How many years of testing have we done on Diablo 3? 
We cant even get a decent balance patch!!
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Yes, look at other aRPGs in Early Access like Last Epoch.
Of course you won’t get a decent patch - they aren’t monetizing D3. You are lucky its servers are still up. The game should be open sourced.
Ok, and how many actually play it?
Plenty of people log-in on a new patch there, way more than the current population of D3 players.
Early Access is the best way to safeguard your game against critical bugs and player base withdraw on launch due to problems. That’s why it’s becoming more and more popular.
Early access is awful. Sure, a small company can use it to get some advertisement, but other than that, it only hurts.
Heh, I would imagine the fact that you get payed by your guinea pigs is a large frikkin reason.
Last Epoch from what I gather has been “early access” for over 2 years at this point. That’s 2 years of sales without actually having to deliver a (working) product, and it will be 3 years if they stick to the 2022 release date.
So, I rather have a buggy release than 3 years of paying for a beta game.
Not really, daily peak since it hit “early access” is just over 7k players. Pretty sure D3 peaks quite a bit higher than that.
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Most people want a polished game on release. Early Access aims to guarantee that.
Let’s be honest here - Diablo 4 isn’t a next gen game. If it had released in 2020 it could have been regarded as such, but releasing anywhere from 2022 to 2024 won’t make it next gen, and a 2025+ release would make it outdated. There are quite a lot of other projects that are about to outshine Diablo 4 at that time.
So better have a bug free release instead of doing the circus with D2R once again. Blizzard aren’t good at testing their games. An Early Access will help them with testing and the player base will be way more satisfied on release.
Open the game for an Early Access after Blizzcon 2022 and after year and a half release it. The other option would repeat the D2R situation and would result in massive refunds.
D3 has quite a lot of players when the new Season starts, but then it quickly becomes a ghost town.
D4 in Early Access will have way more players than D3 and Last Epoch combined.
You said Last Epoch had more players. The most they ever had concurrently was 7000, average is less than 1000. D3 beats that any day.
And exactly how would 7k players help safeguard the servers from overloading when D3 for example had millions at release?
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Problem with PTR tests is that feedback is completely ignored, even bug reports. Reported bugs often stay in for launch.
And new features are often released to PTR in a state that is so broken that any testing is impossible.
They can always do free weekends after new patches to bring more players in and test the server performance. If D4 has 50k players daily in Early Access for a year almost all bugs would be reported. Then they make a few stress test weekends and it would be a release without huge problems. Yes, there could exist huge que times, but other than that it would be a stable release.
Not implementing feedback does not equal not listening. How many times does this need to be said.
I have no idea why people fear Early Access. It’s not that those who played during EA will keep their progression. There would be a reset before launch.
I know i am in the very minority when i say this:
I kinda like server issues on launch days. There is something special about it and its not the same when everything goes smoothly, just feels like its missing something.
Everyone on discord having fun/whining/complaining on discord about it. I like it 
Yeah, because it’s not like games already do what with open betas, and that sure doesn’t seem to alleviate the issues at release regardless.
Fear? No. Making customers PAY to bughunt, that’s the issue. Doing it for YEARS, that’s the issue.
It’s like paying at a restaurant for the “honor” of making your own dinner, and while you’re already cooking, make something for the owners as well.
You have a time machine though, remember? Why don’t you go forwards to a year after it’s released, grab all the patch notes, then come back to now so they can fix them before the bugs even happen?
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Not fear, but disgust.
Would kinda only makes it worse. Last Epoch wont take away your characters at release.
I don’t understand the problem. When you pay you know you are buying an Early Access product.
I’d definitely had a problem if I pay for something I can’t use on launch.
I stated what I consider is the issue, I made an example to further show my point. I really can’t make it any clearer.
I mean it could be a problem for you only. When I pay for something clearly declared I don’t have a problem with it.
If I pay for oranges and I receive oranges I don’t have a problem. If I get oranges I can’t eat that’s a problem. And it’s clearly not a problem for me only as D2R launch show.
Well, clearly not as people are agreeing with me. But of course I only speak for myself, are you in charge of any opinions but your own?