Wed, May 16, 2012 | 18:38 BST

Diablo 3: you can’t log-in and you shouldn’t care

Diablo III’s servers are still down this morning after patchy service yesterday, but don’t let teething troubles spoil one of the year’s most deserving games, says Patrick Garratt.

Go to the Blizzard forums and post about how Diablo III’s downtime allowed you to reconnect with those closest to you, greatly fulfilling your life and helping you become a generally better person.

It was inevitable. More than 2 million people pre-ordered Diablo III for its launch yesterday, and many more attended over 8,000 midnight release events. The weight of traffic instantly killed the game’s servers, prompting “error 37″ to stop many logging in, and there’s a message on the check-in screen this morning, in the EU at least, that says the game’s offline and thanks for being patient. We should be back up by 11.45pm PST.

The backlash is tedious this time. Anyone who’s been playing online games for any length of time will know that the first few days of any popular release are going to be patchy. And after waiting for nearly 12 years for a full sequel to Diablo II, a beloved PC game by all accounts, it’s not hard to understand why Blizzard is struggling to make everything work properly. Play was intermittent yesterday, but many were levelling for hours. One guy even finished it. It’s not as if it wasn’t there; Blizzard just needs to do some fiddling so millions of people can play it at once without a smoking hole being left where the company’s Irvine campus currently stands. This could take hours, or even a couple of days.

Here’s five things you could be doing while Blizzard’s trying to make their most amazing addition to the action-RPG genre bulletproof.

  1. Shut up. Seriously, stop whining. Making this stuff work for a rush of millions is verging on rocket science. It happens for pretty much every major online game – including Battlefield 3 and Modern Warfare 3 – and you should be used to it by now. Just be patient and let Blizzard fix it. Save your bile for something that actually matters, like the fact you have little chance of achieving your life goals because you can’t stop playing computer games.
  2. Make a cup of tea. Microsoft suggested PS3 owners should spend the time GTA IV took to install on the console to make some tea, and it’s not a bad piece of advice. Everyone loves tea. Try a herbal variety, something soothing like camomile. Inhale the flowery vapours and feel your entitlement rage dissipate with the rising of the morning sun.
  3. Take some exercise. That’s right. Stop sitting there repeatedly trying, and failing, to get a game, get off your ass and go for a walk. Maybe break into a run. Use the time and head space to formulate class strategies and daydream about the sheer joy of finally getting a link to Blizzard’s servers and moving nothing but your eyes and fingers for about 300 hours as you click yourself to demon-busting fame. Get back, have a shower, try, and fail, to log-in again, smile happily and say, “It’s fine! I’m sure it’ll work later!”
  4. Do some work. Radical, yes, but doing some work while you’re waiting for Blizzard to engineer one of the largest game projects yet created will make you feel better about your life. Write something. Build something. Dig something in the garden. Organise something. Pay some tax. Make a todo list and do some of it. As you cross off the items you’ll feel your anxieties fall away, making it less likely for you to behave like a child on the internet and have a cry over the fact you may have to wait a little while before you can play a video game.
  5. Spend some time with your family. Fucking madness, obviously, but use this time positively by reading to your kids, or sitting down and having a chat with your mum, or helping your dad wash the car, or cooking something nice for your spouse. Stun family members by speaking to them in coherent sentences. Look them in the eye and tell them you love them. Give them a hug. Then go to the Blizzard forums and post about how Diablo III’s downtime allowed you to reconnect with those closest to you, greatly fulfilling your life and helping you become a generally better person.

Do all that. Then when you’re finally able to get a game of Diablo III, you’ll feel happy you had to wait. Turn that frown upside-down, soldier. You’ll be murdering Hell’s happy bastards before you know it, and you’ll feel all the better for it when you are.

84 comment-trail-alt Posted in: Action, Activision Blizzard, PC, RPG
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#1

Talkar
16/05/12, 6:49 am

Can i go to work if i don’t want to do any of the above activities? Please x)

#2

Bane Williams
16/05/12, 6:50 am

My problems are simple.

Firstly, this is a game that should have had an offline component from the start. If it did, I would have been like ‘oh, server maintenance for over half your launch day, I’ll just play solo’. Problem solved. Am I annoyed that there is no Single Player? Not overly, and I understand their reasons for excluding it, but needless to say this was a problem.

