Diablo 3 release date, character info, beta news

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Diablo 3 error 33 – server maintenance

Published May 20th, 2012 in Blizzard, Diablo 3 gameplay, Diablo 3 in the media and Diablo 3 News. 5 Comments

I come back from a trip and can’t wait to get to my computer to play a bit of Diablo 3 all through Sunday night!

First, I get my favorite error 37 (server busy) and then I get Blizzard’s message that they are working hard on the servers, fixing GOD KNOWS WHAT. It’s definitely not a scheduled maintenance as no one in their right mind schedules server maintenance for Sunday evening.

So why the unplanned server maintenance and more importantly, why the silence? Tell us what’s wrong and WHEN (in your estimate) it is going to be fixed. That’s like an auto mechanic saying, “thanks for leaving your car with us, we might have found something, drive a bike for the next month but might fix it tonight. it’s just one of these things, you know, you can never tell which one it’s going to be – a month or an hour.”

I get it when people said about the open beta – relax, Blizzard is tuning their servers and that’s why you get errors, you are not even supposed to play. But once I’m a buying customer I do have certain rights – as in when I’m going to have access to something I already paid.

Not to mention I only play singleplayer and if it was Diablo II, I wouldn’t have had this problem in the first place. And yes, I got killed twice on Friday because the servers lost my connection (I definitely had Internet connection). So Blizzard’s DRM is killing both hardcode mode and my schedule with all these server issues!

End of rant!

Update: OK, we have now moved to error 3003 – so the battle.net servers are totally unconnectable (if this was really a word). A lot of people complaining about the errors as for the majority this is a SINGLEPLAYER game.

Update 2: I managed to log on to THE AMERICAS! Go, go, go! OK, EU is back up, now I get error 37!

Diablo 3 Cow level

Published May 17th, 2012 in Blizzard, Diablo 3 gameplay and Diablo 3 News. 4 Comments

Just when you thought that “There is no cow level” (this actually appears on a loading screen in Diablo 3), it appears that there actually is a cow level.

Proof’s in the pudding:

HOW TO GET THERE:

First craft the Staff of Herding

The items you need are:

–Black Mushroom – located in a patch of mushrooms in level 1 of the Cathedral (Act 1)
–Shinbone – found occasionally in the fireplace (walk right when you enter) of Leoric’s Manor (Act 1)
–Wirt’s Bell – can be purchased from a vendor in Act 2 for 100,000 gold
–Liquid Rainbow – can be found in a Mysterious Cave (random dungeon) in Dahlgur Oasis during Act 2 after you saved an NPC
–Gibbering Gemstone – random drop from Chiltara in the Caverns of Frost (NOT ice caverns) on the quest where you destroy the ballistae (Act 3)
–Plans for the Staff of Herding – random drop from Izual (Act 4)

Then you just need to get the recipe drop, pay your blacksmith 60k gold and craft it! (Normal mode)

To enable it on higher difficulties you need to find the recepie on that level and pay the blacksmith again (200k for nightmare, 500k for hell, 1 million for INFERNO)

Then find a dead cow in the western parts of old tristram road and you get magical pink rainbow farting unicorns and teddybears,

Btw that cow cracks me up. ENJOY! (and remember, there is no cow level..)

Diablo 3 guest pass giveaway

Published May 15th, 2012 in Blizzard, Diablo 3 gameplay, Diablo 3 in the media and Diablo 3 News. 288 Comments

Update: We’ve given away 12 guest passes so far. We’ll get more tomorrow!

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These are two guest pass codes that were probably redeemed, but we haven’t heard back from the winners, so give them a shot.
First come, first served! The rest, follow the steps below to qualify.

We are giving away several Diablo 3 guest passes. These will give you 30 day play time – for free! The only downside is your characters will be limited to level 13 (same as the beta).

We are going to give away more of the guest passes tomorrow – courtesy of the guys who work on the online RPG Riftforge.

So in order to qualify for a guest pass, here’s what you need to do:

1) Register for the Riftforge exclusive beta, it’s playable in a browser.

