Blizzard has decided to reduce their Diablo III server overload by preventing players from playing the entire game if they purchase it online. The official word from their forums is below:
As of patch 1.0.3, when purchasing a digital version of Diablo III through the online store or your Battle.net Account, players are restricted to the Starter Edition for the first 72 hours (sometimes less). Players on Starter Editions have the following restrictions:
- Act I up to the Skeleton King is available
- Level 13 cap
- Matchmaking available only with other Starter Edition players
- No Auction House access (Real Money or Gold)
- Global Play is not available. Players attempting to connect to Diablo III Starter Edition in a region other than their Battle.net Account's home region will receive Error 12. See the Global Play support article for more information.
More information regarding the Starter Edition is available here: http://us.battle.net/support/en/article/diablo-iii-starter-edition-guest-pass
As you can imagine, this caused quite a bit of complaining in the battlenet, which then prompted the following explanation:
Outside of the issue that we fixed, digital purchases do require a review period before they kick over from Starter to Full editions. We apologize for the inconvenience, but it is a necessary step to combat fraud and other malicious activities that can weaken everyone's play experience.
The delay is no longer than three days, and is often much quicker than that. Hang tight. 🙂
I know I love being forced to wait up to three days to play a game in full that I've bought for full price, don't you?
