Diablo 4 Open Beta is opening up to the public from March 24 to 26 so Blizzard preemptively posted expectations to the community on queue times, maintenance, bugs, and feedback.
Thank you to those who participated in the Early Access Beta. Betas are incredibly useful for the development team. They allow us to test things at a scale that we cannot test on our own, like server capacity, class balance, usability, accessibility, etc. This information is invaluable, ensuring that your experience at launch is as smooth as it can be. It’s also critically important for the development team to hear how players feel about the overall experience of Diablo IV.
With your help, we learned a lot during our Early Access Beta weekend. We intend to learn a lot more this weekend during our Open Beta, and we want to talk to you all about what you can expect and how your participation directly impacts Diablo IV development.
- Queue Times: When we open the 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 we expect this weekend, and we will be using that capacity to intentionally stress our systems in preparation for launch. 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.
- 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.
- Bugs and Feedback: When you are in-game, whether you’re continuing to build your character from last weekend or trying Druid or Necromancer for the first time, we want to hear from you. The team will be monitoring the forums, where there are dedicated sections for bug reporting and technical support for PC and console, as well as general discussion, where you can leave feedback around anything Diablo IV.
We can’t thank you enough - by providing feedback, reporting, and patiently waiting in queues before enjoying Act 1 of Diablo IV, you are helping us to continually improve the game. This past weekend energized the team, who were finally able to watch players around the world experience what they have been building firsthand, and we’re excited to see and learn even more during this upcoming Open Beta weekend.
The Diablo team will be playing alongside you this weekend, and we look forward to seeing you in Sanctuary!
Hail Lilith.
Furthermore, item drop rates in the Open Beta are confirmed tuned to be higher "to give a fuller experience and better test during Beta".
