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Update: Commodity trading has been activated again in the Diablo III Auction House. Happy auctioneering

I'll state up front that I do think there's a disparity between melee and ranged, and I would like to see that closed. I feel like if I talk a lot about thought processes and design philosophy and don't state this up front people will lose the forest for the trees and conclude we think everything is fine. So I'll say it again: melee vs. ranged disparity is not fine, changes are being made, and even if you disagree with the approach outlined below we can hopefully have the common ground that the current situation needs improvement.

It may not look like it on the surface, but a large number of the changes in 1.0.3 are actually targeted at closing the melee/ranged gap. Let me go through some of them.

Hardcore
I'm going to use Hardcore as a starting point. In Hardcore, there's actually a reasonable distribution of classes, and I don't think the melee vs. ranged disparity is as large. There are a lot of Hardcore players of every class in Inferno without a huge disparity. Why is this important? It's because a significant portion of the melee/ranged disparity is related to a ranged character's ability to progress even while dying. A melee player can throw themselves at a monster and die, doing almost no damage to an elite enemy. A ranged player can do a huge amount of damage to an elite enemy, die, respawn, and basically attrition the enemy down with repeated deaths. In the Hardcore environment where a single bad Mortar, Vortex, Jailer, or Reflects Damage will kill a glass cannon-ranged character, the disparity between ranged and melee is an order of magnitude less.

Repair Costs
One of the more controversial changes in 1.0.3 is the increased repair costs. The design intent of these increased repair costs is to make death more meaningful. One of the top arguments we see against the increased repair costs is "I'm already dying dozens of times to make any progress in Inferno. Don't you see this is going to make this impossible?" This concern is most often brought up by ranged glass cannons. Many melee players respond "increased repair costs seem fine" because they haven't been using death-zerging as a tactic. Melee can't easily death-zerg an enemy down, but ranged can. I don't think the answer is to make death-zerging more attractive for melee; I'd rather make death-zerging a less profitable strategy for ranged.

Enemy Health and Damage
We're also looking to adjust the damage and health of enemies in Inferno Acts II, III, and IV. This is another change that is primarily for melee with secondary benefits for ranged. A lot of ranged are building glass cannon with the mentality "well, I'll just try not to get hit at all." So, reducing incoming damage when they weren't taking any before isn't significant for them, whereas reducing incoming damage for the melee is a big deal. For the ranged classes, I'm hoping that the incoming damage reduction will make some survival stats more appealing to ranged classes. While before the damage was so large it just felt pointless to try and mitigate any of it at all, after the change hopefully ranged classes will think "well, if I just put on a modest amount of survivability, I don't get 1-shot, so that's worth it." There are some ranged players who are already doing this -- stacking survivability so they don’t have to endlessly kite -- and it just feels like the minimum amount of survivability to avoid the 1-shot is so large it's unattainable. That's one of the things 1.0.3 seeks to address.

Damage Reduction in Co-op
Another change which is targeted at improving life for melee is the reduction in co-op damage. Again, since many ranged players just build glass cannon and avoid damage completely, they didn't really care if incoming damage went up as other players entered the game, but the melee characters really noticed. It was very easy for your life-on-hit to have you at a steady equilibrium, but as soon as another player entered the game your life-on-hit was no longer covering the incoming damage and death became imminent.

Additional Changes
And finally, there are always minor polish adjustments designed to help melee -- such as the AI on some monsters (BEES!!!) being tweaked to run away less often, which again helps melee more than ranged. I actually spent some extra time the other day to make sure if a Sand Wasp runs away from you, and you start chasing the wasp, it doesn't turn and shoot 4 bees in your face (hopefully that makes 1.0.3). I'm also working with one of our gameplay engineers to make it so if you sidestep the Dark Berserker’s power hit (where he brings his giant mace down), he doesn’t turn to track you as he swings (though that change probably won't make 1.0.3). These kind of AI adjustments are things ranged players don’t even notice, but are huge for melee.

