Hello,
Just wanting to put this here. I loaded up D3 as normal today but when I tried to start the game from the main menu it was grayed out. Hovering over the Start button it said “You are not the party leader”. I know that I have no friends so that couldn’t be true. I had a pet out and dismissed it, then the Start button lit up like normal. Just thought I would put that in here in case someone runs into this.
It seems that this bug is spreading. Rapidly. I just got hit with it as well. Switching heroes fixed it for me, and since all you did was remove the pet temporarily, it seems that any action taken properly sets the party leader flag.
This may be a sign that the bug is being worked on and something else broke in the process. One can only hope since that at least means progress is being made (we hope).
This bug has existed for 8 months+ I just tried to log on after not playing for like 4 months and now I can’t play.