Diablo IV Gone Gold, Release Dates, Gameplay Guide Episode 1

[svetlio]

So basicly blizard have so little sales of diablo 4 that they felt d need to publish this "goin gold" article in a final bid to comvince peaople to massivly overpay for a late beta.Knowing blizard and their game releasing habits i feel bad for evryone that preordered it, the usual scenario is that even whit 4 dayearly acsess you will have 5-6 hours ques in extremly laggy and buggy game so you can betatest for 4 days and they can pach up some bugs for d official release day

[chiddie]

So basicly blizard have so little sales of diablo 4 that they felt d need to publish this "goin gold" article in a final bid to comvince peaople to massivly overpay for a late beta.Knowing blizard and their game releasing habits i feel bad for evryone that preordered it, the usual scenario is that even whit 4 dayearly acsess you will have 5-6 hours ques in extremly laggy and buggy game so you can betatest for 4 days and they can pach up some bugs for d official release day

That is basically the standard scenario for 99% of more or less every mmoish game’s first days of release.

[svetlio]

Got it basic scenario is to charge you 100 euro so you can beta test for them!!! Cool story.

[chiddie]

Got it basic scenario is to charge you 100 euro so you can beta test for them!!! Cool story.

It’s not 100 euro. But anyways, are you new in videogames?

Because day one patches (especially for online multiplayer games) are a thing since at least 10 years.

[svetlio]

It’s not 100 euro. But anyways, are you new in videogames?

Because day one patches (especially for online multiplayer games) are a thing since at least 10 years.

I am sorry you are corct its not 100 euro is 99.99 my bad.For 99.99 i woud expext to play COMPLATE game.Not into paying to betatest.If they charge you 10-15 euro its ok. If they charge you 99.99 and anonce that their game is gone gold 30+ days before reales getin first day pach(wave of hotfixing critical errors) is not ok.Even more it soud be a ground for full refunding in real money and not blizard balance shitt.

[chiddie]

I am sorry you are corct its not 100 euro is 99.99 my bad.For 99.99 i woud expext to play COMPLATE game.Not into paying to betatest.If they charge you 10-15 euro its ok. If they charge you 99.99 and anonce that their game is gone gold 30+ days before reales getin first day pach(wave of hotfixing critical errors) is not ok.Even more it soud be a ground for full refunding in real money and not blizard balance shitt.

Dude you have no idea what you’re talking about.

1. The standard version is 70 bucks.
2. The game HAS to go gold at some point because consoles have also physical copies and printing plus packaging plus shipping them takes time.
3. You are not buying a beta. Day one patch does not mean “beta” or “game broken” by ANY meaning.
4. You are clearly a sad troll and/or Blizzard hater.

[svetlio]

1.And to me you are clearly blizard diehard fanboy or you are working for them
2.Explain to me what kind of game need "content update" in its first day.
3.If they release a pch in first day that is not content update,then it is pach to fix bugs,errors (or balance updete ???) in any case its not a complate game
4. Not a complate game=late beta at best
5 Ill just be normal person and w8 for 70 procent off promotion wich will come by d end of d year,will get real complate game and will let diehard bizard fanboys like you do some betatesting for blizard.
6 IF you standart in last 10 years is to acept first day paches it only come to show how low standarts in d games you play have fallen compared whit d standarts before

[Kumorii]

Another one that complains about first day patches.

No game is ever bugfree, nor will they ever be.
The alternative is that they stop working on the game after "going gold" which means you are stuck with the bugs the games ship with. And I say that again, all games have bugs, no exception.
The benefit of a day 1 patch is that you get more bug fixes.

Day 1 patch complaints makes no sense. At this point it's just another buzzword for a game someone hates.
It's backwards.

If they release the same game but no day 1 patch you would apparently have a complete game. But one that does have a day 1 patch that fixes MORE bugs apparently is not?