Another adjustment being made is increasing both the maximum range and the dead zone of Mortar. Mortar was specifically designed to be an anti-range affix, but many ranged players would just stand even farther away, whereas melee would sometimes get caught in the cross-fire of two Mortars. Increasing the maximum range and the dead zone helps with both of these.

Why are you allowing the RMAH to deteriorate nearly every other aspect of the game? I already know the answer but I want them to endure the discomfort of saying it.
It's a question based around a false pretense. We've repeatedly explained the game design philosophy for our systems many times in the past, easily proving your brash claim to be false.

There's no answer for a question like that.

There is only information, listening and constructive feedback. We'll continue to play our part.

Auction House
Error 31073 indicates the auction house is currently experiencing a lot of traffic, and (to help mitigate that) it is automatically throttling the number of items that can be listed at a given time.

The post below goes into a little more detail: http://us.battle.net...ic/5573699157#2

Same for me! Just bout an item. I got an error message. Lost my cash, cant get my item, and cant see any of my gear in sale screen, nor the gears that I did not sale.
What error did you receive, do you remember?

Just an FYI, depending on current traffic in the auction house, you may experience a delay in having items appear in your Completed tab (or, similarly, having gold transferred from the Completed Tab to your stash). More here:http://us.battle.net...ic/5573699157#1

Fail...
Why not just sort out your DB problems, and lease more hardware, FFS this AH is going to make them millions, throw 10% of that revenue stream at making it work better.
Pass that on PLZ
We're continuing to make a number of improvements to the auction house, but this is an interim solution to improve overall stability. It's not ideal and our goal is to have it so that players don't experience that error at all.

Idk my error message just says, "THE AUCTION HOUSE IS CURRENTLY UNAVAILABLE". Pretty easy for me to understand that.
Is the auction house button grayed out, as well?

So it is working, I just can see why people would jump to conclusions that their stuff is gone and what not, they just need to be a little patient...
That's definitely good advice, but I know it can be hard to heed.

If players are experiencing the grayed-out auction house button, they should ideally wait a few minutes and then try again later. Alternatively, they can enter a game and come back out, or logout and then login again to try again. This is actually another way of limiting traffic on the auction house during peak gaming hours. We don't have a timeframe yet for when we plan to remove this specific type of throttling, but we will be working not only to improve the messaging around it but also to implement fixes and general optimizations that will make it unnecessary to throttle players to begin with.

It's 2012 and you are still exposing cryptic error numbers to users instead of actual helpful messages.
Error 31073 should be accompanied by the following message: "Due to heavy system load your transaction request has not yet been resolved. Please keep this in mind as you consider additional transactions in the auction house. Check the completed auctions tab for more information." Yes/no? If not, that messaging should be going in with a future patch.

Any news on those people with blacked out auction house?
You just quoted the answer to that very question.
(Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Dyeing Legendaries
I have the same issue. Why hasn't this been hotfixed???
It's unfortunately not that easy.
Andrew Chambers (senior game designer for Diablo III) addressed this question yesterday here:

I just chatted with our awesome artists about this the other day! We currently have some tech restrictions that make it unfeasible for us to [allow players to dye legendaries]. We definitely want to allow this though, and we are looking at solving the tech issues related to it.

(Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Aus/NZ Service
Thank you for everyone's feedback we have had on this topic.

As part of improving our service we’ve made further optimisations to our server-selection process for ANZ players connecting to the Americas region that will provide more consistent latency when connecting. Our systems are currently operating to specification; however, we will continue to monitor things in the event that further issues arise on our end.

We recognise that some players are continuing to have latency-related problems possibly due to issues outside of our infrastructure. For players impacted by ongoing latency issues, we are continuing to investigate the potential causes with the help of your feedback here in the Aus/NZ forums. Please note that you should judge the quality of your connection by your actual in-game experience, NOT by the small latency meter in the in-game user interface, which is not always an accurate reflection of your actual connectivity.

