Diablo 4 Vessel of Hatred Launch Woes Causes Some Uproar

The launch of Diablo 4's highly anticipated expansion, Vessel of Hatred, didn't go precisely as planned for Blizzard. At the time of writing on 8 October 2024, at roughly 07:15 CEST, login issues have not been completely resolved yet, with some heroes of Sanctuary still trying to play the game and failing miserably.

Many gamers and even fan sites have been waiting and waiting for hours for those servers to open up, so they can jump into Nahantu and take on the infamous Lord of Hatred himself. 

It's past my bedtime and the Diablo 4 servers are still offline. (But may be coming up soon.) https://t.co/b9F0cFfSg5

— Blizzard Watch 💙 (@BlizzardWatch) October 8, 2024

While server issues, to a degree, are to be expected at the launch of an expansion, some gamers are already dropping a small review bombing on Vessel of Hatred via Steam.

Read More: How To Create & Use Runewords in Diablo 4

At the time of writing, the Steam review score says "Mostly Negative," with gamers complaining they cannot play the game and some even claiming they wish they could get a refund. Yes, for a few hours of downtime at the start...

Players were running into errors such as "Unable to find a valid license for Diablo IV (Code 315306)" with no way to play the expansion.

So what is or was the issue? Well, Blizzard ran into a "small technical issue" on their end, and Adam "PezRadar" Fletcher took to the community forums to explain to eager fans that:

We are looking at a small delay for launch due to a small technical issue on our end. We are still expecting Vessel of Hatred to launch this evening, but we will need some additional time to ensure we have every player start at the exact same time across all platforms.

At 4pm PDT, we will begin locking out new logins for Diablo IV. Players already logged in prior to 4pm PDT will still be in-game on Patch 1.5.2, but they should expect to lose connection to the game over time while we do additional work to get the simultaneous launch prepared.

We apologize for the late breaking news on the time shift, but this is an important step we need to make to ensure every player can start their journey through Nahantu together.

At roughly 06:30 CEST on 8 October 2024, Blizzard revealed that the expansion has now officially launched.

Hatred's corruption is released upon Sanctuary ☠️#VesselOfHatred is live now 🐺

Purchase today and experience the next chapter in #DiabloIV: https://t.co/nhbWBQF8flpic.twitter.com/dGXbEYLcAq

— Diablo (@Diablo) October 8, 2024

If you are still running into issues playing Vessel of Hatred, these will likely get fixed very soon. I know it's not ideal, but it's also not the end of Sanctuary...right?

For more Diablo 4, be sure to check out our dedicated section or some of our Guides & Tutorials just below:

Our section keeps growing, so check for new guides daily! Don't forget to pick up one of the Diablo 4 Editions and join the fight to save Sanctuary soon.