As Blizzard teased earlier this week, there will be another Diablo 4 playtest next month (opens in new tab). That's great, but if you were hoping to carry over your progress from the March beta, you're out of luck. In a blog post (opens in new tab), the developer revealed that not only are characters from the beta gone for good, but those created during the May 12-May 14 "server slam" will also be deleted before the full game is released.

"Character progress created during the Early Access and Open Beta weekends will not carry over to the server slam.

"Additionally, character progress made during the server slam will not carry over to launch.

This is a bit frustrating considering that Blizzard has added an entirely new exclusive perk to the existing Diablo 4 beta rewards that can only be obtained by level 20 characters who have defeated the world boss Ashava. This means that those who spent hours last month grinding down to level 20 will have to start all over again. While many will have no qualms about starting the leveling process all over again, it is unfortunate for those who don'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 would have to say goodbye to our characters after the open beta weekend. It was (perhaps foolishly) under the assumption that this would be the last time we would visit the Sanctuary before its release in June. Especially for those who don't have enough time to level up a new character to level 20 for just one extra reward.

While certainly disappointing, it's nice to have one last chance to jump into "Diablo 4" before June. The weekend is expected to be crowded as the servers are load-tested, and there may be a lot of old-fashioned error codes to accompany the demon-slaying.