We invite players to test out the new optimisations and welcome additional forum feedback on user experience. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Report Spam
This post brings up a great point. If you find gold spammers in the General Chat please use the in-game option to report them.
If you are unsure how to do this, just right click on the player name in the chat and select Report then Spam.

This will help to reduce the gold seller spam for everyone. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Diabloholics
This game is only for "Diabloholics" you whiners should QUIT the game as you said it. If we can play the game, can you not?
But that's not true at all. While Diablo III may not be for everyone, our goal is to make the game as fun as it possibly can be -- for long-time fans of franchise, for players just getting started, and for all those people somewhere in the middle -- and criticism lets us know how we can improve.

No one should be advised to "quit" the game simply because they don't play the same way you do. Constructive discussion, good. Vitriol, bad. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Diablo Players:

We’d like to extend a very sincere thank you to everyone who joined the global Diablo III launch celebrations this week, as well as to everyone who was ready to jump into Sanctuary the moment the game went live.

To that end, we’d also like to say that we’ve been humbled by your enthusiasm -- and we sincerely regret that your crusade to bring down the Lord of Terror was thwarted not by mobs of demons, but by mortal infrastructure. As many of you are aware, technical issues occurring within hours after the game's launch led to players experiencing error messages and difficulty logging in. These issues cropped up again last night for the Americas and Europe servers. Despite very aggressive projections, our preparations for the launch of the game did not go far enough.

We’ve been monitoring the game 24/7 and have applied several optimizations to help our systems better weather the global rush. As of late last night, specifically 11:50 PM PDT on May 15, all systems have been online and running relatively smoothly. We’re continuing to monitor performance globally and will be taking further measures as needed to ensure a positive experience for everyone. This includes some maintenance to implement additional improvements for each region.

In order to make sure everything is continuing to run as it should, we’ve decided to move out our target launch for the real-money auction house beyond our original estimated date of May 22. We’ll post further updates on that in the near future.

Aside from the tremendous number of players simultaneously logging in to the game, one of the launch-day service issues was linked to the achievement system. Some players began to notice early on that achievements were either not being earned properly, or not being saved between multiple logins. We’re investigating this issue and will provide a specific update as soon as possible.

We greatly appreciate everyone’s support, and we want to sincerely apologize for the difficulties many of you encountered on day one. Please visit the Battle.net Support site or Support forums for the latest service-related updates or for help in troubleshooting any technical issues you may be having downloading, installing, or while playing the game.

Thank you again for your patience while we reinforce the gates of Sanctuary and further strengthen it for your onslaught.

Respectfully,
Blizzard Entertainment

We're working on providing an update regarding issues with achievements. Please stay tuned.

Interisting how the community managers are just playing the game while we cannot because we're waiting from answers on their part...
Well, the best way to experience what the community is experiencing is to install and play. I do that on my lunch (if I can) and after work. That doesn't leave me as much time as I'd like. You'll also note that we've been communicating on our end the whole time on a variety of issues. We'll continue to do so as well as we have information to share. So, no, we're not "just playing the game". I'm looking forward to the weekend in the hope that I will be able to do just that though.

We have communicated multiple times that we are aware of the Achievement issues and are still investigating. When we have more information to share, we will. Lack of updates does not mean we've forgotten about it.

are you guys going to just throw in the towel on whats already been lost, or can we re-earn the 1 time achievements that are currently unavailable forever to us?
i would be really sad if two days into the game I already have a handful of achievements i can never get
We're still determining a variety of things in this regard. I can't answer this any more specifically for you though right now. We are working on an answer though.

1 day after release, and they beat act 1, and act 2 aswellalready on inferno i think.
They have only killed the Skeleton King at this point. Do note that up to the Skeleton king is only part of the first act and they still have lots of the game to go till they complete act 1.

Another point to be made is that this is a group of fully co-ordinated, skilled, dedicated and hardcore gamers who have been playing regularly since the moment of release. It will take quite a while longer for the average player and even most seasoned gamers to reach this point. That being said, it's amazing to see the speed in which they have reached this stage of the game, but remember that the hardest is yet to come...

