Blizzard's Apology Letter For Diablo III

Diablo III has started off a bit on the rocky side as a bug has forced players to be kicked off from the Diablo III servers which makes the game completely unplayable for those who have come across the bug due to the players needing to constantly be connected to the servers.

Because of this bug, Blizzard has issued an apology letter. The letter also states that Blizzard will be pushing back the release date for the real-money auction house that was to be out on May 22.

Here is the full letter:

Diablo Players:

We’d like to extend a very sincere thank you to everyone who joined the global Diablo III launch celebrations this week, as well as to everyone who was ready to jump into Sanctuary the moment the game went live.

To that end, we’d also like to say that we’ve been humbled by your enthusiasm -- and we sincerely regret that your crusade to bring down the Lord of Terror was thwarted not by mobs of demons, but by mortal infrastructure. 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.

We’ve been monitoring the game 24/7 and have applied several optimizations to help our systems better weather the global rush. As of late last night, specifically 11:50 PM PDT on May 15, all systems have been online and running relatively smoothly. We’re continuing to monitor performance globally and will be taking further measures as needed to ensure a positive experience for everyone. This includes some maintenance to implement additional improvements for each region.

In order to make sure everything is continuing to run as it should, we’ve decided to move out our target launch for the real-money auction house beyond our original estimated date of May 22. We’ll post further updates on that in the near future.

Aside from the tremendous number of players simultaneously logging in to the game, one of the launch-day service issues was linked to the achievement system. Some players began to notice early on that achievements were either not being earned properly, or not being saved between multiple logins. We’re investigating this issue and will provide a specific update as soon as possible.

We greatly appreciate everyone’s support, and we want to sincerely apologize for the difficulties many of you encountered on day one. Please visit the Battle.net Support site or Support forums for the latest service-related updates or for help in troubleshooting any technical issues you may be having downloading, installing, or while playing the game.

Thank you again for your patience while we reinforce the gates of Sanctuary and further strengthen it for your onslaught.

Respectfully,

Blizzard Entertainment

[Discuss this on the forums.]

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Diablo III Faces A Major Bug

A major bug has reappeared in Diablo III that kicks players from Diablo III servers, causing players not to be able to play the game at all, players get booted out of their game with an Error 3006 message.

The bug originally appeared in the early stage of the beta, but it was then fixed, now it is back again. When players interact with the Templar by equipping him with a shield the error message comes up right after they get kicked off.

Blizzard is warning players not to equip the shield until they get the bug fixed.

"Don't trade your equipped shield with the Templar," wrote Diablo III player Laurelin. "The game boots you out, and you can't log back until Blizzard notices and fixes this issue."



[Discuss this on the forums.]

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Valve And Blizard Finally Agrees On Dota Trademark

Today Valve and Blizzard worked out an agreement due to a trademark problem that had to deal with Dota.

Due to the agreement, Valve will continue to be using the Dota name for Dota 2 and Dota merchandise while Blizzard will be using "Dota" for non-commercial Warcraft III and StarCraft II maps. This will be forcing Blizzard to change their StarCraft II Blizzard Dota game name to Blizzard All-Stars.

"Both Blizzard and Valve recognize that, at the end of the day, players just want to be able to play the games they're looking forward to, so we're happy to come to an agreement that helps both of us stay focused on that," said Rob Pardo, executive vice president of game design at Blizzard Entertainment. "As part of this agreement, we're going to be changing the name of Blizzard DOTA to Blizzard All-Stars, which ultimately better reflects the design of our game. We look forward to going into more detail on that at a later date."



[Discuss this on the forums.]

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Diablo III Beta Open for the Public

If you didn't get invited to Diablo III's closed beta don't fret, for this weekend only you can participate in an open beta to get a taste of whats to come.


Starting at 12:01 this afternoon you can partake in the Diablo III until 10:am on April 23rd. You can choose all 5 classes and play up to level 13 alone or with friends. All it requires is a valid battle.net account. I think I'll try it out if my computer can handle it.

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Diablo III Will Be Out in 2012

After years of being in development, Blizzard will finally be releasing the long-awaited Diablo III this year.



The game will officially launch on May 15th and you can also pre-purchase it now on battle.net so save the date.

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Diablo III Heading to Consoles

You certainly heard me right, Blizzard has announced that they will be hiring developers for the console version of their long-awaited sequel to the Diablo series. Community Director Micah Whipple made the announcement via twitter.

"Yup. Josh Mosqueira is lead designer for the Diablo console project."

And Mosqueira also tweeted that Blizzard is also hiring designers for the console development team.

"Are you a game designer? Do you love Diablo? What about Diablo on console? If so we're looking for you..."

No specific consoles were announced or the long awaited release date. It's gonna be interesting how the console version will be like.

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Diablo III Cinematic Trailer

If you are already pumped for Diablo III, then this brand new cinematic trailer Blizzard has released is going to probably force you to flip shit over.

I, personally, am not a big fan of Diablo, but I will admit that this is one hell of a trailer; Blizzard is known to do some pretty nice visual trailers for their games.

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Diablo III Gets A Collector's Edition

If you are one of those people that don't believe that Diablo III is eventually coming out, well Blizzard is sticking it to you guys with a Diablo III Collector's Edition and a chance to play for free.

With the Collector's Edition, players will be able to get an artbook, soundtrack, behind the scenes, in-game items for Diablo III, WoW and StarCraft II, a Diablo skull, 4 GB soulstone memory stick and of course the game. I don't even play Diablo, but that is one hell of a collector's edition, I'm quite jealous.

Diablo III news doesn't stop there, if you sign up for Blizzard's new WoW Annual Pass, then you can play Diablo III for free, the actual game, not a trial or a demo or anything like that. The pass is a 12-month subscription for WoW, you can either pay the pass monthly or cough it up all at once.

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World of Warcraft: Mists Of Pandaria Announced

Today Blizzard has announced that their newest expansion for World of Warcraft will be titled Mists of Pandaria and will include new classes.

The Monk and the Pandaren are the new classes that are being added along with new land to explore - Pandaria. The level cap will be raised to 90, a pet battle system, challenge mode dungeons, PVE scenarios and a new talent system are all new features that will come with the expansion.

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