I imagine people complaining about day 1 patches never grew up with games without them... It would blow your mind with how broken games were released. Which they couldn't fix. Or you had to wait for a patch to come out that fix whatever game breaking bug a game might have. Games weren't delivered in a 100% state back in the day, they never were, nor will they ever be. You can't have a 100% bug free game.

The choices are:

More bugs without 1 day patches.

Less bugs with 1 day patches.

It's such an easy choice.

[chiddie]

1.And to me you are clearly blizard diehard fanboy or you are working for them
2.Explain to me what kind of game need "content update" in its first day.
3.If they release a pch in first day that is not content update,then it is pach to fix bugs,errors (or balance updete ???) in any case its not a complate game
4. Not a complate game=late beta at best
5 Ill just be normal person and w8 for 70 procent off promotion wich will come by d end of d year,will get real complate game and will let diehard bizard fanboys like you do some betatesting for blizard.
6 IF you standart in last 10 years is to acept first day paches it only come to show how low standarts in d games you play have fallen compared whit d standarts before

1. I am simply a person with a working brain that does not make assumptions basing on NOTHING.
2. Where did you read that D4 will have a CONTENT patch day 1?
3. Dude, seriously? Again, repeat with me: “NO GAME COMES OUT BUG FREE NOWADAYS”. Because games are more and more complex and there’s a limit on how much they can be tested before release. If you want a 10 years development cycle to release a game like D4 with ZERO bugs, feel free to found your company and give it a try (hint: you will need a hella LOT of money to achieve that, good luck with your kickstarter).
4. Bugs do not mean “game is not complete”, what are you - again - talking about?
5. The chances that the game will cost 20 bucks by Christmas are below zero. Feel free to wait, see you in S10 (maybe).

Really this entire conversation makes no sense, it’s only a low level rant against Blizzard “because yes”.

It’s like saying that WoW is in beta since Vanilla day one because in every patch there are still bug fixes nowadays. Totally non sense.

[svetlio]

1. I am simply a person with a working brain that does not make assumptions basing on NOTHING.
2. Where did you read that D4 will have a CONTENT patch day 1?
3. Dude, seriously? Again, repeat with me: “NO GAME COMES OUT BUG FREE NOWADAYS”. Because games are more and more complex and there’s a limit on how much they can be tested before release. If you want a 10 years development cycle to release a game like D4 with ZERO bugs, feel free to found your company and give it a try (hint: you will need a hella LOT of money to achieve that, good luck with your kickstarter).
4. Bugs do not mean “game is not complete”, what are you - again - talking about?
5. The chances that the game will cost 20 bucks by Christmas are below zero. Feel free to wait, see you in S10 (maybe).

Really this entire conversation makes no sense, it’s only a low level rant against Blizzard “because yes”.

It’s like saying that WoW is in beta since Vanilla day one because in every patch there are still bug fixes nowadays. Totally non sense.

1.we all know that blizard are poor and microsoft are poor too so they dont have money to properly test thier produscts. I totaly agree whit you on that one.
2.They give 20 peocent off on their last WOW expansion 45 days after release
3.Puting 99.99 on a geame whit season subscription is very good marceting idea,they can make alot of money on it from diehard blizard fans(you and the other 999 faling for it) and then for chrismass there will be 50-70 procent off promotion cos they will need to actualy sell copies to earn their christmass bonuses!!!
4.Time will tell who is correct on it .for now i am stopin talkin to you.

[Mardux]

Lmfao I love how a game being 'finished' before shipping is considered news. Good god

Lmfao I love how you have exactly zero idea how game development has worked in the last 30 years.

- - - Updated - - -

Another one that complains about first day patches.

No game is ever bugfree, nor will they ever be.
The alternative is that they stop working on the game after "going gold" which means you are stuck with the bugs the games ship with. And I say that again, all games have bugs, no exception.
The benefit of a day 1 patch is that you get more bug fixes.

Day 1 patch complaints makes no sense. At this point it's just another buzzword for a game someone hates.
It's backwards.

