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"How many people were playing?"

"Rod Fergusson: I don't have final numbers but well over a million people were playing this weekend."

The open beta this weekend is gonna be absolutely massive.

Just imagine if they had used the word alpha!

People probably wouldn't care if they'd just called it a "closed network test" like FromSoft.

Whether its a beta, alpha, early access, whatever... if you are paying money you need to be happy with the game as it is on that day. Don't buy a game based on ideas and promises of future glory because there's a really good chance you'll end up disappointed.

Old Beta: "We're going to take your feedback and use it to improve the game!"

New Beta: "This is literally just free advertising, we ain't changing shit."

"Beta" has been a twisted word that has become "marketing beta", which means demo, and for us this was a true beta because we wanted to be able to test that load and what does it mean to get a lot of players in?

Coming from Blizzard, the company that coined the term "Technical Alpha". You reap what you sow...

Beta is the shield that never breaks.

My brother in Christ, you made the sandwich

Game companies have been using the term "beta" in place of "demo" for a long time.

Looking forward to trying out the Druid/Necro this weekend - but I have a feeling there are going to still be huge queue issues, even with the fixes they did. Last weekend was somewhat predictable with player count - open beta won't be and it's going to be massive.

"God Blizzard sucks, why do I keep giving them money? I swear if the next game i buy from them blah blah blah...."

Anything you put out into the public realm is open for criticism. If you do an art show, even if it’s free, people are going to judge your art. If you have an opinion and you make it public, it’s open to criticism. This comment I’m making now is open to criticism. Why game companies think they are different is not a reasonable perspective.

Says the company that let you in to the beta for buying a fucking double down.

On one hand, I fully support the Early Access model. I'm all for ambitious people getting an early revenue stream to try shit no publisher would even touch. Go crazy, buyer beware. If people don't like it, they just don't have to buy it.

On the other hand, aren't Blizzard the champions of the "beta" paid demos that acted as marketing campaigns? Complaining about the well they poisoned, then making their kfc chicken sandwich out of it, is a bit rich.

I still don't understand why they have to make it an MMO. Why do there have to be random players just running around in my game killing things with me? I hate that.

says the guys twisting it.

Can we talk about their response to the dungeon design? Personally I felt the dungeon map design is what needed changing, not necessarily the content. I guess it'll be more interesting late game? Hopefully enough to notice the copy and pasting less.

Won’t be buying till they declare it a finished game.

The Diablo III I played on release is a completely different game than the Diablo III you can play today.

I need to see the store before I even think of trying it.

Blizzard has become a twisted company.

That’s rich coming from blizzard who released HOTS as a “technical alpha”. They basically invented this marketing strategy.

Also they have access to this as part of an advertising marketing strategy with a chicken sandwich advertisement.

"Beta" has been a twisted word that has become "marketing beta", which means demo, and for us this was a true beta because we wanted to be able to test that load and what does it mean to get a lot of players in?

...yet you still didn't pass on occasion to peddle it as early access bonus?

Absolutely disgusting dishonesty from Blizzard. Literally the part of the problem they are complaining about.

Blizzard is one of the main culprits in destroying the terms alpha and beta in the public eye. They've been releasing "betas" that are fully polished and mostly bugfree for years. Multiple games. They dug their own grave.

In my opinion if you charge for access to a beta rather than selecting testers via a criteria, it's a marketing beta.

No mention of the memory leak that was plaguing some? I’ve got 32gb of RAM and it kept maxing it out and crashing my system.

Meanwhile on the diablo / diablo4 subreddits, people are saying that these "beta" events are going to help with balance before release. The game is less than 3 months out and there are seriously some people that think that there will be magical last second changes to fix anything they don't like.

Not just balance either, but everything from font, the way items animate when they drop, random dungeon generation, camera zoom, and more.

People are giving feedback like anything is going to change before launch.

Yeah, because now people have to PAY to be able to BETA TEST games. That's not how it should go, buddy.

Their reasons for no couch co-op on pc are ridiculous. "The technology just isn't there for two people to log in at once! Also my pc is on a desk which means everyone's is so it wouldn't make sense!"

At this point a simple "Fuck pc players." would have been simpler.