Diablo 3 Beaten in 7 Hours
I'm one of those people who likes to explore all of the map, because you never know what might be lurking in that unexplored part, right? I'm in no hurry to rush through because that's not my play style, but I know we're all different. Some people love the bragging rights that come with being super quick through a game. Meh, I prefer to take my time, soak up the atmosphere, listen to the story, and loot every single damn barrel I find.

But yeah, as others here have said, completing normal mode is by no means finishing the game... It's just the start. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Diablo 3 Beaten in 6 Hours
That's the problem... people are used to playing Skyrim
You can beat Skyrim in a few hours if your intent is to rush to the end of the game as fast as possible.

You can beat the original Super Mario Bros in 5 minutes.

If your intent is to simply race to the end of the game as quickly as possible I'm sure you can complete Normal difficulty in very little time. If your intent is to take your time and enjoy it, stop worrying about what people rushing to the end of the game think.

Luckily, unlike other games, regardless of how quickly you want to rush to the end, the near-limitless content provided through randomized events, dungeons, enemies and items (and their random drop chance) mean that you'll be able to play for years to come.

Welcome to Diablo III, please enjoy. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Class Sigils
Within the first couple of weeks of Diablo III's release on May 15, we'll be processing all of these accounts and flagging them to unlock the appropriate sigils. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

White/Grey Items
t's OK to leave those behind. Hopefully you'll be finding better things to fill your inventory space with.

Oh I do. It just seems like a waste to me to make all those items and have them not at least be sellable to where it's worth your time.
It's that "clean your plate philosophy" that is a bit hard to break. I have been working on breaking myself of that as well. You're not alone. When you see things hit the ground, you want to tidy things back up. (Minus the exploded demon bits of course.) (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Skills
I come from D2 and know little of D3. Can i reroll skills in the game? Very confusing skill system. Can someone please elaborate?
Skills are now something you unlock at predetermined levels. Depending on your class, you'll unlock skills at different intervals and in different quantities. Skills will unlock all the way up to level 30. Once a skill is unlocked, you can add it to your build at any time, incurring only a minimal cooldown when you do.

In a similar fashion, skill runes are also something you unlock as you level up (you'll earn skill runes up to level 60). By the time your character hits level 60, you'll unlock five skill runes for every skill. Skill runes augment your character's abilities in various ways -- some drastically, some more subtlety. You can also change out your skill runes at any point.

While a little outdated, you might want to read up Jay Wilson's explanation of the system when it was first introduced in beta:http://us.battle.net...en/blog/4475014

Can someone please elaborate?
Have you checked out the Game Guide? There's some pretty cool information in there.

Skill Calculator: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/
Skill Progression tabs:

• Barbarian
• Demon Hunter
• Monk
• Witch Doctor
• Wizard

If you go to each class's Active Skills tab, you also see what skill runes are available for each skill. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

As we near Diablo III’s long-awaited May 15 launch date, we have some additional details to share on what to expect, how to prepare, and when you’ll be able to begin installing and playing.

Purchase the Game
If you haven’t already purchased Diablo III you can acquire it directly from Blizzard through the digital presale. You can also preorder the game at most major retailers and fine purveyors of high-quality gaming products worldwide. If you’re interested in the Diablo® III Collector’s Edition, please be aware that this physical retail-only edition is printed in limited quantities and has already sold out in most places that take preorders on games. We recommend calling around and checking if your local retailers will have the Collector’s Edition available.

Create Your BattleTag™
We expect that on launch night both the game service and website will be under very heavy strain due to the immense number of people excited to be among the first playing Diablo III. With that in mind, we highly recommend you create your BattleTag now, as it’s required to play Diablo III. Please keep in mind that this non-unique nickname is a permanent choice, and will display both in-game and on the website, so be sure to choose one you like! (What is a BattleTag?)

Regional Launch Times
As previously mentioned in the announcement of our midnight launch events, the launch time of the game is broken down by region.

