You'll have to start completely from scratch
As Blizzard playfully teased earlier this week, we’re getting another Diablo 4 playtest next month. That’s great, but if you were hoping to carry your progress over from the March beta, you’re out of luck. The developer revealed in its blog post that not only are your beta characters gone for good, but any character created during the May 12 – May 14 server slam will also be deleted before the full game releases.
“Any character progress made during the early access and open beta weekends will not carry over to server slam,” the post clarifies. “Additionally, any character progress made during server slam will not carry over to launch.” It’s a tad frustrating considering that Blizzard has added a whole new exclusive treat on top of its existing Diablo 4 beta rewards—one that you can only get with a level 20 character from defeating world boss Ashava. That means those who spent hours grinding it out to level 20 last month will have to do it all over again from scratch. I’m sure many won’t mind another shot at the levelling process, but it’s a shame for those who won’t have the time or energy to do it a second or third time.
To be fair to Blizzard, it was pretty clear last month that we’d have to bid farewell to our characters once the open beta weekend was over. That was (perhaps foolishly) under the assumption that it’d be our last visit to Sanctuary before June’s release, though. Part of me was hoping that we’d at least be able to cling onto them for one final pre-launch playtest, especially for people who won’t have enough time to level a whole new character up to level 20 for a single additional reward.
It’s a bummer, for sure, but it’s still nice to have a final chance to dive into Diablo 4 before June. The weekend is being used to stress test servers, so expect some heavy congestion and a plethora of good old-fashioned error codes to go with your demon slaying.
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