Death in "Diablo 4" is generally no big deal, at worst a minor setback, but in hardcore mode it's a completely different story: you stay dead. It can be an intense challenge, but also a very unfair moment. A crash or a loss of Internet connection is considered death, and everything you've accumulated over dozens or hundreds of hours of play is suddenly gone. This is not cool, but hopefully players will not have to worry about this for much longer.

In the first stream of the Diablo 4 Campfire Chat today, game director Joe Shely said that the developers are aware that the teleport bug has caused the death of several Hardcore players.

"We are investigating these two cases and will work to fix them once we identify the root cause," Shely said.

Disconnection deaths are a different matter; as Shely said, you can't "fix" them like a bug because the problem can occur anywhere between the player and the remote server. For this reason, Blizzard plans to add a trigger to Scrolls of Escape that will automatically trigger when the game detects that a player has disconnected.

Scrolls of Escape is a hardcore-only rarity, intended to help players escape situations that would otherwise result in death. Even in the middle of the toughest boss fight in the game, this can be used to quickly teleport back to town. It's basically a "Get Out of Jail Free" card (as long as you remember to bind it to a button), but according to Shelley, its presence opens the door for players to more "exciting moments" in the game.

So the plan is to simply add disconnection detection to Scrolls of Escape, so that if for some reason the link to the Diablo 4 server is broken, the player is automatically blown to a safe city. according to Shely, the process of determining disconnection is actually " very complex" and could go undetected and unprotected, he said. But unfair and terrible deaths due to bad luck or poor choice of Internet providers should be greatly reduced. This is a huge improvement.

Unfortunately, according to Shely, the anti-disconnection feature will be implemented sometime in Season 2; the first season of Diablo 4 currently has no firm start date, but is expected to go live in mid to late July and run for about three months. The Immunity and Teleportation bugs, on the other hand, "could be sooner than that" (and we hope they will be).

One point that was not answered during the session is whether Blizzard will (or can) do anything to resurrect Hardcore characters who have already died due to bugs or disconnections. I have inquired and will update if I hear back.