The Americas (U.S., Canada, Latin America, Australia, New Zealand, and South East Asia) servers open at: 12:01 a.m. PDT, May 15

Digital Presale Download
If you’ve purchased a digital copy you can begin downloading your client right now, and we highly encourage you to do so. We also have a Diablo III presale visual guide available that may be helpful. As it may take you some time to download the full game, it’s best that you begin early. This may afford you additional time to troubleshoot any downloader or installer issues you may encounter.

Early Install
We will be unlocking the game's installer at 8:01 a.m. PDT on May 14. This will allow you to begin installing the game, troubleshoot any issues you run into, download and install the launch day 1.0.1 patch, and be ready to play as soon as the servers come online.

Global Play Launch Time
We’ll be turning on Global Play when the game has launched in all regions. This means that you will not be able to play in a region outside your home region until after the Americas’ midnight launch at 12:01 a.m. PDT on May 15. We’ll provide an update once Global Play is enabled, and you’ll then be able to change the region you connect to through the game’s options. Please note that characters, items, and friends lists do not transfer across regions and players who use Global Play to connect outside of their home region will only be able to access the gold-based auction house. More information can be found in our Global Play introduction article.

Launch Night Login
As we’ve unlocked the Diablo III installer early, many people will be ready to log in right when the servers go live at midnight, so we’re going to be closely monitoring the impact on the service. It’s possible we’ll need to adjust the rate at which we’re logging people in to ensure a stable experience, and if we do you may see a delay when attempting to login. Please be aware that a delay of up to 40 seconds is possible while the game attempts to connect you. If your connection doesn’t succeed in 40 seconds, you’ll be presented with an Error 37 message and asked to try again. If you see this error it does in fact mean that you should try again. We’ll be working around the clock to keep you informed of any issues that are occurring through the in-game breaking news window, as well as the official forums.

Heads up to all of you who are Boston-bound, Crithto and I (Bashiok) will be cozying up with NVIDIA in the NVIDIA Freeplay & Tournament Area at PAXEast! We’ll be showcasing the Diablo III and Mists of Pandaria betas on NVIDIA hardware, chatting you guys up about the games as you saunter by, and holding Diablo III beta signups.

Come for the games, stay for the witty banter! ... Or beta keys. You probably care more about beta keys.

Q. People keep asking about the wings perk from the Collector’s Edition:

• How will your character receive this item?
• Will each character have the item, or does it have to be shared across your characters (like heirloom items did in WoW)?
• If a unique item, how will transferring the wings work?
• Can the wings be accidentally sold or destroyed?
• How will these wings work on a HC character when they die -- do you lose them?

Each character you make will receive CE items in their inventory. They cannot be dropped, but can be destroyed if you want the inventory space, for example. If you want them back you can transfer through the shared stash from another character.

Q. Also will there be items similar to the wings (fluff items) that drop in game later?
No plans for any right now, but we’re not opposed to it. The amount of equippable items we have is pretty intense.

Q. Some players are starting to suggest that the use of “yards” in elective mode skill descriptions is a bit misleading. Players feel that the area of effects are much smaller than the tooltips indicate and joke that their characters must be at least 15 feet tall if the tooltips are accurate. Have we put any thought into changing the unit of measurement or reducing the numerical values to better the distance of the abilities?
We’re well aware that it’s not entirely accurate, but once you use the ability once or twice you understand how it’s supposed to perform. With the fast and furious action of Diablo III, the exact measurements really aren’t as important as how you actually understand and use the skill.

Q. Will the Collector’s Edition dyes have any sort of "particle effect" on the items, or are they simply dying them with a unique color?
No they don’t have particle effects. For now they can technically only be single color gradients.

Q. Will dyes be shown on gear on the AH? (For example: "This gear is dyed 'Off-White.' ") This is semi-important because of Collector’s Edition dyes. Players anticipate that since this dye will be rare, it will carry more value within the community.
No, dyes are removed from items when you put them on the AH.