If they release the same game but no day 1 patch you would apparently have a complete game. But one that does have a day 1 patch that fixes MORE bugs apparently is not?

I imagine people complaining about day 1 patches never grew up with games without them... It would blow your mind with how broken games were released. Which they couldn't fix. Or you had to wait for a patch to come out that fix whatever game breaking bug a game might have. Games weren't delivered in a 100% state back in the day, they never were, nor will they ever be. You can't have a 100% bug free game.

The choices are:

More bugs without 1 day patches.

Less bugs with 1 day patches.

It's such an easy choice.

I mean, they could always do what the haters want and just never release any game because there will always be more bugs. Thats technically an alternative.

[exochaft]

I imagine people complaining about day 1 patches never grew up with games without them... It would blow your mind with how broken games were released. Which they couldn't fix. Or you had to wait for a patch to come out that fix whatever game breaking bug a game might have. Games weren't delivered in a 100% state back in the day, they never were, nor will they ever be. You can't have a 100% bug free game.

The choices are:

More bugs without 1 day patches.

Less bugs with 1 day patches.

It's such an easy choice.

I think the issue is less about Day 1 patches as a tool and more about how said tool is used.

Without devolving into an extremely long post, the Day 1 patches nowadays are now being used as tool to be lazier in the QC and testing department. Obviously this trend will highly depend on the company, but there are some games that are so broken on release day that people wonder if they even bothered testing things (or in some cases, people who were part of the testing phases of the game knew/reported the issues a long time prior to official release).

Yes, I'm from a time before PCs were even in most homes, and I still remember buying the original Wolfenstein 3D on 3.5" floppies as well as buying consoles in the early home gaming market. Yes, games did launch with bugs. However, there was a much larger push to make sure the game was released in a good state exactly because there was no such thing as Day 1 patches or even internet in the early days. Some of my favorite SNES games that I play to this day have bugs and glitches in them, but they're completely playable as they are because the games were still tested enough that such issues either wouldn't effect most people or you had to really go out of your way to find/exploit the bugs. In general, it was pretty rare that a game launched that was so broken that you couldn't play it or the experience was so terrible you didn't want to play it (they did exist though, and they were usually cheap games).

Fast forward to today, and you can commonly get games that launch in such horrendous conditions that even Day 1 patches can't fix them. What's the difference? To be completely fair, a lot of games are so complex that it gets harder to catch all the bugs. However, the ability for a gaming company to test and do QC on a game is leagues better and more accessible than it was decades ago. Nowadays, the fact you can have multiple alpha and beta testing phases involving thousands (or even millions) of people prior to release day is something that could only be dreamed of decades ago. Unfortunately, I feel this access to generally free and accessible QC testing is taken for granted, or used as a replacement for internal QC testing, or just QC testing is skimped for time. While Day 1 patches may be a necessary evil when it comes to larger, more complex games (especially in the PC gaming market), even Day 1 patches are turning in Week 1 or Month 1 patches attempting to fix issues that should've been address a long time prior to release.

All this being said, I think it's fair to say most people wouldn't really care about minor issues and bugs that have minimal or no impact on gameplay. When thinking back to the earlier gaming days before the internet was widespread, vast majority of bugs in games fell into the category of having little to no impact in gameplay... because if there was major impact, your game sales would likely suffer. Nowadays, it's considered acceptable to some people that a game can launch with massive bugs and issues impacting gameplay because we can have Day 1 patches. Again, it's not about the ability to patch a game on release day if necessary, it's that gaming companies are using it to be lazy at the expense of the customers.

When it comes to Blizz, their testing as been... questionable at best. Nobody's perfect, but having been part of the alpha and beta testing phases for Blizz games and patches, I can safely say their acceptance and/or response to player-based feedback has been steadily declining over the years. It's gotten to the point in some cases where blue posts will gaslight the crap out of the community when it comes to major issues that were know for extended periods of time during the testing phases, claiming that no one caught them until things went live. D4 testing phases hasn't seemed to terrible, but I imagine the company is trying to combat their image issues as of late, but fundamentally the recent announcements when it came to balances/fixes after the open beta were already know in the closed beta as part of the feedback. Basically, I'm fairly skeptical with Blizz and their behavior in the past, so I don't blame others for being skeptical, as well.

