14 DAY TRIAL // Blizzard has its mind set to make the Reaper of Souls launch taking place later tonight as smooth as possible, and the entire world's hope is with them.
When Diablo 3 went live, players couldn't play for days due to the overloaded Blizzard login servers, because, of course, nobody expected a game that's been highly anticipated for 10 years to be this popular.
Joking aside, many players all around the world were unable to play Diablo 3 when it launched on May 15, 2012, and there was ample frustration regarding no possibility of offline play, which could have prevented the whole thing from being an issue.
Times have changed and now Blizzard came with the promise that tonight's launch will be flawless, pointing out that they have taken several measures in order for their players not to experience any inconveniences.
Considering their track record with expansions, odds are that things are indeed going to be much better, as it's been a while since the old days of downtime for entire weeks after new content comes out.
Nonetheless, Blizzard has made a Reaper of Souls launch day preparation post over on Battle.net, addressing players' concerns and advising how to best prepare for the big event.
First of all, owning a copy of Diablo 3: Reaper of Souls and redeeming the Game Key in their Battle.net account management tab should be the first step to ensure everything works without a hitch.
Next up, upgrading the game launcher to the Battle.net desktop app in advance would be prudent, to say the least. The good news however is that players who have logged in since Patch 2.0.1 went live should be good to go.
Updating the game client should be a no-brainer as well, but be advised that it can take anywhere from 15 minutes up to an hour to get everything going, so don't leave it until the last minute.
Then it's time to look up your regional launch time for the Reaper of Souls expansion, which conveniently will be divided into multiple time zones in order to ease the load on the servers.
For Asia, the expansion will be available to play at 11:00 a.m. PDT on March 24. 3:00 a.m. KST on March 25 2:00 a.m. CST on March 25
For Europe, the expansion will be available to play at 4:00 p.m. PDT on March 24. 23:00 GMT on March 24 00:00 CET on March 25 01:00 EET on March 25 03:00 MSK on March 25
For the Americas, the expansion will be available to play at 9:00 p.m. PDT on March 24. 10:00 p.m. MDT on March 24 11:00 p.m. CDT on March 24 12:00 a.m. EDT on March 25 1:00 a.m. ADT on March 25 1:30 a.m. NDT on March 25 12:00 p.m. SGT on March 25 3:00 p.m. AEDT on March 25
The big hurdle last time was a massive overload of the login servers, and this time around Blizzard found an elegant solution to all the people crowding in at the same time.
As such, there will be no need to patch or exit the game once the appropriate time comes, as all the Reaper of Souls files are already on your computer. Once the expansion is launched in your region, a system message will be broadcast informing players that the new content is now available, which means that you can play the game while waiting for the clock to strike and then jump right into Act V.
In order to reduce potential queue times, players are advised to log in ahead of time, which is very convenient now since you can line up a Diablo kill around the time the expansion goes live and then just seamlessly transition into Act V and start going after the Angel of Death.
Of course, depending on server load, some queuing might be encountered when logging into Diablo 3 or when creating a game, which will be indicated by appropriate messages, complete with waiting estimation.
Of course, anything could go wrong at any time, but for now we're keeping our fingers crossed.