The long-awaited Diablo 4 open beta’s first appointment is live right now from March 17 till March 19, but many (hopeful) players on Reddit have been encountering connection issues and extremely long queue times while attempting to hop into the game. While Blizzard itself has documented a few issues that are likely to manifest during the beta period, the game is down altogether or inaccessible for a large portion of the community.
The Diablo 4 open beta’s first appointment is open right for now for those who pre-ordered the game or received an access code through the special KFC offer in the U.S. However, a number of players on the /r/Diablo4 subreddit are reporting extremely long queue times along with additional errors while attempting to launch the game:
That’s rough. Waited about 15-20 minutes for “Authentication Pending” just to get an error. Tried logging back in multiple times with the same error. Now I’m back in a queue for ~30 minutes.
While Blizzard included long queue times as a potential issue that could surface during the beta, the spontaneous disconnects that are happening for players once inside the beta were not mentioned. /u/BigWinnerBiggerLoser reports:
Got in in about 2 minutes, started playing, got booted and now sitting in a 61 minute queue.
Streamers are not exempt from these issues, as in the case of Asmongold who was also booted from the game during a playthrough.
Currently, those attempting to rejoin post-disconnection are seeing increasingly-long queue timers:
For those who have managed to make it past the queue, the game may potentially freeze at the end of character creation, a bug for which Reddit users suggest skipping the customization phase altogether.
Update: Blizzard has acknowledged the issues and says it’s currently investigating:
[#Diablo4] We're currently investigating an issue affecting our authentication servers, which may result in failed or slow login attempts.
— Blizzard CS – The Americas (@BlizzardCS) March 17, 2023
Once the issues are resolved or further updates are issued, we’ll be sure to let our readers know.