Diablo 2 was a defining classic for the action RPG genre when it was originally released in 2001. It was such a titan within the industry that many players have still enjoyed it throughout the decades following its release, so the announcement of its remaster, Diablo 2: Resurrected, came as no surprise. The remaster brings the original game's mechanics, story, and gameplay with improved visuals and some quality of life features to bring it closer to modern standards.
However, its launch was marred by a myriad of issues that saw players struggling to get into the game while those who did often had their experiences tarnished. These issues led to some Diablo 2: Resurrected players calling for refunds while Blizzard has tried to quickly fix the issues plaguing the game. Some of the game's issues at launch have been fixed, but now players are complaining about a server queue problem that has reignited frustrations.
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Diablo 2: Resurrected's Issues at Launch
Chief among Diablo 2: Resurrected's problems at launch was a number of server issues that saw players either unable to connect and play the game or frequently getting kicked from sessions. This problem was then exacerbated when players couldn't access characters because the game said that they were already in use, or they were simply deleted. On consoles, players were also frustrated with the number of bugs, glitches, and crashes that they had to deal with, which all led to Diablo 2: Resurrected getting review bombed on various platforms like Metacritic and Steam.
Blizzard was quick to respond to the complaints, and the development team has been transparent in what is causing the issues as well as how they aim to fix them. Updates and hotfixes came to the game rather quickly, but Diablo 2: Resurrected has still struggled to achieve the consistent performance that players justifiably expect from an online title. To try and appease fans, for the time being, the developers have introduced a log-in queue to ease the burden on the servers, but now that has caused new issues that players have been vocal about.
Diablo 2: Resurrected's New Server Queue Problem
Log-in queues were introduced on PC first, which was quickly followed by some console versions of Diablo 2: Resurrected as well while others are still waiting to receive the update. Once the update was released on PC, players found themselves in queues for ten minutes or longer only to be frequently disconnected. This has been understandably frustrating for players, and many have voiced that they are particularly unhappy with the state Diablo 2: Resurrected as it is an old title remastered by a company that posts billions of dollars in revenue every year.
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The queue times are particularly gruesome and obtuse on console, as players frequently don't even get any indication that they are waiting in a queue. Instead, they have to simply wait for the game to try and connect without any idea of how long it is expected to take or what position they have in the queue. This process is even worse for Diablo 2 players on Switch, where players report that instead of getting placed in a queue, they are just receiving an in-game message instructing them to check their internet despite their connections being fine. Queues are planned to come to the platform next week, but many players, for now, have said that they are simply giving up.
What Blizzard Has Said About It
In a forum post on Blizzard's website a few days ago, community manager PezRadar posted a rather long and transparent explanation of what has been causing the issues for the game as well as what the team is doing to improve the experience. According to the post, the game's popularity has caused its servers to become overwhelmed and shut down as they struggle to handle the numerous log-in attempts from players. To make this worse, whenever the game was unable to connect it would repeatedly try to do so, which would just further contribute to the problem. While the server outages have been frustrating for players, Pezradar does report that a positive side effect of them is that they have given the developers and engineers at Blizzard very valuable information that is being used to improve their servers and data processing company-wide.
As for what the developers are doing to address the issues, the post lists three particular focuses. The first is rate limiting, which prevents players from opening and closing too many games that are connected to its databases to help reduce the strain on the server. This does hamper many leveling techniques in Diablo 2: Resurrected, but the developers have emphasized that it is merely a temporary mitigation technique. The second change is the addition of login queues to help keep the game at safe levels of population as the developers work to improve the servers to handle more players. The final approach is breaking critical game processes into smaller services, such as game server lists so that a player doing one process doesn't flood the database with various attached services as it does now.
It is very unfortunate to see fans having such a hard time enjoying a game that they were excited to get their hands on. However, it is good to see that Blizzard is staying communicative with its community. Hopefully, the developers will be able to make the necessary changes as fast as possible so that more players can get to enjoying Diablo 2: Resurrected's endgame to their hearts' content.
Diablo 2: Resurrected is available now on PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.