The Diablo III Beta Has Officially Ended
Posted 1 May 2012 by FluxBlizzard announced the end time yesterday, and 3am PDT has come and gone, and with it the 
Diablo III Beta. I saw a lot of comments from players who said they’d uninstalled it days ago, to give them a longer break between Beta and Final, but that wasn’t my path. For me, knowing that the beta was about to end motivated me to get in my last licks, and I actually played more the past couple of days than I had in the previous month. Elly and me even recorded two full two-player clears that we’re calling “playcasts” as they were half play through, half podcast. Look for one or both of those in the days to come, just when you start to itch from withdrawal.
Whatever complaints you might have had about it, we can all agree that the Diablo III beta was full of surprises. It certainly wasn’t the beta many of us expected, and probably wasn’t what Blizzard expected either. When it began last September, the official plan was still to push for a December 2011 release, and Blizzard had repeatedly told us they wanted a quick beta with limited content that would function chiefly as a Battle.net stress test.
Obviously, that didn’t happen. Twice during the beta, Blizzard announced that Diablo III had missed a release window, but at least we could see what they were working on, as the beta underwent massive content changes over the months. These included the introduction of the entirely new skill and rune system, numerous changes to crafting and Artisans, a full makeover of the character interface and attribute system, several complete rebalances of the game difficulty, and much more. (Remember gold pets? The Cauldron of Jordan? The Nephalem Cube?)
The amount of testers was a surprise as well. Far from being a quick short test with a rapidly-increasing number of players, the Diablo 3 Beta started small and stayed that way for months. It began as a friends and family test back in August, and scaled up very slowly, remaining basically a glorified F&F all through 2011. More invites finally started to trickle out in early 2012, but even then it was just a few hundred here and there, mostly via contests. Not until the second week of April did we the number of testers finally begin to scale up dramatically, with 275,000 added from Battle.net account opt-ins, a glorious event occurred more than seven months into the beta test.
The biggest event came a week and a half ago, when the open beta weekend let everyone who hadn’t played yet (and who could slay the tech dragon that is the new Blizzard B.net launcher) got their chance on the realms. Well over 200,000 games and 500,000 players were online simultaneously during that event, and Blizzard seemed pleased with it from a tech fix aspect, as they crammed as many players as possible onto just one North American server. The full worldwide launch will feature additional server capacity in the US, as well as multiple servers in Europe and Asia, and after the last day and a half of the open beta weekend ran smoothly, many players feel fairly confident that launch day won’t be an unplayable traffic jam.
If you haven’t done so already, you should uninstall the Diablo III Beta from your computer before you start installing the full game. The Beta client can not be upgraded to the full game, and you do not want to give the Blizzard Launcher any confusion or potential interference from old game or Battle.net files.
Diablo 3 was Blizzard’s longest-awaited and longest-running beta ever, and Diablo III is the Blizzard title that’s had the longest time between announcement and launch — June 2008 – May 2012.
The Beta is dead. Long live the beta.! Farewell to the Beta, and now that you’re gone…. I miss you already.
Farewell until we meet again.
Had a great time in beta. Cannot wait till the 15th!!
I shared the Beta with 2 firends of mine from my account and between us we clocked well over 100 hours, and played every character up multiple times to see what had changes. Highlights for me were:
- Introduction of Skill Runes
- Finding my first Amulat
- Discovering the monster count increased with several patches
It’s been a blast Blizzard! I feel I owe you money already as I discovered very few bugs to report.
Haha between two other people you clocked 100 hours, I clocked 38 just over the open beta weekend
Finally the beta is over. I must of played it for like 2 weeks before I got dead bored of it. Seriously, with so many other great games out there, how could some of you be hooked to a beta with such limited content and zero character depth? I’ve been playing Battlefield 3 religiously and will finally take a break on that when D3 releases. Once I get bored of the lack of character customization in D3, I will return to BF3 where I find weapon customizations to be on par with D3′s character customization, lol.
Well written Flux. It is a little hard to believe we spent so many years waiting for the beta milestone, and now we are on the other side.
It is strange to think back to some of the features like gold companions. They didn’t fit in the world of Sanctuary, but they sure make clicking on bookcases more interesting.
As much as I like Diablo (perhaps not as much as before since priorities for me has changed a bit… married w/kids), the beta didn’t do much for me. In fact, it probably exacerbated my itch for playing. I didn’t spend more time on the Beta because it felt like a waste of time due to the fact that it doesn’t count. I felt like running into a wall (lvl13).
Glad I got in the beta back in Jan, so I can’t complain too much about that.
One suggestion. PLEASE change the skill interface. Just make it a drag/drop function. Who cannot figure out how to do that nowadays? I don’t think its necessary force players to use Left mouse as prim attk, right mouse as defenseive attk.. so forth.
Is it really necessary? I believe with elective mode you are able to put whatever skill you fancy in whatever slot you want? I suppose i could even put Call of the Ancients on LMB if I wanted. Maybe i am wrong
You’re right. Just enable elective mode then you can put any skills in any slot you want.
I loved the beta.
Played through once as barb, that’s all I had time for (open weekend only). Got hooked on it immediately, can’t wait for more.
I played tonnes of Diablo 1 and 2, I believe the difficulty level in the beta is perfect for the introductory phase of the Normal game.
Everything just flowed, one can just enjoy the storyline and get used to the mechanics as they blast through waves of enemies. While quite easy, as it should be, I was kept on my toes a couple times, and the fight with SK had an epic feel to it, I had to back off several times and run for health globes. Regarding all the criticism thrown at the beta and design decisions in general, I think the problem is often with the people themselves – they are just bored, period, and nothing will really please them. I get annoyed when I see these unrealistic expectations, usually coming from people who don’t have Anything else to do for their entire day and expect to get 10,000 hours plus out of a 60 dollar product. I also think anyone who is preparing some \mod\ to make Diablo 3 \look better\ is naive, has ego issues, and is impossible to please.
I’m glad Blizzard has the strength of character, and the funds, to take a stand against customers like this and say: \We hear you, but we don’t agree.\.
I’m sure we all will be talking about this time and all the fun it was 10 years from now.
10 years from now Diablo IV will have been in the works for 6+ years and the usuals on this site will be complaining about how D4 will suck compared to D3.
Just getting this on the books now so that I can reference this for those that are experts at revisionist history. You all know who you are.
IIRC Blizzard said that D3 would be the last of the Diablos in an ARPG format. It was a few good years ago so I really can’t see myself trying to dig that quote.
That being said +JW interview on gamesplant about making an expansion only if D3 is successful boils down to the question of money. If D3 is the bomb and the fans want more we will get expansions and maybe even D4.
edit: I hate this tablet and it’s auto correct. Also the reason I can’t link quote from interview.
Just to be safe and not get any problems on launch day I will format my computer to make sure the launcher is completely gone :)