Diablo II: Resurrected online play was down for several hours after launch

[Cal Jeffrey]

Facepalm: The highly anticipated Diablo II: Resurrected launched yesterday, but a broad swath of players found themselves unable to play or even load existing characters for online play. It seems Blizzard had underestimated the demand and its servers became overwhelmed.

Diablo Executive Producer Rod Fergusson responded to the problem, commenting on Twitter that player response surpassed the expected load estimates they made during testing.

"We've had tons of players online, which is great but has been a challenge for servers surpassing our testing," Fergusson said. "We know many players are still affected, so we're actively adding capacity and will keep on this until it's in a better place. This may involve more restarts as well."

[#D2R] Servers should be available again in all regions. We will continue to monitor performance. We've also applied a fix that should help unlock characters and will continue to review for any we've missed.

— Blizzard CS - The Americas (@BlizzardCS) September 23, 2021

Blizzard's online crew quickly responded to the outage, taking the servers offline for "maintenance." The downtime was only for 30 minutes, but players still had issues for a few hours before things seemed to even out. Blizzard Customer Service reported via Twitter that it had fixed the problem by 5pm eastern and would continue to "monitor performance."

Fortunately, playing offline was still a viable alternative, which probably helped relieve the stress on the servers as players opted to play offline until Blizzard resolved the issues.

We got in on the beta for Diablo II: Resurrected and found it to be a faithful reproduction of the original. Obviously, graphics and cut scenes got the most attention, and there are a few settings and interface tweaks, but Blizzard didn't change much.

You still have seven classes to choose from—Amazon, Assassin, Barbarian, Druid, Necromancer, Paladin, and Sorceress—and the maps and dungeons are still randomly generated. Overall, the 21-year-old game holds up well. Would I recommend buying it if you still have a playable copy of the original? No. But it is a no-brainer for anyone who has never played it before.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/91425-diablo-ii-resurrected-online-play-down-several-hours.html

 

[yRaz]

They did not underestimate demand, they knew how many people wanted to play based on sales numbers. It's also not like this is their first time launching an online game

 

[George Keech]

I genuinely didn't end even know this has launched

 

[yRaz]

I genuinely didn't end even know this has launched

I've been paying attention to this game, me and my friends didn't even plan on playing it until atleast a week after it's release due to potebtial bugs and server saturation issues.

 

[Bl00dyMinded]

I genuinely didn't end even know this has launched

I also had no idea about this game. Also $40 for a game that is about 20 years old... I'll pass. And it's also blizzard with the current sh1t show they have I don't want anything with them. I miss it when it was Blizzard and they cared about it's fans, not activision. The good old battle net days.

In better new New World finally drops next week!

 

[brucek]

Do they really not have a cloud-based architecture that can scale on demand?

I don't believe that Amazon, Google, Microsoft or whoever ran out of servers... I think more likely Activision decided they were only going to pay $X for launch day and were fine making other players wait until later in the week. After all they already had their money.

 

[brucek]

I don't understand the concern over the price. This is not the kind of game people play for like 5 hours... 500 hours seems more likely... and even just from having played the beta I can say it's obvious they invested in refreshed, modernized art and technology. If you love this type of game you are going to get your money's worth.

That goes triple if you've been playing the original since 2000, meaning you've paid $3 per year. It won't shock me if Blizzard supports and people play this one for another decade or two either.

 

[kiwigraeme]

Do they really not have a cloud-based architecture that can scale on demand?

I don't believe that Amazon, Google, Microsoft or whoever ran out of servers... I think more likely Activision decided they were only going to pay $X for launch day and were fine making other players wait until later in the week. After all they already had their money.

This is the answer here - I'm not sure it's 100% poisson distribution - as somethings events are predictable - ie launch day, community day pokemon go, crowd surge at concert for big band ( first song and number one song ) . But online - should be able to tap "unlimited" resources - unlike a supermarket - who at best can pull only people out from bakery, stacking to man the checkouts

 

[nodfor]

Made a lvl 1 char, logged into a game once, now can't join any game - getting a message that char is already in game, for several hrs. Can't create an alt that actually can join or delete the char, I can only create chars on hardcore mode that can play.

On D2 launch day 2 decades ago you had to wait for several hrs to join a game, and you would get constantly disconnected, is this an attempt to recreate that atmosphere ?

 

[psycros]

Probably artificial constraints to create fake demand/buzz. Almost every company pulls this now.

 

[amghwk]

Hopefully they won't have a need to patch this game, and keep patching now and then. The original Diablo 2 + Expansion has already been perfected.

