The Public Test Realm for Patch 2.1.2 will be shutting down today at approximately 11:00 PST. As usual, progress made on the PTR will be wiped clean and not transfer over to your account. Shall we remember this PTR as the most fun players ever had? That awesome +3000% Legendary drop ratio!
In preparation for the launch of patch 2.1.2, we will be shutting down the PTR tomorrow, January 9, at approximately 11:00 a.m. PST. At that time, you will no longer be able to log in to the PTR client, all PTR accounts will be reset, and the PTR Feedback and PTR Bug Report forums will be marked as read-only.
Please note that any progress you made on the PTR will not transfer over to your Diablo III account.
Thank you to everyone who participated in this PTR and provided feedback. We look forward to releasing patch 2.1.2 to the public shortly!
Support Downtime
Blizzard's support services will undergo through maintenance starting today at 12:00 AM PST. Just a heads-up in case players need to contact support to solve something - they will need to wait a couple hours until maintenance completes.
We will be performing maintenance on our Support Site systems beginning on 1/9 at 12:00 AM PST. We anticipate this maintenance will last for 3 hours, and estimate that services will be available again at 3:00 AM PST.
During this time, the following services will be unavailable:
Battle.net Support Site
Website Ticket Submission
In-game Ticket Submission
We appreciate your patience during this maintenance, and will provide updates as necessary. Updates will also be provided on our Twitter account: @BlizzardCS
Gambling Tip
Rhykker has uploaded a video with some tips on how to greatly improve the odds of getting specific items once Patch 2.1.2 releases - specially those wanting to compete on Season 2. For most players, it might be obvious, but it is an easy thing to forget after being away for a while. Check it out!
Great news: we got an estimate launch date for Patch 2.1.2 - they are aiming for a Patch release as early as next Tuesday! Tyvalir made a huge post explaining how this first Season rollover will work, with the Patch being deployed 3 weeks prior to the new season, to avoid some possible technical issues by releasing both in conjunction. That will not be the case for future patches and season rollovers. It was also pointed that they are aiming for a simultaneous patch launch on PC, PS4 and XBox One. Read below.
As we prepare for patch 2.1.2 and the Season rollover, we wanted to share some important information regarding the timing of these two milestones.
Patch 2.1.2 And Season 1: With respect to Seasons, our goal is to avoid implementing major balance changes towards the end of a Season. Ideally, patches and significant hotfixes will occur between Seasons or early enough in the Season that players have ample time to adjust to the new environment.
However, we discovered some technical risks in executing a simultaneous launch of patch 2.1.2 and the upcoming Season rollover, and it’s clear that trying to do both in tandem or close proximity would jeopardize both processes. This left us with two options:
A) We launch patch 2.1.2 after the Season rollover. In this scenario, Seasonal players wouldn’t have access to any new 2.1.2 items including updated Set items, updated Legendary items, and the new Seasonal items for at least a couple of weeks after the Season went live.
We could launch patch 2.1.2 before the Season rollover. In this scenario, this would impact Seasonal Leaderboard progression.
Not giving Seasonal players access to new items right away in Season 2 would take a lot of the excitement out of the start of that new Season. With this, we believe that by giving players a few weeks to adjust to patch 2.1.2 changes, and by allowing them to test existing changes on the PTR, the impact on the existing Leaderboards can be minimized.
After weighing both options carefully, we have decided to launch patch 2.1.2 three weeks prior to the Season rollover. This should provide players enough time to adjust to the patch changes before the Season ends as well as ensure that Season 1 is not prolonged further for those looking forward to Season 2.
Future Season Rollovers: Season 1 has been a great learning experience for us and we aim to provide a smoother transition at the end of Season 2. In fact, our intent for future Seasons is to have the current Season end, the corresponding patch deployed, and then the following Season start—in that order. While we will not be able to do that for this inaugural Season rollover, this will be our plan for all rollovers moving forward.
