Blizzard issued six hotfixes during Diablo 4 early access beta, promises improved open beta

While the Diablo 4 beta had some initial issues, the early access beta weekend was largely successful and led to a wave of positivity as players began to experience the game first hand. Now, Blizzard will be taking the lessons learned this weekend and making improvements ahead of the upcoming open beta. 

If you missed out on the early access beta last weekend, then be on the lookout this weekend, as Diablo 4 will go into open beta from the 24th to the 26th of March. You'll be able to freely download the game on PC, Xbox and PlayStation and play up to the beta's level 20 cap, test out a couple of different world tiers and experience much of what the game has to offer, while keeping campaign spoilers to a minimum.

Speaking on criticism of the early access beta, Diablo franchise lead, Rod Fergusson, expressed some frustration with the way the term ‘beta' is viewed nowadays: “The word beta nowadays has kind of been misconstrued, where people start calling things beta that’s [actually] a marketing beta, and it’s just another term for a demo”, he said in an interview with NME.

“That’s not our case at all. Our beta is actually us testing our technology – especially on the server side. We had a little bit of a rocky start on Friday. We put out six hotfixes over the weekend, we solved dozens of issues and all of that work is going to pay off next weekend and then pave it for launch.”

It is true that the word ‘beta' has been diluted over the years. Publishers like EA and Activision will routinely hold beta tests just over a month before the launch of a game. These are typically marketing betas, as very little tends to change or improve between the end of the beta and the game's release. In Blizzard's case, it has stuck to the older route of testing things months ahead of time, allowing teams plenty of time to take action based on feedback or issues that crop up.

Diablo 4 will be entering open beta this weekend. Given that over a million players logged into the early access beta, we would expect that the open beta will see even higher amounts of traffic.

KitGuru Says: I spent a little bit of time with the early access beta last weekend and I must say, Blizzard has nailed it. It seems like such a huge improvement over Diablo 3, storytelling is looking like a big improvement and the graphics and gameplay are both highly polished. 

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