Diablo III - Marketing and Release

Marketing and Release

Diablo III was released on May 15, 2012. Players had the options to buy one of two retail boxed versions, a standard edition and collector's edition, or could also pre-order directly from Battle.net and download the installer in advance. On May 14, 2012 players who bought the downloadable version from Battle.net could install the rest of the game including patches. On May 15, 2012 the retail version could be bought from stores doing midnight launches such as GameStop. The Diablo III Battle.net servers went live at this time and people who downloaded the game could begin playing. Initially the launches were hindered by heavy server load with many users getting various errors, including the error 37 which reads; "The servers are busy at this time. Please try again later". These issues made the game unplayable for those affected, while some others experienced in-game bugs. Despite assurances from Blizzard that the problems leading to the connection errors during Diablo III's launch had been resolved, Eurogamer reported on May 31, 2012 that these errors were still ongoing, and had reappeared after patch 1.0.2 was released for the game. Many fans complained that the ongoing problems had caused them to lose their hardcore (permanent death) characters.

In South Korea, players waited up to 36 hours to purchase the collector's edition.

The release was also the source of a minor controversy in Australia when retailer Game went into voluntary administration the day before the release, and so was unable to honor pre-orders or offer refunds. In response to this, Blizzard Entertainment offered affected customers credit in purchasing the digital version of the game.

The game has yet to be released in China as it has not been approved by the Ministry of Culture however it continues to be sold under the name "Big Pineapple" which sounds similar to Diablo in Mandarin Chinese in order to dodge the sales ban.