[Kumorii]

I think the issue is less about Day 1 patches as a tool and more about how said tool is used.

Without devolving into an extremely long post, the Day 1 patches nowadays are now being used as tool to be lazier in the QC and testing department. Obviously this trend will highly depend on the company, but there are some games that are so broken on release day that people wonder if they even bothered testing things (or in some cases, people who were part of the testing phases of the game knew/reported the issues a long time prior to official release).

Yes, I'm from a time before PCs were even in most homes, and I still remember buying the original Wolfenstein 3D on 3.5" floppies as well as buying consoles in the early home gaming market. Yes, games did launch with bugs. However, there was a much larger push to make sure the game was released in a good state exactly because there was no such thing as Day 1 patches or even internet in the early days. Some of my favorite SNES games that I play to this day have bugs and glitches in them, but they're completely playable as they are because the games were still tested enough that such issues either wouldn't effect most people or you had to really go out of your way to find/exploit the bugs. In general, it was pretty rare that a game launched that was so broken that you couldn't play it or the experience was so terrible you didn't want to play it (they did exist though, and they were usually cheap games).

Fast forward to today, and you can commonly get games that launch in such horrendous conditions that even Day 1 patches can't fix them. What's the difference? To be completely fair, a lot of games are so complex that it gets harder to catch all the bugs. However, the ability for a gaming company to test and do QC on a game is leagues better and more accessible than it was decades ago. Nowadays, the fact you can have multiple alpha and beta testing phases involving thousands (or even millions) of people prior to release day is something that could only be dreamed of decades ago. Unfortunately, I feel this access to generally free and accessible QC testing is taken for granted, or used as a replacement for internal QC testing, or just QC testing is skimped for time. While Day 1 patches may be a necessary evil when it comes to larger, more complex games (especially in the PC gaming market), even Day 1 patches are turning in Week 1 or Month 1 patches attempting to fix issues that should've been address a long time prior to release.

All this being said, I think it's fair to say most people wouldn't really care about minor issues and bugs that have minimal or no impact on gameplay. When thinking back to the earlier gaming days before the internet was widespread, vast majority of bugs in games fell into the category of having little to no impact in gameplay... because if there was major impact, your game sales would likely suffer. Nowadays, it's considered acceptable to some people that a game can launch with massive bugs and issues impacting gameplay because we can have Day 1 patches. Again, it's not about the ability to patch a game on release day if necessary, it's that gaming companies are using it to be lazy at the expense of the customers.

When it comes to Blizz, their testing as been... questionable at best. Nobody's perfect, but having been part of the alpha and beta testing phases for Blizz games and patches, I can safely say their acceptance and/or response to player-based feedback has been steadily declining over the years. It's gotten to the point in some cases where blue posts will gaslight the crap out of the community when it comes to major issues that were know for extended periods of time during the testing phases, claiming that no one caught them until things went live. D4 testing phases hasn't seemed to terrible, but I imagine the company is trying to combat their image issues as of late, but fundamentally the recent announcements when it came to balances/fixes after the open beta were already know in the closed beta as part of the feedback. Basically, I'm fairly skeptical with Blizz and their behavior in the past, so I don't blame others for being skeptical, as well.

Thing is, I agree with a lot of what you say. However I do not agree with that it's more common now than before.
For every snes / nes game that was launched properly, there was another one that wasn't.
Angry video game nerd made an entire career on games that was released too early, buggy or just plain bad design which could use more time in the oven. I think it's more about perception rather than an actual tangible difference in time. Games are also way more complex nowadays, which means overall more bugs, but overall the QA departments have also increased accordingly. So for me, growing up with NES and DOS and to this day don't really see much difference. Except, as with everything, internet made it so you know about everything that happens. It's not like there were articles upon articles when a game got released on how buggy it was back in the day. Ergo, perception is the difference.

