Diablo 4 Servers Are Ready For A Record-Setting Launch Day
Diablo 4 will have plenty of servers available next week when the game releases on June 6.
Activision Blizzard claims that its Diablo 4 servers are “prepared” for the upcoming game launch next week, signaling that the development team and the backend hardware are ready for the mass influx of Diablo 4 players once the game officially launches on June 6. Luckily, Blizzard has a trove of experience it can pull from, considering that online games typically suffer server capacity issues at game title launches.
According to VGC, Diablo 4 general manager Rod Fergusson reassured fans that everything’s ready for the game’s launch. Blizzard held a massive Server Slam open beta earlier this month, which is deliberately designed to let players stress test Blizzard’s servers before the game officially launches. This works well for Blizzard, as it gains a ton of unpaid testers, which in turn were granted Early Access, all stress-testing the servers and providing Blizzard with the necessary feedback so that the company doesn’t get caught off guard when the launch happens.
This is great news, but only partially. It would seem that Blizzard has managed to weed out all the quirks and bugs that have plagued the Diablo 4 beta and have put the game on a horrible start. However, Blizzard has a habit of launching a title worldwide at the same time for all regions, which is equal to letting a million people into an amusement park.
Sure, the park can accommodate the count, but the team at the entrance is going to have a rough workday selling tickets to a stampede of customers and visitors. The bad part about the whole thing is that Server Slams can’t fully replicate real-life server loads.
But they’re definitely a step in the right direction; any preparation and mitigation method for Diablo 4 server traffic congestion is always better than none. In the end, it’s always better to start with a higher server count, despite the heftier cost, and reduce the cost later through realm mergers as the player count goes down and stabilizes. Otherwise, you’re risking the same problem Square Enix had with Final Fantasy XIV, with massive server congestions, player prioritization, and Square Enix having to pull the game from sales until it acquired more servers to accommodate the player count.
Well, it would seem that Blizzard did everything in its power to circumvent such events. However, past experiences have taught us that the extent of those preparations lies in their financial viability instead of player comfort, so it’s safe to assume that Diablo 4 servers will be congested up to the level of inaccessibility, at least at one point. Despite having confidence in invested work and his team, Fergusson has stated that a bumpy ride on Day One isn’t excluded. Still, it sounds like Blizzard is ready for the worst-case scenario with their servers at launch.
In the end, we’re discussing a “what if” situation, considering that all the tests with millions of concurrent players went smoothly. Diablo 4 is scheduled to launch on June 6 for PC and current- and past-gen PlayStation and Xbox platforms.
