Diablo III Launch Day Was... Ugly

Blizzard Entertainment commands a lot of respect in the video game industry, and it’s that respect that led to Diablo III being “the most pre-ordered PC game of all-time on Amazon.com”, over 8000 retailers hosting midnight launch events, and likely five million copies (or more) of the game being purchased on day one. But anyone actually attempting to spend any amount of time with the game today will have been left scratching their head over why they were subjected to server disconnects, multiple stretches of emergency maintenance downtime, considerable amounts of lag when the game finally did come up (even in single player), and other less-than-entertaining problems.

And so, while the servers are currently offline, I figured I’d share a quick 24-hour timeline of the entries we’ve been left with from the company’s customer support Twitter feed and official Diablo Twitter feed that outline the instability and many error codes we’ve all been seeing on launch day:

Approx. 1:45am CST – Link – If you’re receiving Error 33 when trying to log into #D3 that is because the servers are not yet live in North America.

Approx. 2:00am CST – Link – If you try to log into the game now, you should get Error 33, which sounds bad but might be a good thing.

Approx. 2:00am CST – Link – Getting Error 37 when trying to log into #D3? http://bit.ly/L5vSP7 Give it some time and try again.

Approx. 2:15am CST – Link – Error 3004, 3006, 3007, or 300008: We’ve found that one of these suggestions can help: http://bit.ly/Kj0A1X

Approx. 3:00am CST – Link – We are aware the http://Battle.net sites are in maintenance. No ETA when they will be available Updates to follow.

Approx. 3:00am CST – Link – Working to resolve login & char creation issues due to traffic. We’ve added servers & brought our websites offline: http://ow.ly/aUKkp

Approx. 4:00am CST – Link – Error 37 = Please wait & try again. This is the result of high login traffic. Kind of like this: http://bit.ly/KXRAPf

Approx. 1:00pm CST – Link – #D3 is currently down for #Maintenance to resolve several issues. We expect to have all servers up in approx. 1 hr.: http://bit.ly/KYL2jj

Approx. 2:00pm CST – Link – #D3 #Maintenance has been extended until approximately 1:30 PDT: http://bit.ly/KYL2jj

Approx. 3:30pm CST – Link – We’re testing and implementing multiple fixes for the current #D3 service issues. An update will be provided in approximately 30 minutes.

Approx. 4:00pm CST – Link – #D3 servers will be going offline at 2:15PM PDT to address several issues impacting the game. Servers should be back up at approx. 3:30 PDT.

Approx. 10:45pm CST – Link – The current connection issues for #D3 are being looked into. We hope to have the issue resolved quickly. Stay tuned.

Approx. 11:10pm CST – Link – We’re aware players may not be able to connect to the Americas region, or are having difficulty stay in-game. We are investigating.

Approx. 11:20pm CST – Link – We are in the process of performing an emergency maintenance for #D3 servers in the Americas to resolve several issues http://bit.ly/IXhyDg

Approx. 11:55pm CST – Link – Americas region service update at: http://bit.ly/KeoqdB Service expected to return by 11:45 p.m. PDT as we work to resolve these issues.