Getting server load right should have been easy. Why? They had stress tested the Beta and had launch experience with a similar number of customers before.

The truth is, Diablo 3 has been unavailable for over half its launch day. Launch day is the biggest sales day for a title, and Diablo 3 is one of the biggest titles in a long while. Technically, Blizzard are likely happy because customers won’t be able to return their retail box copy and have it traded in, as it’s an online only game. Which is at least one of the reasons they pushed for online only.

But I’m not overly angry about the launch, merely ambivalent. I also know that one of the group I was playing with was experiencing pings between 200 and 3000 ms, and we isolation tested the router and made sure no other processes were using his connection. It will be interesting to see if this is fixed.

And little chance of reaching my life goals? Unfortunately, my life goals entail writing about videogames, and guess what? That’s what I do.

#3

Malmer
16/05/12, 6:53 am

You are right, except that this isn’t just an online game. It is a single player game. Without the need for connectivity for anything orher than drm.

#4

Logic Incarnate
16/05/12, 6:53 am

6. Play a single player game instead…

#5

Dugstar1
16/05/12, 6:58 am

Patrick Garrett.. Your a legend… Best article I’ve read in a while :D

#6

mojo
16/05/12, 7:00 am

you shut up.
i cant play this game at all because even the singleplayer takes place on the server.
i have a very bad internet connection, hence theres no way for me to play this game.
Thank you Blizzard you fuckholes.

#7

Patrick Garratt
16/05/12, 7:17 am

The US servers should be back up any second now.

#8

Patrick Garratt
16/05/12, 7:18 am

https://twitter.com/#!/Bashiok/status/202643327408021504

#9

TMRNetShark
16/05/12, 7:19 am

Hehe, everyone so angry now… watch in a week when the servers are back into their right minds… people will be loving the game for what it is.

I’m not worried. :P

#10

Patrick Garratt
16/05/12, 7:24 am

Here you go: https://twitter.com/#!/Diablo/status/202644949093728256

#11

ChaosSmurf
16/05/12, 7:36 am

The replies on the Diablo twitter are gorgeous :3

#12

JB
16/05/12, 7:56 am

I wonder how this piece would have looked like if it was Microsoft who made this bullshit blunder… again…

#13

TheWulf
16/05/12, 8:00 am

Well, I don’t even need to worry about this. In fact, these problems help to confirm that I made the right decision. No buyer’s remorse for me! Hooray!

#14

BULArmy
16/05/12, 8:04 am

EU servers works just fine and the message about them being full is gone, so I think problems are solved and from now on is only the great experience that D3 is.

#15

Gekidami
16/05/12, 8:09 am

Its good to see journos defending this game, even after Blizzard pretty much gave the whole of the videogames media the blacklist treatment by refusing to let them review the game before release. Keep up the non-fight guys!

#16

Erthazus
16/05/12, 8:14 am

@15, will you shut the fuck up? Stop whining. That’s how it works with Blizzard before and that’s how it will work in the future. Stop whining, seriously. Blizzard does not care about scores and reviews. Every journalist will start playing the game like every other person.

If you are interested in the scores, it’s going to have 90+ on metacritic.

#17

Patrick Garratt
16/05/12, 8:15 am

The EU servers are working, yeah.

#18

Gekidami
16/05/12, 8:19 am

“Its ok, because its Blizzard” lol what would the video game industry be without its sacred cows, and double standard, special pleading fanboys, eh?

#19

Patrick Garratt
16/05/12, 8:23 am

Anyone want to co-op? patlike#1682

#20

Sini
16/05/12, 8:30 am

You’re a game journalist, that means you suck by default. Sorry

On another note, even if US servers are down, you can always play on euro ones, the stuff earned there doesn’t carry over though. Just go to options(before you log in) and Account and change territory there.

#21

Giskard
16/05/12, 8:38 am

It’s really odd. Since yesterday, I haven’t had a login problem, whenever I decided to login. Got in at once, no problems at all…

Guess I’m lucky :)

#22

Erthazus
16/05/12, 8:38 am

@19, If you finished the first ACT I can invite you :D right now to Act II. It’s beautiful.

#23

shogoz
16/05/12, 8:45 am

told you diablo would suck cock

#24

Patrick Garratt
16/05/12, 8:50 am

@22 – I’ll get past it later, I hope. I’m rambling round a field full of bats at the moment.

