Blizzard General Manager Rod Fergusson weighs in on the eve of the launch
Diablo 4 will be here real soon: in nearly 24 hours, actually! When that zero hour actually hits, who knows what’s going to happen?
There was a server slam stress test held on the weekend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom‘s release that supposedly went well, but you can’t plan for everything. You can, however, plan to a point, and Blizzard has apparently done just that. Speaking to GamesRadar, Blizzard General Manager Rod Fergusson said the following about the publisher’s prep work for Diablo 4‘s launch:
“We learned a lot from each of them [the previous D4 tests]. We’re feeling better, like we feel good about that, like all the stuff that we’ve learned.”
“We’ve done the work, and we’ve done a lot of testing, and so we’re prepared. But you know, never say never. It might be a little bumpy on the first day, but our hopes are that, like we did on those weekends, we learn and adapt.”
It’s going to be hard to top Diablo 3‘s launch woes
If you’re planning on taking a few days off of work to play Diablo 4, just note that “it might be a little bumpy on the first day” seems like a realistic vibe, even from a very optimistic company spokesperson. In any case, it’s going to be extremely difficult to top the rocky launch of Diablo 3.
When Fergusson directly refers to Diablo 4‘s testing in the interview, it’s clear that Blizard has learned quite a bit from Diablo 3‘s development. We haven’t seen the full extent of Diablo 4‘s microtransaction monetization in 1.0, but there are likely lessons learned from Diablo Immortal there, too.
How is Diablo 4 faring on launch day?
[Update (June 1, 2023): Well, things were a little dicey out of the gate, as one may reasonably expect. It seems like Blizzard has opened at least one support thread for “license” issues, which are preventing logins. One of the last major updates from Blizzard is as follows: “Devs are looking into this as the issue’s more widespread than anticipated. If I hear anything else back from them I’ll let you know, but for now just keep trying every 15 minutes or so and it should self-resolve with no further effort on your end.”
On a personal level: I cannot get in on PC, but was able to log into Diablo 4 on PS5 roughly an hour and a half after the floodgates opened (and have remained logged in since). Hopefully, tomorrow will fare better!]
