Diablo 3 Digital Purchase Now Restricts Full Client Play For 72 Hours

By Michael Shelton / June 22, 2012

Sound ridiculous? Well, that's cause it really is. A topic that was recently posted in the Diablo 3 forums (and subsequently deleted) highlighted the limitations that new purchasers would face after patch 1.0.3. Essentially, players would be restricted to playing the Starter Edition client for the game for a period of 72 hours. Players would be restricted to a level 13 cap, matchmaking with only other Starter players, playability up to Act I Skeleton King, no Auction House access, and no Global Play. With all of the limitations that Blizzard placed upon new purchasers, we would assume that they would have fully explained the new limitations, yet at the time of posting they revealed nothing. Luckily, Blizzard has released a statement highlighting both the reasoning behind the limitations, and the actual restrictions that players will face:

"For security reasons and to help ensure the integrity of the game and auction house service, players who purchase the digital version of Diablo III may have to wait until payment verification is complete before they can access certain game features. Similar to World of Warcraft, these restrictions were put in place to deter credit card fraud, which in turn helps reduce gold spam and other harmful activities that can have a negative impact on the game experience for everyone."

Essentially, security precautions are the reasoning for why they're punishing gamers who are investing into the game they spent over an entire decade to create. While Blizzard is quick to say that this restriction is usually lifted within 24 hours, this feels like an unacceptable way to ensure player security. With a game that has spent this long in development, it would seem that a better security measure should have been implemented prior to launching. Blizzard has revealed the official restrictions for new digital purchasers. These temporary holds include: no public game access for unverified digital accounts, no auction house access, no item trading or drop item retrieval from other players, no chat in any public or game channels, no custom messages to friend requests, players CAN send/accept friend requests, and no global play. Yet, this leaves many to wonder why they would place a level cap upon players and restricting players game progression. It turns out that these were untintentional consequences of their new security measures for Diablo 3. Blizzard is already working to correct this mistake, and here's what they had to say:

"An unintended consequence of these security measures, players who purchase the game digitally after patch 1.0.3 are temporarily being capped at level 13 and not able to proceed beyond Act I. We are working to correct this as soon as possible and will provide another update when we have more details to share."

It's understandable that they are taking extra precautions to protect their game and its users, but restricting gamers seems like a bad move. Whether the time period is 5 hours, or 72 hours, Diablo 3 has been in development for a long time and this seems like a big oversight in launching patch 1.0.3 Hopefully, they will work out a fix quickly for the level cap and game progression. What are your thoughts? Has Blizzard completely dropped the ball with Diablo 3? Let us know in the comments below! Source: IGN