Q. As a follow up to that, can items dyed with Collector’s Edition dyes be placed on both auction houses?
Absolutely, but the dye color is removed. Dyes are not removed if an item is dropped/traded, though.

Q. Will the AH be a part of the game world (find an auctioneer in the city to do it) or is it staying in the game menu?
We think it’d be cool, but no it’s only within the Battle.net menu.

Q. Can we expect any achievements that aren’t strictly focused on game mechanics? For example, there’s rumor that finding and killing Bashiok in game is an achievement. Are these going to be similar achievements that are more Easter Egg-like and inspired by the community?
Yes, we have many achievements that ask you to do something weird or crazy or just difficult to pull off.

Q. We’ve already shared that cosmetic rewards will be coming with some achievements. We know about the banners, but are there any other rewards we haven’t yet mentioned that we could also share with the community?
We don’t have any now, no. Titles and cosmetic item rewards would be cool but it’s a wish list item for the future. All achievement rewards are banner related, which we think is pretty cool as it displays very prominently when forming groups, as well in-game at the waypoint hubs.

Q. Will there be feat of strength achievements (I.E. first person to hit 60)?
We do have feats of strength but not one specifically for first to 60.

Q. Will you be able to bind Force Move to a mouse key?
You can bind it to anything but primary and secondary mouse buttons, but it can be bound to any other mouse buttons.

Q. Since there seems to be a cap for adventurer stats ( +MF/+GF), will the stacks refresh on a Rare or Champion kill after you hit stack cap? Example: Say a stack cap of 5, on the 6th Rare/Champion kill, will the whole stack refreshes?
The whole stack refreshes.

Q. Will there be difficulty-exclusive random events/quests?
We don’t have any, no. It’s not a bad idea so maybe it’s something we could look into for the future.

Q. When does the exit indicator appear on the mini-map? When you are within range or when your character can see it (line of sight)?
When you’re within range.

Q. Will weapons with elemental affixes get extra damage against their elemental counter-part (e.g. Holy weapons get more damage against undead)?
No, we don’t want people to feel like they’re forced to carry around a bunch of weapons with each damage type and swap them in and out to remain effective. We actually had it in the game at one point where each damage type had a secondary effect, and we were super excited about it, and then we played it and it just sucked. It sounds super cool, but in practice it just forces too much on the player and makes decisions for them on which types of items are best based on the damage type.

Q. Will poison damage stack?
DoTs can stack, and the DoT can be poison based, but poison is not inherently a DoT.

Q. In Hardcore Mode, will players receive damage from collapsing/destroyed walls and/or parts of the décor (as it is not the case in Normal Mode)?
No. Hardcore is the exact same as “softcore” in every way, you just can’t die more than once.

Q. Will the Scroll of Companion (if/when it returns) be cute and cuddly or will it be more visually gritty and dark (keeping in line with the rest of the creatures in D3)?
If companions return, we have no idea. There may be some cute and cuddly things. Cute and cuddly things can and do exist in Sanctuary. They just may get stepped on by a demon. We’d make an effort to create more dark and gritty companions though, if we do revisit the system.

Q. Will you be looking at the visuals of the Wizard skill "Blizzard" and “Meteor” after the community's negative reaction to it? Players aren’t impressed with their current visuals as compared to those in D2.

There are plenty of people that like them, and plenty of people that like one or more of the rune variants. No, we don’t have any plans to make changes to any skill visuals.

Q. Are you guys happy with where the Witch Doctor is as of patch 15? We noticed as of the last few patches, particularly 14 to 15 the WD has received an enormous amount of tuning compared to the other classes and currently feels a little overpowered at early levels.
Balance is always ongoing. It’s possible the build for patch 15 caught us at a point where we had made a lot of witch doctor changes and not changes to other classes? We generate beta patches to test ongoing updates, and don’t wait to make sure each class has had equal attention. We’re very happy with class balance on our internal builds.