#25

Simpo20
16/05/12, 8:51 am

@ Patrick Garratt – Just registered to comment on this article, honestly one of the best articles on the web i have read for a long time, Funny & True.

and then the reality of the ‘online community’ kicks in by reply #2 (Bane Williams) – people really do need to chill out. I managed to play for about 4 hours last night Co-Op with a friend.

When i got home, i installed and couldnt log in, sat down with my wife and watched some TV. Tried again, failed. Cooked my wife some dinner (she didnt know what was going on at this point she just thought i was being nice… little did she know if i could log in this wouldnt be happeneing!!) and so it was karma, 1 and 1/2 hours after being home from work, and spending some quality time with my wife. i logged in, and my friend logged in as i was making my hero. onwards to 4 hours of D3 goodness! :-)

I would happily Coop with you Patrick Garratt .. add me – Simpo#2536

#26

Telepathic.Geometry
16/05/12, 8:55 am

I think that the best way to handle this kinda bullshit would be for Blizzard to lie about the release date, saying that it’s coming out two days after the real date. A lot of people would realise that they were able to log on, and start playing, helping to stagger the people trying to log on a bit, and robbing them of their perceived right to bitch and whine.

#27

Patrick Garratt
16/05/12, 8:56 am

@25 – I’ll add you next time I’m on!

#28

BULArmy
16/05/12, 9:08 am

@26 That is hilarious idea, but again the interwebz will be full of rage.
For me the solution is something in the veins of tiers. Like in MMO ppl with Collectors Edition are given head start let say 2 days early. Then maybe some kind of Limited Edition with numbers Blizz are sure will not crash servers again as pre-order, one day before release. And then everyone else on release date, but with queue and not those maddening errors.

#29

TheBlackHole
16/05/12, 9:11 am

Wow… that’s a really arrogant news piece.

“Making this stuff work for a rush of millions is verging on rocket science.”

No, it’s really not. The problem is not complicated – it’s simply one of scale. To facilitate the millions of users trying to connect, you have to traffic an insanely huge amount of data, which would cost a disproportionately large amount of money to do. Inevitably, most of these facilities would have to be shut down again once the traffic had slowed to a manageable level, making it worth neither the time nor money.

So instead (and this is where the gripe is), developers choose a ‘maximum threshold’ for traffic, where they KNOW the servers are going to fall over, and essentially bottleneck the entrance until everyone is eventually through.

This problem is greatly exacerbated by people continually trying to connect (imagine a million people hammering F5 to refresh a webpage mimicking 10x millions of users), but essentially the problem is that no company is willing to build the infrastructure necessary to make the game work from minute-one, because financially it makes very little sense.

Despite this (and I agree with the way it is done) I don’t think your article is at all helpful, and does very little to explain the complexity of this situation to your readers.

#30

GwynbleiddiuM
16/05/12, 9:12 am

Well I managed to finish ACT I on my Monk and Witch Doctor, I didn’t like Demon Hunter and Wizard so far but Barbarian feels good. Soon I’ll decide which one will be my first play through but my personal preference is da witchdocta.

All in all I’d like to play with ya guys :> I’m playing on EU tho.

#31

endgame
16/05/12, 9:26 am

Bulls**t!! This is not an online game! This is a single player game! But Pat, you’re right about one thing, all of you (all 2 million of you) who supported this DRM, you asked for this, so stfu and wait for the servers to get back online you bunch of losers! You people are pathetic!? You payed 60 dollars/euros for an unplayable game! Douche-bags! LOL!

#32

botherer
16/05/12, 9:39 am

Do we have to wait for your internet to go down before you’ll see sense again?

#33

Simpo20
16/05/12, 9:40 am

@31 – its online if i want to play the game with my friends COOP…..

#35

TheBlackHole
16/05/12, 9:42 am

@34 That’s very funny :)

#36

Gekidami
16/05/12, 9:46 am

I feel that -just for the hell of it- this needs to be brought up:
http://www.vg247.com/2011/09/08/the-day-i-realised-always-on-drm-moaners-have-a-point/

#37

Patrick Garratt
16/05/12, 9:51 am

@32/36 – Yeah, but this isn’t about not having an internet connection, is it? It’s about Blizzard fixing some servers. They’re different things. I’m sure it makes perfect sense to Blizzard to have you constantly connected to Battle.net. In fact, I doubt the game would have ever been made if you weren’t.