For more information about the upcoming Season rollover, click here. To get a sneak-peek at upcoming patch 2.1.2 changes,click here.
Thank you for your patience and support. We hope to see you in Sanctuary and Season 2!
so, since season 2 will start on 2/3/2015, we should get patch 2.12 three weeks before that, which means next Tuesday?
As mentioned previously, February 3rd is the earliest date that we would be able to begin the Seasonal rollover, which means the patch could fall as early as next Tuesday. It's important to remember, however, that this is just the earliest date it may fall, and that it may change if the need arises.
Does this schedule align with the console releases? IE, can we expect to get the console patch on the same day as PC? Or will there be a lag?
Our current goal is to release patch 2.1.2 on PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One on the same day. This may change depending on a variety of reasons, but we are indeed hoping to provide a simultaneous launch (or as close to one as possible).
Seasonal Items
Most players already understand how seasonal items work by now, but some might still get confused how their "semi" exclusivity works. Nevalistis made a blue post explaining how these are exclusive only during the Season - hopefully clearing up the doubts on this for good.
The items that are Season only, will they now be available for drops on non-Season or is it only the Season items that you have currently obtained rolled over but no new ones will drop for non-Season?
Once the season ends, all seasonal items introduced in Season 1 will be added to the loot pool for non-seasonal games. These items will continue to be available in Season 2 as well, as they'll be part of the general loot pool.
When Season 2 begins, new seasonal legendaries will be available for players participating in the new season. Those items will also roll over to the general loot pool at the end of that season, so on and so forth.
D3 Chainsaw Carving
Griffon E. Ramsey, a gamer and artist that works with chainsaws, has put together a video talking about her experience with Diablo 3, and showing an amazing carved Diablo head. The message of the video could be summarized, but watching it is simply a much more enjoyable experience. Check it out!
Not many players seem particularly excited for Ancient items. There was a blue post today further clarifying their purpose. How they are meant to be an end-game grind for those who feel the item hunt does not last long enough, without being a necessity for the other players. Read below.
Looking at those anciet items...it seems everything has to be re farmed...
The primary intent behind Ancient Items is to give the folks that have everything on their wish list more to search for in the item game. They're not mandatory for playing the game, and while they'll help you push a bit further in Greater Rifts as you acquire more of them, they shouldn't feel like a necessity in other endgame activities.
New players and those returning at the start of Season 2 will also benefit from the new item tier. Finding an Ancient Item early on will feel great, even more so as a rare experience. You shouldn't expect to fill out all your gear slots with gold borders right away, either. It's a time investment that becomes easier as you attain higher difficulty levels and better gear, and further incentive to continue pushing your limits.
Future D3 Servers
On a thread over at the EU official forums, a fan wondered if Diablo 3 would ever have an offline version of the game, if the game ever stops being supported and its servers shut down. The reply he got indicates that is probably not something we need to worry about, citing how D2 has playable servers to this day!
I just think about old Diablo games and new one connected to server. We don't have to pay for service. Just buy game and play it... I just thinking how long it will be supported - maintained?
I just hope they will release serverless version of the game if they will shut down this original one.
What things going to be? Some people spending all life there...
I can only presume that Blizzard will have servers in place for many years to come.
Deadset has uploaded another Sunday Sanctuary Talk, this time going through the events from Diablo 2 - Lord of Destruction. Great for those who love to keep in touch with the lore. Check it out!
A live patch has hit the live patch servers. Usually when this happens before Tuesday it means the patch should go live on the next Tuesday. However, we have not seen a maintenance post yet, so it is still up in the air if we will see the patch this week or not.
Why Players Quit D3
Drothvader, a former MVP, made a thread that got quite popular on the official forums, asking players what makes them stop playing Diablo 3 and what would it take for them to come back. The beginning of Droth's post is quoted down below (it's much longer than that), with Tyvalir's reply afterwards. Some might think that is a pointless effort, but the community managers and devs are watching these, and they might shape the future of the game, as it happened with D3 vanilla and the AH!