Q. Since arena is temporary out of picture. Is there any other way to take participate in PvP after D3 launch? Do you plan to implement world pvp mode like D2?
No. There are many reasons why we’re focusing PvP into the arenas and not bringing back hostility. PvP Arenas will only be a few months after release, and in that time people will be trying out classes and perfecting their gear and builds. When they do arrive they’ll be an awesome addition to the game, and players will be ready to face off in some awesome PvP action in a designed and crafted experience.

Q. How does the new “Nephalem Valor” mechanism work in multiplay game? Say if 4 player kill rare creatures separately, will they receive buffs from other players’ killing credit? Or the buff will be counted separately.
Everyone in the game gets the buff when a champion/rare is killed.

When you say extra loot, do you mean, extra loot. Or do you mean extra loot that is on par with what elite/champs drop. I remember from the article before, bosses do not drop gear that is as good as champs/elites.
They will drop gear as good as champions and elites with this buff (because you have to kill champions and elites to get it, which was the point). With the buff active you’re guaranteed one extra item drop from the boss, and it’s likely that it’ll be 1 item per stack of the buff. Up to X stacks. We don’t know how many it’ll be, probably a handful.

How many stacks will there be if any?
We're not totally sure but probably a number you can count on one hand.

Do you lose the buff when you die?
It lasts through death currently, and we like it. I know some people will also want it to be a punishment for death, but repair costs are already extremely impactful.

Does the buff split between players?
Like someone joins after you've been killing and they have less stacks? It's a direct increase to your MF/GF, so it uses the same mechanics.

Do you lose it on disconnect?
There's a small grace period, similar to WoW where you can get back into the game before your character is actually logged out (ie a timeout), but yes if your character times out you would lose the buff.

What is the Time limit on the stack, if any?
We're messing with times from about 15 minutes to an hour. We don't know yet.

Do Stacks get removed after a boss?
We don't really think it needs to. Your focus is still going to be seeking out champions and rares. If you want to get full stacks, kill a boss, and then try to rush to kill another boss before the buff falls off... have fun? It's not going to be the most lucrative way to play, so it's likely a non-issue hypothetical.

We’re working hard on balancing and testing Diablo III, and one of the major components is making sure that the end game experience is fun and exciting. We’d like to share a few of our goals for end game:

• We have an enormous number of skill build combinations, and we want a lot of those skill builds to be viable and interesting
• While there are millions of skill builds available to players, we don’t want players swapping skills regularly to beat specific encounters as they come up
• We don’t want repeatedly running specific three-minute chunks of the game to be the most efficient way to acquire gear for your character
• While a three-minute run shouldn’t be the most efficient, we also don’t want you to feel like it’s a two-hour commitment every time you sit down to play
• Bosses should still feel worth killing

Nephalem Valor is one of the major new systems in Diablo III and it kicks in at level 60. Keep in mind that this is still in testing and we’re still working out the details. Here’s how it currently works internally: Rare and Champion packs already have great loot on them. By killing a Rare or Champion pack, not only do you get their loot, but you’ll also receive a buff granting you increased magic find and gold find. However, if you change a skill, skill rune, passive, or leave the game, the buff disappears. As an extra reward, if you kill a boss while this buff is active, you’ll receive extra loot drops from that boss.

The exact amount of magic find and gold find provided by the buff is still being reviewed, as is the amount of extra loot you get from a boss while the buff is active. We’re also playing around with whether or not the buff stacks, what the duration should be, and whether or not it should persist through death. We want to make sure the buff is strong enough to make staying in your current game more rewarding than creating a new game. At the same time, if the buff is too strong, it risks making shorter play sessions feel not worthwhile.

We expect this system will encourage players to stick with a skill build of their choice, select an area of the game they enjoy, and sweep it for rare and champion packs on their way to a boss, finishing off a run with a boss that’ll be worth killing. If you wanted a shorter play session you could be done at that point, but if you have more time, the path of least resistance would ideally be to stay in the same game and make your way towards the next boss.