Published , by TJ Denzer
Published , by TJ Denzer
Diablo 4’s fastest and most stalwart champion met with a cruel fate in the game this week. After Blizzard had announced a race to achieve level 100 in Hardcore Mode (where if your character dies, it’s permanent and you have to start a new character), Barbarian player cArn achieved the result. However, as he continued onward from the achievement, cArn’s 82-hour strong Barbarian was eventually slain, not by the actual in-game content, but by a server disconnect.
This incident was shared by cArn themselves as they were streaming on Twitch at the time, as spotted by PCGamesN. After achieving level 100 on Hardcore in Diablo 4 in the contest laid out by Blizzard, cArn went for the final boss of the game. Unfortunately, on his way there, technical issues struck, the enemies in the game suddenly locked up and started running in place and a few moments later, the game disconnected entirely. Blizzard’s built-in rules on Hardcore treat a disconnect as a death to prevent players from trying to cheese the system when low on health by logging out. So, when cArn was able to log in again, he found his character had been wiped.
Luckily, cArn was able to reach level 100 before the disconnect happened. They have been recognized by Blizzard as the winner of the contest. However, it’s also a highly disappointing end to an incredible run. CArn put 82 hours into their character and wasn’t even defeated by anything the game’s content had to offer. It also begs the question of how many other players’ runs were ended in such a manner. Given that Diablo 4 is a live-service game, disconnects that can destroy runs with dozens of hours logged is less than ideal, even if the game is quite fun in critical review.
Diablo 4 franchise general manager Rod Fergusson already confirmed that several expansions are already in the works for the game, but Blizzard might want to make the servers airtight first, especially if the game continues to have contests that demand dozens of hours of playtime.