The walls have lag in Diablo 4
Has this ever happened to you? You’re playing Diablo 4, having a great time, and then you find yourself stuck an area. You try to leave, but every possible entrance to the next area seems to block your path. If you’ve dealt with this, you aren’t alone.
While a live service game like Diablo 4 comes with certain advantages, there are drawbacks players will have to deal with. While the game doesn’t communicate this very well, invisible walls in Diablo 4 are most likely a result of its always-online requirement. Let’s unpack this situation.
What causes the invisible wall glitch in Diablo 4?
On Blizzard’s Support page, the invisible wall glitch comes with this explanation:
“Sometimes this problem can occur if the game has not correctly transitioned your character to a new area and it may help to enter the zone again.”
Now, I can’t tell you what causes this issue beyond what Blizzard says here. However, having played the game with my Steam Deck and desktop computer on both review servers and the launch servers, I can perhaps offer some insight. During the review period, when the servers were very quiet, I never encountered the invisible wall glitch. However, after the game launched, I encountered this issue repeatedly and exclusively on my Steam Deck.
With this experience, I theorize that the invisible wall glitch occurs in part due to issues loading the area you’re trying to enter. Because the game can’t render Diablo 4’s shared world for you, it can’t safely put you into that next zone. This matches Blizzard’s explanation, but again, this is just a guess, so we’ll need to hear an official explanation for more information. It could be just an (un)lucky break that this issue exclusively impacted me on my Steam Deck, but connectivity issues do appear to be a likely culprit.
How to solve the invisible walls glitch
As I encountered this glitch, the only real solution I found was just to wait. Park your character by the zone you’re trying to enter, let your character sit there, and hope for the best. If you’re lucky, the invisible wall will lift and you can keep playing. Otherwise, you may get an error message and/or need to restart your game.
I also recommend testing your internet connection and making sure everything works on your end. If you’re dealing with a spotty connection, you should resolve that before trying to make progress in Diablo 4. Alternatively, since using more powerful hardware did work for me, you can try that if that’s an option. I am aware that buying an entirely new system just to play Diablo 4 is not tenable advice. But if you happen to have other hardware on-hand, I would recommend that.
Otherwise, the problem could stem entirely from Blizzard’s servers. Others have dealt with connection issues since launch, so I find this explanation likely. You may want to try playing the game during quieter hours if possible, with fewer people actively playing the game. Otherwise, perhaps just wait for these server issues to resolve or for the player count to come down a bit after launch.
Hopefully this issue will resolve soon, so awkward workarounds like this become unnecessary.
