I don’t typically post things online but I thought I’d share my experience with Diablo 4. I’ve put 400 hours into Diablo 4 in hardcore and I did enjoy the gameplay and the grind for gear and levels, however the game has some fundamental issues and gamebreaking flaws. I logged on, walked out into the open world during a helltide and attacked the first mob of monsters I encountered. I noticed the game was lagging and I could not action anything in the game. I quickly quit the game within a few seconds and when I loaded it back up, it said my character had fallen. It’s unfortunate blizzard cannot provide servers that are safe, secure and lag free. It’s unfair to die in this manner, outside the players control. As silly as this may sound, because it’s only a video game, this loss feels devastating to me. Ultimately I play video games to have fun and this experience has left me feeling upset, frustrated, and defeated. I’ve uninstalled and deleted the game and I will never return to it again in the future.
I’ve noticed the same thing, theirs is way too much instability from the server side.
I’ve encountered the same scenario as you in helltide multiple times during HC leveling. I learned the best way to avoid a server side death is to immediately use a scroll of escape. When I haven’t done this, I have died. However every time I have done this, including with nearby mobs, I end up in town almost full life.
yes, it is extremely frustrating to lose a character like that.
Has still not happened to me, but I definitely emphasize with your reaction.
And props for doing so in a sober and rational manner by the way 
Sounds like you enjoyed the game up til this point. If I was you I’d try to read up on the server stability in a season or two as it tends to get better over time.
its non season, not a huge deal. season 1 resets so try again then.
I love HC and it sucks that we die to server issues. I’m not trying to diminish your experience but it is the “preliminary” stage of the release. I’m convinced it was a rush job on the back of the Diablo Immortal fiasco and the “Do you not have phones” BS. I’m hopeful Season 1 will have all of this fixed and we can die by our own stupidity. The beauty of HC is starting over… 
Please come back to Diablo… 
Honestly, I gave up. Just the day before yesterday, the server went haywire, so I avoided playing for 24 hours. I was expecting hidden maintenance. Because it was Tuesday, many games performed maintenance on that day. Even the blizzard last week happened on the same day. Before I committed to starting last night to farm, I checked 2-3 times between 12 hours of gameplay that they were not doing some maintenance. The last 5–6 hours were more afk and I did not check the BNET app at all… This is getting annoying. During the course of 12 hours of gameplay, I was online. Another character died because of their dumb maintenance. Was teleporting to town game crash. Log in as dead to the environment. I looked at the BNET app. Guess what maintenance Ingame listed on the app? Not a single announcement in game chat. The whole 12 hours I put into farming for items went down the drain. Why are some dumb, lazy devs not sending out in-game messages that there is a maintenance GOING on?
I agree. I had to stop playing HC for a bit because I kept dying to server issues and couldn’t even get to tier 3. I’m extremely frustrated. I view this though as the “preliminary” stage like I said. I think I would care more about the Season character rather than this one just due to the extra content promised. I would hang in there. Take a break and come back, relax on softcore until the season starts.
I think you almost never want to “leave the game” during lag. That will certainly strand you afk for 10-30 seconds almost ensuring death.
Instead if you’re going through a lag spike (not total disconnect) you should be:
- force moving your character in the direction you know (or think) is safe
- Regularly pressing the potion key, whatever defensive and crowd controlled abilities you have, and your biggest attacks that don’t require standing still
- spamming your scroll of escape hotkey (and possibly death evasion too).
Doing all of the above will give you the greatest chance of survival when the game unlags and superspeeds to whatever is going on in the present. It’s not foolproof but I have survived a TOOON of lag spikes both in d3 and in d4 by doing this.
Might be time to put HC on the shelf for a bit. Dying to disconnects is the worst. At this point, I am not even sure I will start season one on HC.
Welcome to hardcore. Not for the faint hearted.
been HC since og d2, these replies are so lame and represent the Stockholm Syndrome members of the community who think that’s the way it is because that’s how it’s been. Hardcore is great but blizzard’s design is just inexcusably bad, DC deaths have already been solved in the genre but blizz hasn’t implemented it.
remember, in D2, u were able to save and exit and it would instantly exit the game. Also if u dc’d in d2, it would exit you out of the game.
There is one solution to this, adding a death tracker statistic to SC. That way you can play sc, and try to keep your deaths at 0. and if u dc and die, it would go to 1. I think this is the solution. Add a death tracker statistic to SC blizzard. please if your reading this. alot of HC players would switch to SC, including me
imagine being lvl 100, and your death tracker statistic says like 5, and u know yourself they were all to DC. think about how good that feels , and also to show off to others who inspect your character. think about it
even take it a step further, it says in the local chat when someon gets slain by " insert monster name here"
why not log that, and have it viewable, and keep a total count? this is very easy to implement
This is not the genius idea that you think it is.
Dont understand why everyone is always complaining about the servers. A connection is always build up between 2 peers. It doesnt mean any slowness or hickup is always on Blizzards side. It can be a short delay on your side (someone starts a download, short interference in WLAN, an automatic update process of any app on your PC starts and consumes bandwith etc.) or any hop in between your side and the Blizzard servers has a short delay.
First thing, this isn’t PoE so you shouldn’t be closing the game and it’s been that way since D3. Playing pre season and pre big patch is always going to have bugs and issues that need to be fixed. No game is released perfect without issues and if you’re worried about losing progress or your character regardless of it being a legit death or a bug, HC is not for you.
As also a HC player that has 300+ hours and played since launch hardcore exclusively. I just MUST say this:
I’m from EU and ever since launch I haven’t had a big internet lag spike or a disconnect. Not a single one. I did have the game freezes but that’s apparently because of the known VRAM leak.
Therefore I don’t want to be that guy, but do you ever wonder if those lag spikes and disconnects could be your ISP problem?
Ye I gotta say that, apart from maintenance and ddos, I can’t confidently say that the lag spikes have been caused by server side issues. My internet is sh t in Australia 
Indeed. Playing on PS5 with a wired connection and fibre service, the game is very stable. A few times when it has started to chug a bit I’ve just logged off and reconnected… though once I chose to press on and almost lost a character. Won’t make that mistake again.
What D2 was this? In D2 LoD, it was very dangerous to quit out of the game - you could easily end up linkdead on the server and then be actually dead by the time you could log back in. People ran things like chicken hack to try to speed up their escape, but there was still a risk even then.