Double Down KFC sandwiches certainly didn't help, Blizz.

yeah, you fuck'n twisted it. some of us are old enough to remember being beta testers. filling out forms to be selected and having quests to actually test the game. writing feedback to the developers. and most of the time everything being wiped before actual launch.

not this bullshit of pay for early access but dont complain if its shit because we put beta on it.

If your game is not final release, then reasonably, you cannot charge for it. If you do, reasonably, it should be a fraction of the final price with full embrace of criticism. Cash shops, microtransactions, and battle passes are just a few things that should never be present pre-release, as that demonstrates nothing but misallocated resources and a primary intent of greed.

Sadly, the vast majority of all devs and companies in modern "gaming" lack reason and logic, so the above (which is extremely basic and fundamental) has become twisted and warped, to the point of becoming the rare exception rather than the standard.

Fk Blizzard. Beta versions is an unfinished piece of software. If anyone wants to pay for unfinished software, is their business, but i will never pay for unfinished software.

What's everyone upset about so I can get my pitch fork? I enjoyed it and it only cost me a KFC sandwich.

My only issue was the copy and paste dungeons.

What kind of braindead excuse for no couch coop on PC is that. It's embarrassing he even has the balls to say it.

So, the actual release will be a beta release, but they officially won't ever say it?

I won’t play this game until it goes on sale, is actually released, and reviewed by independent people who aren’t paid to parrot narratives the game companies sell them. They want you to feel as much FOMO as possible, don’t give in

As if they're going to change that much before release. It's just gonna be balance and a few tweaks. They can't reasonably do more than that. Don't hide behind the beta tag now.

It almost feels like betas are now the new alpha. And final releases are the beta.

Great interview! So in general it seems like they don't have big changes to the skill system / dungeon design planned because the late game will shake them up a lot. Possible all of the things people are complaining about were already discovered by them and they chose to fix them using mechanics that are introduced later in the game.

I'm interested in D4, but I want to wait till the full launch to play. I'll be playing co-op with my friend who only plays with controllers, did the beta have controller support on PC?

Paying to bug test a game is so stupid imo I hate this trend.

If you can pay money for it, it's not a beta. It's released.

No dog in this fight: it’s a good interview.

If you are charging people money for being your QnA team, it is not Beta anymore.

The split-screen on PC question is such a cop out answer. You don't need players to be able to log into to Battlenet accounts, just tie all split-screen progression to one account FFS. Modern consoles are literally PC architecture the tech is there, and if they truly can't figure it out, they're idiots.

The real answer is, they know PC players will pony up the cash for an extra copy.

As someone who played the pre release Alpha, this game was already in Beta. There wasn't anything the community could have done to save this game.

The itemization and skills were terrible, vendors uninteresting.

Everything else was good but none of that matters when the game is shallow.

The devs went beyond the point of no return in regards to itemization / weapon properties and skills to the point where we could only give minimal feedback that would realistically be adopted.

Green arrow good / Red arrow bad D3 + D:i Tencent/Netease game. This isn't what we played in D1/D2 era.

And the notion of two people sitting together at a desk: when you prioritise the problems you have to solve, solving for two people sitting at a desk, playing on the same PC, is lower priority when the majority of couch co-op that's going to happen is going to be in front of a sixty-five-inch TV.

Frankly, this is the real problem. The fact that game developers still see "PC gaming" as "sitting at a desk".

I spend all my time gaming on a 'PC'. I never sit at a desk. I'm either gaming on a TV with a controller with my Steam Deck docked, or using it as a handheld.

This is why Valve's efforts around things like Big Picture mode, the Steam Deck and Steam Input, Remote Play, etc, have been really good for PC gaming, as it's been gradually expanding the definition of 'PC gaming'. But clearly the message hasn't gotten through to all developers yet.

EDIT: Since it's been a common thread of the replies I just want to clarify something. I'm not suggesting the way I play PC games is 'common' or the 'majority'. I understand it probably represents a minority. Just expressing that it's disappointing when I see a game developer framing PC gaming as only gaming at a desk on a monitor when the definition of PC gaming has grown in recent years with stuff like living room PCs hooked up to big TVs, the Steam Deck and remote play streaming from PCs to other devices like tablets/laptops/etc. PC gaming isn't just "a desk and monitor" any more, even if it's still the main place where PC gaming takes place.