LogInBlizzard believes it successfully resolved all the major issues and is now fully prepared for the game's launch.
Blizzard has shared that it is confident in a smooth launch of Diablo IV for both PS5 and PS4 next month thanks to beta testing and a series of server stress tests conducted over recent months.
Speaking to Eurogamer, Diablo IV's art director, John Mueller, and associate game director, Joe Piepiora, discussed their efforts to iron out any imperfections in the game prior to its release.
Piepiora emphasized that Diablo IV testing was not solely for marketing purposes and highlighted that it was a necessary step to identify and address potential technical issues. According to him, the developers successfully identified numerous problems and effectively resolved them.
"These are not marketing betas. None of them were. Everything has been about, we need data to make sure the launch goes smooth. That's entirely the purpose of the betas we did," he said.
The developers noted that Blizzard conducted approximately a year of internal testing on Diablo IV before launching open betas. Still, it recognized that internal tests did not replicate the same workload and conditions as public tests, which is why the studio placed significant importance on beta testing.
"When you have people coming through different ISPs and coming in through different servers around the world, there's so much more data you get from that," Piepiora explained. "And with each of those we found lots of little things that happen, like this happens with clan invitations, this happens when you join a party in a certain way – lots of little things like that across the board."
The developers shared that during the recent final beta, which ran from May 12 to May 14, Diablo IV servers experienced minimal queues, and testers widely praised the game's stability. However, as Piepiora pointed out, this stage also proved instrumental for the developers as they implemented certain server-side changes in preparation for the release.
Diablo IV is set to launch on June 6, 2023, across PC and consoles. Starting from June 2, players who have pre-ordered the Deluxe and Ultimate editions will gain exclusive early access to the game.
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