Diablo IV's Big Expansion Faces 'Small Delay' On Launch Day

Happy Diablo IV day to all who celebrate. The action-RPG’s Vessel of Hatred expansion is finally here, though it will end up going live later than expected due to “a small issue on the backend,” Blizzard confirmed on Monday.

The $40 DLC arrives a year after the base game and introduces a new Spiritborn class for players to try, as well as a new area of the map and continuation of the main campaign’s cliffhanger ending. A massive patch arrives alongside it as well. That was all supposed to go live across Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 5, and PC beginning at 7:00 p.m. ET on October 7 (today). But a late breaking announcement from Blizzard indicates players may be waiting at least a few hours before they can get their hands on the new content.

“We are looking at a small delay for launch due to a small technical issue on our end,” the game’s global community head, Adam Fletcher, wrote on the Blizzard forums. “We are still expecting Vessel of Hatred to launch this evening, but we will need some additional time to ensure we have every player start at the exact same time across all platforms.” Players will still be forced out of Diablo IV at that time, but no new logins will be allowed until the issue’s resolved.

Asked by one fan for a more precise ETA, Fletcher wrote back, “I’m hoping just a couple hours at most, but we shall see.” One player responded, saying, “I’m cool with delays to get it right and have a smooth release for the expansion.”

Live service launches, including for big expansions, often run into problems ranging from long queue times as an onslaught of new and returning players wait for service capacity to ramp up. Occasional there are more serious bugs and connection errors that end up locking players out for extended periods of time. One particularly weird glitch back when Diablo IV first launched gave some players an error message unless they first spent money on a microtransaction. Some players were so impatient they decided to go along with it.

Hopefully, nothing like that happens this time around.

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