All right everybody, I’m going to close this thread down. Here’s why.
This is a bug which has now been acknowledged by one of the Diablo III developers. (See MicroRNA’s redirect.)
This is the technical support forum, where we help with technical issues with a resolution. Now that this has been officially confirmed as a bug, this is out of our hands. Please feel free to continue reports and discussion on the bug report forums, but this particular thread has simply become a nest of arguments, suggestions, and complaints which we are unable to address in technical support. We understand that this issue is annoying and apologize that it’s been interfering with your ability to start games, but we in Tech Support are not developers. All we can do is help fix issues which are in our power and forward reports for highly impactful issues.
If you have an issue joining games and are NOT silenced, please feel free to create your own thread so that we can work with you individually. Otherwise, keep an eye out for further communications from the developers on this issue.