To say that the recent launch of Diablo III was a much anticipated event is an understatement. Certain gamers have been waiting years for the launch of the latest installment of the dark fantasy role playing game. In fact, prior to its release, Diablo III broke records for the number of video game pre-sales and became the most pre-ordered game that Amazon has ever offered.
When Diablo III was released in North America on May 15th, problems soon arose. Users had issues logging in, staying connected and were getting error codes such as, “There is a temporary outage of the Battle.net Service. Please try again later.”
Blizzard Entertainment, the company that released Diablo III had anticipated some issues, but nothing like what actually occurred. Users who were waiting with bated breath to start the game were plagued by problems. The gaming forums and fan pages erupted in outrage over delays and errors. There’s even a well done video entitled “If Diablo 3 were a girl” which we predict will get some serious views in the near future.
Many gamers on other games were frustrated because all of battle.net was down, and games like World of Warcraft and StarCraft2 wouldn’t respond either.
Adam B., a HostDime Server Analyst and avid gamer, was one of the individuals affected by the issues.
“I downloaded it the night it came out but wasn’t able to play until six in the evening the next day (when it came out at three in the morning),” he said. “The roughly 700KB/s file was a smooth download. When I got home at six, the servers were down. I kept getting so many errors. I must have gotten six or seven different kinds. 3003, 37, 75, 3006…these are the ones I can remember.”
So what happened??
Obviously Battle.net anticipated a heavy server load. They have released popular games before and were not strangers to server stress for new launches. From what we can see on the Diablo III user forums, the EU servers seemed to start well and are still performing well under the pressure of so many users. However in the U.S., the user load, coupled with the new authentication protocols and the “always online” single and multiple user modes, seem to have overloaded servers. At one point during the evening of its release, the servers went down for maintenance, once again denying entry to the new game.
Blizzard apologized for the rough launch and issued the following statement:
“As many of you are aware, technical issues occurring within hours after the game’s launch led to players experiencing error messages and difficulty logging in. These issues cropped up again last night for the Americas and Europe servers. Despite very aggressive projections, our preparations for the launch of the game did not go far enough.”
So the lesson here is that if you plan to launch the third installment of a really popular game then we suggest you do some stress testing to make sure your server configuration can handle the load of users. Secondly, it might not hurt if you could play in single player mode without being connected to the servers. Having all of the character information on the server side may be better for authentication and hacking issues but not for the user. And third, buy bigger, better, servers and buy extras, just in case.
Still having trouble? Luckily there’s the Diablo III Common Errors page. You’re welcome.
Vikki F. is the Director of Marketing for HostDime.com, Inc. and has been in web design and hosting for eleven years. Let us know if you have any questions by sharing your comments in the box below, or by sounding off on our Facebook Page or Google+ Page, or by tweeting us at @HostDime.
Diablo III image copyright of Blizzard Entertainment
Enjoyed reading the article and agree with having the ability to play offline in single player mode. The launch was F.U.B.A.R.