You’d think that after successfully launching a game that’s been hyped for well over a decade, Blizzard’s Diablo III team would be sitting back to relax. Apparently not. Every Diablo III developer I spoke to at the game’s launch party at the Irvine Spectrum Center in Blizzard’s home city said that they’d be right back at work the next day.
Between all the Error 37s I’ve encountered through the 15th and 16th, I can definitely see why. Blizzard’s got their work cut out for them. Diablo III players know what I’m talking about. For most of the first day of the launch, Diablo III servers were overloaded and under maintenance, much to the sorrow (and sometimes wrath) of gamers who had ditched work or school in order to play the game.
Despite those hoops and ladders to jump through in order to play Diablo III, gamers have other concerns to worry about when playing: game breaking bugs. The trigger for the bug is fairly easy to trigger too. After acquiring the Warrior companion, if Diablo III players decide to equip the NPC party member with a shield, they will be kicked off of the server with an Error 3006.
Blizzard’s already been made aware of the issue and actually has compiled an entire list of game breaking bugs on the community forums. It's currently in the process of addressing each of these bugs.
It’s sad to see a game that’s been so highly anticipated be plagued with such launch issues. Then again, at least it’s not Duke Nukem Forever.