Diablo 4's pre-order beta is beset by long queues and connectivity issues
Server hotfixes have already been deployed
Diablo 4's pre-order beta is underway. That means people who have already paid for the hack-and-slash sequel are currently enjoying the quintessential modern Diablo experience: queuing to play for hours and being spontaneously disconnected should they manage to enjoy a few moments smashing monsters.
Blizzard saying they're tracking the issues and, as of a couple of hours ago, say that they've applied fixes that have improved wait times.
There's a post on the Diablo forum for tracking known issues, but also a separate thread specifically for covering queue and disconnect issues.
In that thread, Blizzard identify several issues, including wait times that are longer than the onscreen prediction, authentication issues which lead to players being unable to connect or to being disconnected, players being unable to join parties while in-game, or being told that they can't reconnect after being dropped because their "party does not exist," and more.
Thankfully at least some of these might be fixed now. "Last night, the team pushed a few backend server hotfixes to address server stability and issues related to player parties that we reported on yesterday evening," says an update from a Blizzard community manager from two hours ago. "This has led to significantly improved queue times, so players should be experiencing much shorter waits to get into the game."
Betas are for testing a game and finding these kinds of issues, and so it's not a surprise that this is how the Diablo IV beta is going. Next weekend will bring the open beta and even more players, though, so a lot of fixes are going to need to be applied awfully fast for that to be a smoother introduction for new players.