is extremely powerful, it has a tendency to squash new players in a few blows before disappearing into the night. I'm not really sure how you prepare for that, but Blizzard said to expect the Butcher to stick around at least through the beta.

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