Blizzard expects ‘unprecedented traffic and queue times’ for Diablo 4’s open beta

Blizzard has told players to expect “unprecedented traffic and queue times” when Diablo 4’s open beta launches today.

Early access to the Diablo 4 beta was available last weekend for players who had pre-ordered the game, and the test opened to queues of several hours for some players.

The Diablo 4 beta will be open to everyone from 9am PT / 4pm GMT today, and players have been warned that wait times to access the game will again be lengthy.

“As we prepare to open the gates to Sanctuary, we’d like to remind our players that the Diablo IV Open Beta is a test to ensure a smooth launch,” Blizzard tweeted.

“We expect unprecedented traffic and queue times as a result. We appreciate your patience & understanding.”

The company elaborated in a forum post: “When we open the gates again this Friday to absolutely everyone, we are expecting a lot of people. There will be lengthy queue times, particularly on Friday when we first launch and during peak regional windows.

“This past weekend helped us to forecast the capacity we expect this weekend, and we will be using that capacity to intentionally stress our systems in preparation for launch.

“In summary, while we know it can be frustrating, we need queues to properly stress test our services and we are designing to ensure we have them some of the time.”

In an interview this week, franchise boss Rod Fergusson stressed that the Diablo 4 beta isn’t a demo.

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“The word beta nowadays has kind of been misconstrued, where people start calling things beta that’s [actually] a marketing beta, and it’s just another term for a demo,” he told NME.

“That’s not our case at all. Our beta is actually us testing our technology – especially on the server side. We had a little bit of a rocky start on Friday.”

Fergusson added: “We put out six hotfixes over the weekend, we solved dozens of issues and all of that work is going to pay off next weekend and then pave it for launch.”