Diablo 3 open beta weekend starts today

After a false start earlier in the week, Diablo III will properly enter open beta this afternoon. It's only for stress-testing over the weekend, though, so get your robe and wizard hat laundered sharpish or you'll miss it.

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After a false start earlier in the week, Diablo III will properly enter open beta this afternoon. It's only for stress-testing over the weekend, though, so get your robe and wizard hat laundered sharpish or you'll miss it.

The open beta weekend begins this afternoon at 12:01pm Pacific, then will run until 10:00am on Monday, Blizzard explains in a Diablo blog post. All you need to play is a Battle.net account. You can download the client in advance, so you don't miss a second.

The beta is relatively small, packing the first part of Diablo III's first act, but you will be playing Diablo III. Unlike proper closed beta testers, open beta players won't receive 'Beta Bucks' to spend in the auction house and cannot post in the beta forums.

Diablo III launches for PC and Mac on May 15. The closed beta test will wrap up on May 1.

From The Chatty
  • reply
    April 20, 2012 3:00 AM

    Alice O'Connor posted a new article, Diablo 3 open beta weekend starts today.

    After a false start earlier in the week, Diablo III will properly enter open beta this afternoon. It's only for stress-testing over the weekend, though, so get your robe and wizard hat laundered sharpish or you'll miss it.

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      April 20, 2012 4:34 AM

      there goes my weekend

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        April 20, 2012 4:42 AM

        Haha, what? You're gonna replay the beta 30 times?

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          April 20, 2012 4:51 AM

          You'd have to to get the Level 4 Blacksmith beta achievement at this point.

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          April 20, 2012 5:54 AM

          Every class to 13 at LEAST once.

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          April 20, 2012 7:09 AM

          40 times just incase i missed something

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      April 20, 2012 5:27 AM

      Finally the rest of the public get to enjoy the tiny amount of content in the beta. Despite having only about 1/3 of the first act, and a level 13, this beta has managed to occupy at least 50 hours of my time over the last few months. I will definitely be avoiding the servers this weekend though, going to be laggy as hell.

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        April 20, 2012 5:28 AM

        level 13 cap is what i was trying to say

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        April 20, 2012 5:45 AM

        And most of them will bitch about it being easy and not having good skills, which is retarded. Lol.

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      April 20, 2012 6:16 AM

      Can you explain "sharpish" to me? Is it an adverb or an adjective? If the former, shouldn't it be "sharpishly"?

      I don't speak your crazy space-English.

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      April 20, 2012 7:04 AM

      How big is the download for someone who hasn't played beta yet?

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        April 20, 2012 7:08 AM

        15gig

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          April 20, 2012 7:13 AM

          Oh awesome, the beta installer seems to have found my preloaded data for the retail release and is using it. Almost no additional downloading.

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          April 20, 2012 7:19 AM

          I installed it but it's only 4gb? I can start it up but not log in yet.

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            April 20, 2012 7:20 AM

            the launcher says it's up to date too.

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            April 20, 2012 7:22 AM

            Was only 4GB for me too. 15 is probably for the full pre-load, not just the beta content.

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              April 20, 2012 8:30 AM

              yea beta is 4 gig. the full download install files were 7 gig.Not sure what the final install will be. 15 gigs sounds about right for that I'd guess

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      April 20, 2012 8:07 AM

      Anyone having issues connecting? Keeps saying that I'm timing out :(

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        April 20, 2012 8:10 AM

        yeah, servers were up and down all yesterday evening. stress test is borking stuff.

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          April 20, 2012 8:11 AM

          Well that's less than ideal. Oh well. :P

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      April 20, 2012 8:28 AM

      Hmm, it never prompted for an install location, and now it's going to fill up my SSD...

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        April 20, 2012 8:31 AM

        Never-mind, it's on the same screen as the license agreement. Which is dumb IMO.

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          April 20, 2012 12:18 PM

          Almost missed that myself. They could have moved that to the bottom or made an additional step, which is how it's usually done.

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      April 20, 2012 9:13 AM

      Jsut got a new video too!

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      April 20, 2012 12:21 PM

      [deleted]

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      April 20, 2012 12:40 PM

      hmmm can't get in. It's now 40min after.

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      April 20, 2012 1:19 PM

      servers are busy

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      April 20, 2012 2:23 PM

      I can't log in, says the servers are busy :(

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      April 20, 2012 2:27 PM

      [deleted]

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        April 20, 2012 2:39 PM

        Blizzard calls Stress Test a success! \o/
        The open beta has begun and we've been extremely successful

        ... in that we've already managed to break a few things. We've capped the open beta concurrency until we can resolve some stability and service issues, and until it's resolved you will likely see an Error 37 when attempting to log in.

        Error 12 - This is an error we're still investigating, but should only be appearing for Korean accounts which are not able to participate in the open beta. If you do not have a Korean account, we're still investigating this issue but suspect it may simply be due to the Battle.net Account services being slammed by the high volume of traffic or a communication issue between the game and account services.Error 3003 - Click Options, under Account change your region to The Americas. The open beta is only being held on US hardware.

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          April 20, 2012 6:32 PM

          it's all running on malganis hardware. it will be totally fine. nothing to worry about.

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      April 20, 2012 6:30 PM

      It's fun if you have ever enjoyed diablo, but in the middle of playing I feel like I'd rather go play an MMO. Wat does it mean Shack? :(

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        April 20, 2012 6:34 PM

        You've got other issues if you would ever rather be playing an MMO.

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        April 20, 2012 7:14 PM

        Yeah, strangely enough, I was feeling that too. Don't think I'll pick it up at release. Maybe later.

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      April 20, 2012 6:36 PM

      I thought you could use a 360 controller for this?

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      April 20, 2012 6:44 PM

      Color me UNimpressed.

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      April 20, 2012 6:51 PM

      [deleted]

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      April 20, 2012 6:53 PM

      Is there anyone like me here?

      I'm actively refusing to read any reviews, watch any beta videos, or log any time in the beta simply because I want nothing spoiled in what I hope is the best game I ever play in my life?

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        April 20, 2012 6:57 PM

        i played the beta several months ago and swore to myself that i would not touch it until release, but i caved and just finished lvling a monk to 7. god this game is going to rock

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        April 20, 2012 6:57 PM

        No. Frankly, I find the idea of worrying about the story of a Diablo game absolutely baffling.

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      April 21, 2012 1:29 AM

      tl;dr I like it!

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      April 21, 2012 3:05 AM

      Great now I can't even log in lol. Stress test hmmm, yea I think thats a fail. Quick upgrade the 486's before launch... because we had no idea there would be millions of people trying to login at once and we thought we would spend our billions on cup holders.

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      April 22, 2012 8:18 AM

      Was having a hard time "getting into" the characters. I'm leaning towards the barbarian, but his play style is so boring and done already. I think I had more fun playing torchlight.

      Not really impressed.

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      April 22, 2012 6:35 PM

      I got bored after 15 mins of playing the beta, guess i saved $60 right there!

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        April 22, 2012 11:58 PM

        Dungeon Crawlers or ARPG's... you either like the genre or you don't, might explain your boredom after 15 mins. Also there is the fact that its the beta and about 000.1% of the full game.. and basically just a quick tutorial. Oh and also there is the fact that most RPGs that involve leveling and talents don't start to get good until about level 12+, pretty much a known fact.

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