Blizzard President Admits to Botched Diablo 3 Launch
Mike Morhaime offers a lengthy discussion about the past, the present, and the future state of Diablo 3.
In a rather lengthy letter to Diablo 3 players on the Battle.net forums, Blizzard president Mike Morhaime presents a makeshift State-of-the-Union-type update on the game, talking about the launch and the game's progression over the last several months, to where the popular action-RPG is headed. He also thanks the community for their passion and affection for the Diablo series, for sharing their experiences that have helped improve the game overall.
First and foremost he admitted his utter pleasure in the sales numbers, saying that Diablo 3 had the biggest PC gaming launch ever, surpassing even the lifetime sales of World of Warcraft's third expansion and previous PC launch record holder, Cataclysm, in a matter of weeks. But he also acknowledged that the launch was plagued by problems that the team simply did not expect.
"We’ve never gone from 0 to more than 6 million players across multiple continents within a few days with a brand-new game," he said. "For Diablo 3, we looked at historical sales for Blizzard games and other top-selling PC games and watched pre-order numbers. We even upped our estimates to ensure we had additional capacity, or so we thought. In the end, it just wasn’t enough, and that is something we will work hard to conquer for future releases."
The immediate and overwhelming demand for the game has kept the team working around the clock to support all regions, increase capacity, ship additional hardware to Blizzard's data centers, and troubleshoot and fix bugs as they spring up, he said. Over the past several weeks things have "by and large" been running smoothly, but there are still issues that the team is still trying to resolve like latency problems for many players.
"Rather than address every subject individually, I’ll just say that even as we work to address or resolve current issues, it’s always possible that further issues will crop up," he said. "We hope that our actions in the past have demonstrated that above all else, we’re committed to delivering an awesome game experience, and we hope you’ll have faith that we will continue to keep that commitment and respond to any new or outstanding issues quickly."
So what's in Diablo 3's future? Buffs to many rarely used, underpowered class abilities. Patch 1.0.4 will include new and improved Legendary items that are more interesting, more powerful, and more epic in ways players probably won’t be expecting, he said. There are also a number of interface updates in the works such as social improvements that will allow players to more easily join games and communicate with their friends. The auction house is also receiving a boost in search functionality and more.
To read the full State of the Union to Diablo 3 players, head here. Get a little snack and maybe someone to cuddle with before you read it, though.
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sacre Stopped playing myself, a while ago actually. I didn't even hit lvl 60, why? because there was nothing to it... all I did was kill monsters in the same levels over and over again just to get gold so i can buy yellows and continue to grind.Reply
There was no work at it, just repetitive slashing for gold.. yellows i broke down, VERY rarely sold and for what? Gold? to buy more yellows? to farm yellows? to buy yellows?
Same monsters over and over, just more abilities. It was just.. too little.
Oh well. -
Pinhedd sacreStopped playing myself, a while ago actually. I didn't even hit lvl 60, why? because there was nothing to it... all I did was kill monsters in the same levels over and over again just to get gold so i can buy yellows and continue to grind.There was no work at it, just repetitive slashing for gold.. yellows i broke down, VERY rarely sold and for what? Gold? to buy more yellows? to farm yellows? to buy yellows? Same monsters over and over, just more abilities. It was just.. too little.Oh well.Reply
Couldn't agree more, the game felt far too anaemic. -
pezonator I've been playing the game for a few weeks now casually and am lvl 21. My girlfriend also plays and is the same level. Having never played Diablo before, I didn't know any of the story but we are enjoying it. Yes the latency can be annoying 5% of the time but the game works and it's interesting and fun. We don't farm, we just play the game and progress through the story.Reply
All I want to do is finish the game on Normal and that's it, I see no reason to repeat it another 3 times... And before you ask, it was a bday present from friends, so I didn't actually buy it, winning :) -
elcentral "We’ve never gone from 0 to more than 6 million players across multiple continents within a few days with a brand-new Singel/forced multiplater player game,"Reply -
L0tus Played it for 6hrs and somewhat enjoyed it. But I binned it cos I refuse to support games that require me to be online just to play single-player. It's patronizing and dangerously Orwellian.Reply -
klavis sacreStopped playing myself, a while ago actually. I didn't even hit lvl 60, why? because there was nothing to it... all I did was kill monsters in the same levels over and over again just to get gold so i can buy yellows and continue to grind.There was no work at it, just repetitive slashing for gold.. yellows i broke down, VERY rarely sold and for what? Gold? to buy more yellows? to farm yellows? to buy yellows? Same monsters over and over, just more abilities. It was just.. too little.Oh well.Reply
I'm not sure what you expected, that is pretty much what Diablo 2 was. Well except that to get better gear you need to use the AH in D3 because crap for your class rarely drops, which is super annoying.