Diablo 2: Resurrected launched earlier today, offering players the chance to relive the classic hack-and-slasher. But why recreate the experience of one Diablo game when you could recreate the experience of two? Resurrected is also experiencing a bunch of launch issues related to its online mode, just like Diablo 3 before it.
Those issues include players being unable to see their existing characters, create new characters, or launch the game. Some might say essential features.
Reports of characters being “deleted” started to appear on Reddit not long after launch. In most of the accounts, players would restart the game for one reason or another – often because they’d encountered a problem – and find their characters missing when they reloaded the game.
Blizzard’s customer support Twitter account for North America tweeted to say they were “looking into issues that prevent some players from seeing existing characters or creating new characters.” That perhaps mean that the missing characters are not actually deleted, but simply inaccessible for now.
To address the character issues and issues with “game creation”, Blizzard used the same account to announce unscheduled maintenance for 10am PT / 6pm BST, which was expected to last 30 minutes. Complaints about ongoing connection issues have continued since, however, including new threads by the minute on the Diablo 2 tech support messageboard.
Diablo 3 suffered similar launch issues, but it’s worth noting that Diablo 2 is not an ‘always online’ game like its sequel was. Diablo 2: Resurrected characters can be created offline, and the game can be played offline, after it has been authenticated online once.
Diablo 2 remains one of Blizzard’s most beloved games, but Resurrected’s rough launch is but one crumbling ember among the blazing inferno currently surrounding the company.
California’s Department Of Fair Employment And Housing are currently suing parent company Activision Blizzard for discrimination, harrassment, and retaliation, alleging that women are paid less and treated poorly in “a pervasive ‘frat boy’ workplace culture”. Over 2600 current and former Actiblizz employees signed an open letter condeming the company’s initial response and many took part in a walkout. Blizzard Entertainment president J. Allen Brack left the company after that, as did a senior Blizzard HR man, and a number of others have reportedly been let go. The state agency have since claimed that the company have “suppressed evidence and interfered with a government investigation.” And yesterday, the US government’s Securities and Exchange Commission launched its own investigation of the company.
