'Diablo 3' Players Report Crippling Lag, Problem Affects Solo Play As Well

Blizzard's troubled action RPG game "Diablo 3" has run into more technical issues over the weekend. A deluge of user complaintson the game's performance have flooded the title's technical support forum. And according to PC Gamer, users have complained of performance issues that render the game virtually unplayable.

The same resounding complaint can be heard in forums: ping times in excess of 2000ms being reported by gamers across the board. This lag not only makes online play untenable, but it has also affected the solo gameplay experience. This is primarily because, like the online mode, the single-player campaign also requires a persistent online connection with the servers. Needless to say, gamers are incensed at the prospect of not being able to play the game at all.

The inordinately large amount of delay in communicating with Blizzard servers has strangely been recorded across Battle.net forums catering to U.S. as well as European territories. This may point towards the problem existing at the end of Blizzard servers. However, there hasn't been any official explanation on the issue so far from the developer.

VG247 reports that Blizzard has responded in the forum thread that it is gathering data at the moment to find out the root cause of the problem. The support forum agent requested the community to report back with diagnostic reports. The post instructs users to perform a trace route to the Battle.net servers (12.168.209.68) and reply with the results as well as the name of the ISP and geographical location on the same thread.

The post also prescribes users to run the company's automated Looking Glass Utility to check the return path from the servers. Unfortunately, the measures detailed on the forum post are meant for a diagnosis of the problem. So far, there's no word on when gamers can expect to resume normal gaming experience.

This isn't the first time "Diablo 3" has run into performance issues attributed to its persistently-online DRM implementation. The game was rendered similarly unplayable at launch, which Blizzard apologised for, as reported back in 2012 by GamesRadar. The tragic truth is that whether such invasive DRMs may or may not reduce piracy, it's the paying customers who ultimately suffer when something this complicated inevitably breaks down.

Diablo III: Reaper of Souls Opening Cinematic (credit: Diablo YouTube channel)