2) Beat the first two tutorials (takes only a few minutes).

3) Send us an email with the name of the Guardian commander who gives you the third mission.

The email address for the giveaway appears below, it’s a picture, so spammers cannot collect it. It’s same as the domain name (in case you can’t spell unless you copy and paste).

For the record, these are Bulgarian guest passes but work anywhere – all thanks to Blizzard’s global marketing!

HOWTO: Guide how to redeem your Diablo 3 guest pass:

Update: We got several extra guest passes today as well, so we’re going to give them away to people who have emailed us! So keep your emails coming (remember that the correct Commander name is four letters long and starts with C). We have given away 3 passes already!

Disclaimer: This giveaway doesn’t require any purchases on your behalf. It also doesn’t guarantee you are going to win a Diablo 3 guest pass. There’s a good chance you won’t win anything.

Diablo 3 launcher problems fix

Published May 15th, 2012 in Blizzard, Diablo 3 in the media and Diablo 3 News. 0 Comments

Get a Diablo 3 guest pass now!

Note: Diablo 3 guest passes allow 30 days of free gameplay.

Quite a few of us have been affected by a problem with the Diablo 3 launcher. It seems to start OK (clicking on INFO gives the relevant download info). However, the progress bar doesn’t move and the PLAY button remains gray (inactive).

Here’s a few solutions to try:

1) Exit launcher, go to the DVD and start the Diablo III Setup.exe. It will force the launcher to start again and it worked for me on first try.

2) Click Diablo III (via the shortcut or Diablo III Setup.exe) and select “Run as Administrator…”

3) Turn off all anti-virus programs as they slow down the update (a thousand new files to check). Be patient and wait for a few minutes (if you have done solutions 1 or 2).

4) Kill agent.exe and re-open the launcher. This has worked for people getting the ‘failed to read required file’ error. I got the error but retrying Diablo III didn’t work, I had to re-try the Setup file on the DVD.

If you decide to contribute your solution to the launcher problem, post it at this technical forum!

Don’t get too frustrated about this error because even people who managed to get the launcher to update everything are stuck at the login servers which seem to be under a lot of pressure. Everyone is getting either server busy errors (37) or Battle.net service outage error (75).

Diablo 3 error 75

Published May 15th, 2012 in Blizzard, Diablo 3 in the media and Diablo 3 News. 1 Comment

If you’ve just entered you game code (or your guest pass), you are probably thinking playing Diablo 3 is just a few minutes away!

Not so fast. Apart from the now infamous server busy error (37), Diablo has another secret weapon to keep you from playing – error 75: There is a temporary outage of the Battle.net service.

The error is generated at login, the first checkbox lights and then you wait for about 30 seconds. During regular play, the login is almost instantaneous. The only fix is to try to log in to the Diablo 3 servers later… much later.

The numerous complaints at the Diablo 3 tech forum about error 75 doesn’t seem to motivate Blizzard to get additional servers. In fact, most of us are not able to POST at this forum even though we have purchased a copy of the game and added to the Battle.net account.

Update: Changed location to AMERICAs and I was able to go log in but I’m stuck at Retrieving Hero list.

Diablo 3 launches with Error 37

Published May 15th, 2012 in Blizzard, Diablo 3 gameplay, Diablo 3 in the media and Diablo 3 News. 1 Comment

To all the people who said, “Oh, it’s just a stress test, you’re not supposed to even play it”, I have a simple message for you. It will take the form of a picture, as these are worth 1000 words each:

Even Kotaku reported that the server busy error is very frustrating. I have been to a launch party, waited for four hours to get my box and what do I get – a server busy error!

Come on, Blizzard. You’ve sold 1.2 million WoW Annual Passes with a free Diablo 3. You have pre-sold another million Diablo 3s worldwide. You have done a stress test with 2,000,000 players and you still can’t get the damn servers to handle the traffic?!? Rent a few servers for a month, I bet you can get them $99 a pop. Get a thousand and you’ll still make a billion dollar profit.