I'm beginning to think that Diablo 4's permadeath hardcore mode is not worth the heartache. A week ago, the world's first level 100 Diablo 4 hardcore character met an ignominious end due to a random server disconnect. And now, popular streamer Quin69 was unceremoniously wiped out just 9 levels short of 100. Absolutely nothing.

Quin69, discovered by GamesRadar, was porting back to Kyovashad after taking on the Nightmare Dungeon as a level 91 druid when the game began to hang at the load screen. He restarted unfazed, and the Diablo 4 launch menu told him that his fallen character had gone to the Hall of Fallen Heroes. This meant that he was gone forever and could never be recovered. This sent the poor guy into quite a spiral, and for some reason he took his anger out on the mannequin and the microwave oven in his home. Both of which he deserved.

It is not uncommon for Diablo 4's hardcore characters to suffer disastrous permadeaths due to server disconnects, especially in the game's relatively early days, usually because their characters are swarmed and devoured by trash mobs while the game is not connected.

Quin69 had cleared the dungeon and was about to teleport back to Kyovashad, his safe base in Diablo 4. As noted above, the game only states that he was killed by the "environment," making it almost impossible to read this message in anything other than a derisive tone.

Some viewers (one of whom is seen in the video above) have theorized that Quin69's death may have something to do with the "zap" of lightning that persistently remains in the dungeon in nightmare mode even after the mob has been cleared. According to the theory, Quin69 dropped various defenses when ported to Kyovashad, but the lightning stayed in place and instantly killed him while the game hung. It would not help the streamer's heartache at all.

The streamer had dedicated 173 hours to his precious druid before being swallowed by some sort of game design black hole. Even more unfortunate, if he had achieved level 100, he could have made a name for himself in Blizzard's very silly "Diablo 4" hardcore statue. At the very least, it would have been a kind of immortality.