Blizzard Entertainment refers to beta testing Diablo IV not as a marketing ploy, but as a real test of the game and the services that support it. This was told by the general manager of the title, Rob Ferguson, in a commentary for Eurogamer.
According to Ferguson, lately people have misrepresented the concept of beta testing – now it often means a demo version released as another marketing tool. “It was a real beta,” the manager said, noting Blizzard’s different approach.
Ferguson noted that long queues, bugs and errors are natural things. Beta testing is carried out precisely to identify shortcomings and test the capacity of servers. In addition, developers are trained to quickly find and fix problems so that there are as few of them as possible on the release. He also emphasized that sometimes the studio independently creates a queue when entering the game in order to reduce the load on some services and slow down the flow of players.
The first round of beta testing for Diablo IV took place on March 17-19, and the game will be available to everyone on March 24-27. During the beta, players complained about hour-long queues, progress-depriving bugs, broken video cards, and other issues. Many of the shortcomings Blizzard eliminated during the first phase.
