Blizzard Apologies Again For Diablo IV Server Issues, Braces With Weekend Surge Game Plan

Blizzard released Diablo IV earlier this month in early access, giving owners of the enhanced and ultimate editions of the game a chance to explore Sanctuary a few days before the standard edition plebs. Now, Blizzard has flung the doors wide open, and the servers aren't quite keeping up. After intermittent server issues over the past few days, Blizzard is apologizing and striking a positive note as we head into what may be the game's biggest weekend.

Online play has been a staple of role-playing Diablo games for decades, but Diablo IV makes some changes to the formula. There's no offline mode, so you can't play the game unless you connect to Blizzard's servers. When those servers are down, gamers have been venting their frustrations elsewhere online. On the evening of June 8, Blizzard suffered a longer outage, which returned a 300202 error when players tried to connect.

Rod Fergusson, Blizzard's manager of all things Diablo, took to Twitter after yesterday's outage to offer atonement. He said the issues that caused the Thursday outage were addressed, but that's no guarantee of smooth sailing. As Fergusson notes, this weekend is going to be a true test of Blizzard's server infrastructure. Diablo IV is Blizzard's fastest-selling game ever, and this is the first weekend when the majority of players will be able to access it. And this comes after three separate weekend-long tests of Diablo IV's servers this spring.

I apologize again for the downtime but we should be good to go again. Really appreciate your patience as we continue to hit record highs for concurrency and prepare for the expected surge this weekend. Thank you!

— Rod Fergusson (@RodFergusson) June 8, 2023

So far, players are expressing a mix of frustration and resignation as the weekend approaches. There are 300202 memes, predictions of lengthy outages, and demands for an offline mode. It's unlikely Blizzard will respond to such requests after spending years developing Diablo IV as an always-online experience.

We've been poking around in Sanctuary ourselves, and the occasional disconnects and outages are annoying. That said, we've seen worse launches. Blizzard seems committed to keeping the game online, but this weekend is going to be challenging. You probably shouldn't plan the weekend around Diablo IV. In time, after the post-launch frenzy, we might appreciate having deeper online integrations to keep the game fresh for years to come.