Diablo 4 players are expressing their frustrations over the game’s lack of communication when it comes to server disconnects. A recent Reddit thread sparked the initial conversation with many other players also chiming in, calling Blizzard’s handling of server disconnects “stupid.”
Reddit user Same-Drink2905 opened their pleading statement to Blizzard about the game’s server handling by saying “this is stupid.” They argue that other Blizzard games, like World of Warcraft, would issue a server maintenance warning a good few hours in advance, and that “on no planet is this acceptable” for Diablo 4 players.
Some players did play devil’s advocate though, like gonzobon, who said that the server maintenance notice was visible on the launcher for a few hours before it was executed, but the original poster argued, asking why they would look at the launcher when they were already logged in and playing.
Others said that Diablo 4 issued this warning on Twitter, but it was downvoted because it looped back to the same issue. Players shouldn’t have to look outside the game to get information about what’s happening inside the game, and the message should have been sent as a prompt or notice within the game itself. Needless to say, consoles don’t even have anything resembling a launcher for players to check maintenance notices.
The first – and most upvoted – comment sarcastically reads, “Welcome to all the problems of an MMO without any of the benefits”, and this is probably the best way to sum up the real cause of frustration. It’s not about the servers or the developer’s communication per se, it’s about a game that is single-player at its core (as SolidMarsupial puts it) requiring a constant online connection to operate or function at all, and forcing players, especially those who enjoy the solo content, to deal with problems they never want to deal with.
The ‘always online’ aspect seems to cause difficulties even for those who just want to enjoy local co-op play. Systemofwar described their exhausting experience, saying that their character was always lagging and that they died twice because nothing was loading properly. And when it lagged, they were unable to use the dodge mechanic. So the server issues here are affecting core components of the game, not just the players’ ability to log in and out.
For many, Diablo 4 feels like a single-player experience shoehorned into an online template without the tools to make the online component worthwhile. Capsfan6 pointed out the lack of a general chat channel or a city-bound local chat channel, and nerdening was annoyed by the inability to block whispers (private messages in MMOs) on Xbox.
There’s not even a matchmaking feature in the game, as idispensemeds2 emphasized vexingly. There is a trade channel, but as the name implies, it’s only for trading, and all of this boils down to the social aspect (and the overall experience) of Diablo 4 being lackluster for many current players whether they are focused on the solo component or the online component or both.