If I release a game which is release ready and have a few bugs like normal, no one would really complain. Sure bug reports happen and some will think they are unacceptable. Just like always.
However, if I now release the same game but I say "There's gonna be a day 1 patch" you will surely get more complaints about it "not being ready".

Even a big hit such as Elden Ring had a day 1 patch. Why? Because there's no reason to stop development for 2-3 months for no real reason except the perception from customers thinking a day 1 patch is somehow negative. I gave praise to this game for being so good and I heard almost only praise for the game. Though they DID have a day 1 patch. THUS it wasn't finished as per the logic of day 1 patch complaints. Since day 1 patch = it's not finished.

I don't really get the lazy bit, not because I don't agree with it overall, but I don't see how that is tied to day 1 patches.
They are being lazy, so they work up until release to release a fix for their laziness? They were lazy, so before release they fix it? I see that as a good thing again. The game gonna released when it's released regardless, so why shouldn't they keep working those 2 extra months?
Lets say the game isn't ready or whatever. And they spend the next month fixing the game and then on june 6th, instead of releasing, they now go gold. And they start prepping the release version for prints and distribution. There's still 2 months of time until actual release. Should they not work and fix more stuff?

You can keep this going forever... and the only option is to NOT release a day 1 patch for the appearance of "being finished" but in practice leads to a worse product because less bugs will be fixed. No one seems to complain about games patching their games over time, in fact people expect patches to fix various bugs... so I guess developers should postpone their first patch until a week after just for appearances?

This is what I mean with Day 1 patches being a misguided complaint and is mostly just used for games the person already dislike.
If developers are being lazy and release unfinished products they will do so regardless of day 1 patches or not. Have happened before, a LOT. Will continue to happen in the future. For various reasons. I'm with you on being skeptical. I fully understand that. Day 1 patches isn't a reason to be skeptical though.

Games are never finished. They can always be fixed more than they currently are.

[Vellus]

Lmfao I love how you have exactly zero idea how game development has worked in the last 30 years.

"Leave the poor company alone. This toxic playerbase doesn't understand that game studios can't help but release unfinished games and rush development to get new titles out the door. We all just need to accept that playing games at launch will always be a bad experience and there's nothing we can do about it."

[Zorachus]

In the old days "Going Gold" meant the main game development was complete, and was getting ready distribution and shipping, which would all takes weeks to months.

But in 2023, since everything is digital and downloaded, shouldn't the game be ready to purchase and download and play right now?

[Kumorii]

In the old days "Going Gold" meant the main game development was complete, and was getting ready distribution and shipping, which would all takes weeks to months.

But in 2023, since everything is digital and downloaded, shouldn't the game be ready to purchase and download and play right now?

Discs are still being used in 2023. Especially on consoles. Which is why it's now sent to printing and distributing.

[Oftenwrongsoong]

I don't think "Going Gold" has the same meaning anymore, since they'll still probably have a Day One patch you'll have to download to play... but okay, cool.

You mean like how the Gold World of Warcraft build in 2004 was broken at launch and required a day 1 patch to even log into the game?

Yea, times sure do change.

[HansOlo]

"Leave the poor company alone. This toxic playerbase doesn't understand that game studios can't help but release unfinished games and rush development to get new titles out the door. We all just need to accept that playing games at launch will always be a bad experience and there's nothing we can do about it."

"Assuming everything is rushed, just because you didn't like the product to start with".

Or;

"It's ONLY Blizzard games that fails at 1day. It's never seen before, that any other company would fail at launch - in the whole world of the world".

Please share some more insight. It's amusing.

[Nzx]

Game developer : yeeey we reached all our goals before release and can share it before going back to polishing more.

MMO-C forum: WAAAAAAAAAHHHHH BAAAAAAAAAH AAWAAAAAAHHHH WAAAAAAAAHHHH

Hahaha holy shit. This. It's not even worth articulating what these capital letters are covering for because it all literally just boils down to crying for attention.