They would look silly patching a game that is supposed to update an already completed, perfected game.

 

[Adi6293]

I don't understand the concern over the price. This is not the kind of game people play for like 5 hours... 500 hours seems more likely... and even just from having played the beta I can say it's obvious they invested in refreshed, modernized art and technology. If you love this type of game you are going to get your money's worth.

That goes triple if you've been playing the original since 2000, meaning you've paid $3 per year. It won't shock me if Blizzard supports and people play this one for another decade or two either.

I'm too not sure why people hate on the price the game look phenomenal and it's worth that $40, I've been playing D2 to on and off for 17 years I going to my money's worth out of this : -)

 

[GamerNerves]

This game is too expensive, it doesn't look graphically that amazing. 30 € would suffice, but 20 € would be fair. Are the prices of Blizzard games result of Activision treatment?

 

[nodfor]

This game is too expensive, it doesn't look graphically that amazing. 30 € would suffice, but 20 € would be fair. Are the prices of Blizzard games result of Activision treatment?

Game looks great when taking into account that this is a remaster. Some effects need improvement sure, but overall in terms of graphics it is far better than what I expected.

 

[Nobina]

What's that? Blizzard riding the wave of their previous success? Call me when they make something new that's worth talking about.

 

[Adi6293]

This game is too expensive, it doesn't look graphically that amazing. 30 € would suffice, but 20 € would be fair. Are the prices of Blizzard games result of Activision treatment?

The game looks phenomenal €40 is a fair price, lots of work went into doing the remaster

 

[Fearghast]

Even as a Diablo II fan - IMHO the best Diablo ever made - I am not ready to buy something from Activision Blizzard at this state.
Will see how they will resolve their harassment issues, or I will wait for some major discount, 50% sounds about right.

 

[OneSpeed]

Utter crap, it's 2021 and here are the gripes experienced...
1. Could not create a game (like the rest of you), on day 1
2. When I did create a game, my game looked up an hour into it and quit.
3. My saved game did not save where I left off, let alone saved episode 1 (I lost my inventory)
4. Game could not connect to the transaction server, which locked out of the game. I had to reboot, and, of course, lost everything.
5 AND the BIGGEST gripe of all - there are no UI fixes, and the game is not intuitive as it should be.
This is written just right after the game crapped out of me again!
If I had known this, I would have spent the money!

 

[Inthenstus]

I won’t support Blizzard anymore. They’ve killed my favorite game way to many times and let a bunch of apes run the company for far to long.

 

[captaincranky]

Oh thank god, I thought I would die if I didn't get to play.

 

[Puiu]

With readily available, accessible and scalable global servers, I don't believe that the servers where down because of "demand". This is something an indie could use as an excuse.

They either had major server bugs or they are intentionally creating "hype" by saying that too many people are playing it.

 

[Ravey]

30 minutes downtime and a lagy connection for a few hours is a definite improvement over previous launches.

I'm curious to see how Amazon servers compare when New World launches tomorrow

 

[Watzupken]

The game looks phenomenal €40 is a fair price, lots of work went into doing the remaster

You want a good looking Diablo, then go play Path of Exile. It is free and it looks good too. I generally don't like remastered games because the publishers/ developers are trying to cash in on old success. Visually, there is no denying it looks leaps and bounds better than the original. But that's all to it. There are a lot of remake/ reboot/ remaster, whatever you call it, but it is just a shortcut for game developers and publishers to push a "new" game with a new game price tag. They basically save money trying to get someone to write a story + scripts and design the gameplay.

 

[Adi6293]

You want a good looking Diablo, then go play Path of Exile. It is free and it looks good too. I generally don't like remastered games because the publishers/ developers are trying to cash in on old success. Visually, there is no denying it looks leaps and bounds better than the original. But that's all to it. There are a lot of remake/ reboot/ remaster, whatever you call it, but it is just a shortcut for game developers and publishers to push a "new" game with a new game price tag. They basically save money trying to get someone to write a story + scripts and design the gameplay.

I played PoE and its not for me plus at this point it doesn't look better that D2R. I've been playing Diablo 2 on and off for 17 years so for me that price is reasonable, this is a remaster done right, the original game is awful looking on today's big monitors : -)

 

[Puiu]

I played PoE and its not for me plus at this point it doesn't look better that D2R. I've been playing Diablo 2 on and off for 17 years so for me that price is reasonable, this is a remaster done right, the original game is awful looking on today's big monitors : -)

POE definitely looks better, objectively. The problem POE has is that now it's too big and hard for new players to get into. A bit too overwhelming.