For those that have quit, may I ask why? And what could be added to bring you back to playing the game?
So I wanted to spark a conversation today because, well, why not. There are many a player who since the launch of RoS have thrown in the towel and called it quits (Myself included) and I wanted to take a moment to tackle this specific question.
Now, you don't have to go super in depth, but try to in about 500 words describe why you have quit Diablo and what could be done to bring you back as a player?
I'll go first. (continues...)
Hey everyone, thanks to all of you for sharing your thoughts on this and to Droth for the original post requesting player feedback. I've only read through the first few pages so far, but I've already seen a lot of good thoughts and ideas that I'll be passing to the development team. I'm looking forward to reading the rest and passing that on as well.
You've all really outdone yourselves with sharing good feedback here. Whether you realize it or not, these conversations help us to achieve a broader perspective of the game than we could ever get on our own, and I'm thankful to all of you for your passion and support as we continue to develop Diablo III.
TL;DR - This is awesome, and we appreciate it!
GR 45 DH on 2.1.2
A few players are concerned that Demon Hunters won't be able to perform as well with the changes coming in Patch 2.1.2. Some, who have not been following the PTR and previous changes, might be caught by surprise by the changes thinking the class was weakened. Philosophios has uploaded footage of a post-changes DH going through a GR level 45 - so fret not. DHs are as fun and strong as ever! Check below.
Friday was plagued with connection issues throughout all of BattleNet, and D3 was no exception. A big part of the playerbase had issues logging in, and quite a few suspect it was due to DDoS attacks on Blizzard servers - similar to the ones which hit Sony and Microsoft services over the holidays. See the post below for a summary of Blizzard's stance throughout the issue - it should be solved by now.
[UPDATE] 4:10 p.m. PST: The connection issues reported earlier appear to have been resolved. Thanks to everyone for being patient with us while we looked into and addressed your reports. As ever, we will continue to monitor the status of our games and incoming reports from our players.
If you ever have difficulty accessing our sites during a service outage, please don't hesitate to reach out to our Customer Support team via Twitter or by submitting a Customer Support ticket:
Customer Support Page: https://us.battle.net/support/en/help/topic/d3/ ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [UPDATE] 1:49 p.m. PST: We're continuing to work to address issues affecting login, connectivity, and long game queues. We don't have a new ETA to share at this time regarding when these issues will be resolved, but we'll continue to provide updates in this thread as new information become available.
Thank you to everyone for being so patient. We hope to have you all back into Battle.net and playing your game of choice as soon as possible! ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [UPDATE] 11:55 a.m. PST: At this time we are currently hoping to have login and connectivity restored for both Battle.net and Diablo III in approximately 90 minutes. Please note that this just an estimate, however, and that these issues may take longer to resolve.
As always, should this estimate change, and should these issues persist after that time frame has expired, we will post an update to this thread. We will also be sure to provide an update once all issues are resolved. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Good morning, everyone!
We're aware that many players are experiencing issues both logging into and staying connected to several of our games, including Diablo III.
While we don't have an ETA to share at this time for when login and connectivity will be restored, we're working to address the issues presently and will provide further updates as more information becomes available. You can follow this thread for those updates or check out our @BlizzardCS Twitter feed.
We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this service interruption has caused, and would like to thank you so much for your patience (and your reports). We hope to have our Battle.net service restored and running smoothly just as quickly as possible.
D3 Tribal Tattoo
LionessGamer uploaded two "tribal" D3 tattoos at DeviantArt, one based on Imperius and the other on Tyrael. And they both look super amazing. Maybe we will see a photo of the actual tattoos once they are done. For now, check the amazing concept below!
ZDPS Support WD
Philosophios has uploaded a guide for a ZDPS Support Witch Doctor build, crowd control focused and tested on the PTR. Ready for Patch 2.1.2 and able to reach even Greater Rift 55! If ZDPS interests you, it might be worth watching.