[chiddie]

I think the issue is less about Day 1 patches as a tool and more about how said tool is used.

Without devolving into an extremely long post, the Day 1 patches nowadays are now being used as tool to be lazier in the QC and testing department. Obviously this trend will highly depend on the company, but there are some games that are so broken on release day that people wonder if they even bothered testing things (or in some cases, people who were part of the testing phases of the game knew/reported the issues a long time prior to official release).

Yes, I'm from a time before PCs were even in most homes, and I still remember buying the original Wolfenstein 3D on 3.5" floppies as well as buying consoles in the early home gaming market. Yes, games did launch with bugs. However, there was a much larger push to make sure the game was released in a good state exactly because there was no such thing as Day 1 patches or even internet in the early days. Some of my favorite SNES games that I play to this day have bugs and glitches in them, but they're completely playable as they are because the games were still tested enough that such issues either wouldn't effect most people or you had to really go out of your way to find/exploit the bugs. In general, it was pretty rare that a game launched that was so broken that you couldn't play it or the experience was so terrible you didn't want to play it (they did exist though, and they were usually cheap games).

Fast forward to today, and you can commonly get games that launch in such horrendous conditions that even Day 1 patches can't fix them. What's the difference? To be completely fair, a lot of games are so complex that it gets harder to catch all the bugs. However, the ability for a gaming company to test and do QC on a game is leagues better and more accessible than it was decades ago. Nowadays, the fact you can have multiple alpha and beta testing phases involving thousands (or even millions) of people prior to release day is something that could only be dreamed of decades ago. Unfortunately, I feel this access to generally free and accessible QC testing is taken for granted, or used as a replacement for internal QC testing, or just QC testing is skimped for time. While Day 1 patches may be a necessary evil when it comes to larger, more complex games (especially in the PC gaming market), even Day 1 patches are turning in Week 1 or Month 1 patches attempting to fix issues that should've been address a long time prior to release.

All this being said, I think it's fair to say most people wouldn't really care about minor issues and bugs that have minimal or no impact on gameplay. When thinking back to the earlier gaming days before the internet was widespread, vast majority of bugs in games fell into the category of having little to no impact in gameplay... because if there was major impact, your game sales would likely suffer. Nowadays, it's considered acceptable to some people that a game can launch with massive bugs and issues impacting gameplay because we can have Day 1 patches. Again, it's not about the ability to patch a game on release day if necessary, it's that gaming companies are using it to be lazy at the expense of the customers.

When it comes to Blizz, their testing as been... questionable at best. Nobody's perfect, but having been part of the alpha and beta testing phases for Blizz games and patches, I can safely say their acceptance and/or response to player-based feedback has been steadily declining over the years. It's gotten to the point in some cases where blue posts will gaslight the crap out of the community when it comes to major issues that were know for extended periods of time during the testing phases, claiming that no one caught them until things went live. D4 testing phases hasn't seemed to terrible, but I imagine the company is trying to combat their image issues as of late, but fundamentally the recent announcements when it came to balances/fixes after the open beta were already know in the closed beta as part of the feedback. Basically, I'm fairly skeptical with Blizz and their behavior in the past, so I don't blame others for being skeptical, as well.

I may agree in large part, HOWEVER it has to be noticed that games back then were far less complex and it was easier to release them if not 100% bug free, let’s say 90%?

I mean, Doom Eternal was a little more complex than the original Doom, the more complex the game is, the easier it has bugs.

Even remaining into the Diablo area, D1 was not as complex as D4 will be, testing was way easier also, back then.

As someone said, even Elden Ring had a lot of patches in the first month, guess why, it’s way more big and complex than Dark Souls 1 (which is still bugged here and there btw).

Also D4 beta was pretty fine for me. Maybe the other acts will be a mess but I really had near to zero issues with Act 1, apart from the queues.