After a long, long wait, players are now finally able to play Diablo 4 thanks to the arrival of the Open Beta. The first run of the beta, exclusive to fans that preorder Blizzard’s latest dungeon crawler, is live now and will run until the afternoon of March 20. A second version of the beta that’s scheduled to run from March 24-27 will be available to all players for free.
As countless players flood into the test run of Blizzard’s latest dungeon crawler, though, a variety of bugs and launch issues have been reported and documented by both fans and Blizzard itself. We’ve recorded all of these in this article to give you an idea of what you should keep an eye out for while playing, and have also included all available information about known fixes and workarounds.
Diablo 4 Open Beta: Top bugs and launch issues
These are the top bugs and launch issues that players are experiencing with the Diablo 4 Open Beta. Note that most of these issues are affecting both the PC and console versions of the game, though some, such as local co-op bugs, are specific to the Xbox and PlayStation versions.
If and when we become aware of additional issues or workarounds, we’ll update this article and document the new information here.
- If players trigger the Lorath intro cutscene while it’s light outside, the player’s and Lorath’s shadows will shimmer until the Prologue is finished.
- Workaround: This issue will not occur if the player skips the cutscene.
- In-game voice chat may not function correctly.
- Blizzard says performance optimizations are still in progress and that players might encounter some performance issues, particularly on older consoles or PCs with dated hardware components.
- Workaround: Lowering Diablo 4’s settings on the PC version of the game may help mitigate performance issues.
- The ‘Play’ tab at the top of the Character Selection screen is clickable but currently it doesn’t lead to another menu.
- Users may experience a queue while logging into Diablo IV during the Early Access Beta Weekend. Blizzard says that the countdown may finish and go beyond the duration listed. Players are advised NOT to leave the queue since this will refresh your position in it, sending you to the “back of the line.”
- During the beta players will be able to select from a wide variety of work-in-progress “Text Language” options beyond English. English will be the only available option for “Spoken Language” during the beta, but Blizzard says other languages will be available at launch.
- Player 2 may have an issue joining games with a pre-existing hero while playing local co-op during the Prologue.
- Players playing Hardcore difficulty in local co-op on console may not be able to return to character select until both players die. Blizzard says this will be fixed when Diablo 4 launches officially.
Diablo 4 is slated to fully launch on June 6, 2023, with the Open Beta expected to run from March 17-19 for Early Access owners and then again from March 24-26 for all players. It has the potential to be one of the best Xbox games for fans of dungeon crawlers and hack-and-slash combat, and we can’t wait to jump in now that the initial run of the beta is live.