#38

Chockster
16/05/12, 9:54 am

I love you Pat.

#39

Joe Musashi
16/05/12, 10:03 am

HA! I’m unaffected because Amazon haven’t even delivered the pre-order I placed in 2010 yet.

Good times.

JM

#40

Patrick Garratt
16/05/12, 10:04 am

:D

#41

Gekidami
16/05/12, 10:07 am

Pat, its DRM, nothing more nothing less. If it wasnt there people could simply play their game offline till the server issues were sorted out, but they cant. It sure as hell isnt the auction house thats stopping the whole game from having an offline mode and there really isnt any multiplayer feature -unless the game is an MMO- which would halt the perfectly playable single player aspect of the game from being there. Dark Souls & Demons Souls also rely heavily on online as main features, yet if its not there the rest of the game doesnt get locked away.

I dont personally care much about always online DRM, its not really a big deal to me, Blizzard have done a few other things i think should piss people off more than this (not allowing pre release reviews, cutting expected features, region locking servers, charging a higher than average price just because they can…), but i dont deny that it can be an issue, the servers going down making the entire game unplayable despite having a perfectly good single player aspect, being one.
What does bother me is the double standard: Ubi does this; there are calls for a boycott, when its Blizzard; its totally ‘ok’.

#42

Patrick Garratt
16/05/12, 10:12 am

@41 – Yeah, I agree with you. It sucks. But they feel as though they have to do it as a piracy prevention thing, so they build in constant online functionality (friends, auctions, whatever) to justify it. You watch: it’ll be built into next-gen console hardware. If a game needs a constant connection to the internet and it’s amazingly popular, it’s going to fall over in the first few days. Of all audiences, the one that reads this site is well aware of that.

Apart from first thing this morning, I’ve had no problem logging on. So it was patchy for a day. Seriously.

#43

Erthazus
16/05/12, 10:14 am

@GwynbleiddiuM, you finished ACT I?

Join me then. What’s your Battle Tag? We can play the game right now :D

@Pat, I added you. You can join me anytime.(I’m at the second Act)

#44

OwnedWhenStoned
16/05/12, 10:14 am

Didn’t buy it on day 1 because I knew this was going to happen. It happens every time a popular game starts. I’m sure it’s a great game.

#46

strikkebil
16/05/12, 10:49 am

pc gaming ftw!

#47

Revolution
16/05/12, 10:52 am

I just registered today to say how ridiculous this article is, yes a big IP game launch always has problems but is that the fault of the gamer? should gamers always expect games to be in shambles on release? of course not.

Also I have been hearing a lot people took time off for this game, not everyone has the luxury of time and playing and writing about videogames Mr. Garratt.

Oh and one more thing I’m not even a Diablo fan and I didn’t even pick up the game, I just needed to post because this article goes against smart consumerism.

#48

TheBlackHole
16/05/12, 10:55 am

@47

Amen.

#49

GrimRita
16/05/12, 11:00 am

@47 – its becoming the ‘norm’. If you bought a car, sat in it and turned the engine on, only to find that it didnt move – you wouldnt be happy. The same goes for gaming.

Im sick to the back teeth of publishers/developers releasing unfinished/unready pieces of shit, leaving gamers with all sorts of launch problems.

Do the math – If you produce say 1 million copies of your game to sell, logic tells me to expect at least 700k of those in sales. So the math tells me to ensure that we have enough capacity to deal with 700k users and maybe some extra over flow.

Its not difficult. Guild Wars 2 was guilty of this with the beta. If they ‘sold out’ of Digital copies, they surely must fucking know how many people will log in at launch.

#50

Deacon
16/05/12, 11:19 am

I’m kinda torn here. While I agree that it’s ridiculous to rage at not being able to play immediately, issues like this simply shouldn’t be happening – especially with such a high profile game as this.

Personally I’ve got plenty of other things to do were I in the position of the gamer having to wait. But that is hardly the point. The few guys above me have it right. And we need to stop letting companies get away with effectively selling people a broken product – even if it’s just a day or 12 hours. It wouldn’t go unpunished in any other industry.

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