Due to an external error, the character has retired to a digital graveyard…

In May, we reported that Activision Blizzard had announced a contest that would run until the first 1,000 players but no later than September 1. The task: get hardcore with your character, then tag Diablo’s account on Twitter with proof (screenshot, video, something) showing your Battle.net ID with the character. Anyone with swearing in their ID, for example, will disqualify themselves. The first 1,000 players will get on a statue of Lilith, which we still don’t know how big it will be, where to find it, and how long it will be on display. We may see it at BlizzCon in the autumn for a few days, then it will go into storage, as, unfortunately, the publisher will likely treat it as such. The company may belong to Microsoft by then, as they offered a $68.7 billion buyout last year.

It was Souaib Hanaf, aka cArn, a Twitch broadcaster, who won the competition, as he was the first to reach level 100 on hardcore in Diablo IV and will be on the Lilith statue (as players are not expected to play the game all the way through by the publisher). To do it, he spent 82 hours on the Activision Blizzard product, which is quite a figure considering that the new Diablo has been available in early access since June 1 and was released in stores on June 6 (and we’ve already written about it being the fastest selling Blizzard game, but no specific numbers were given!).

But cArn is also a victim of the live service model, which provides no game preservation. Diablo IV requires a server connection on all five platforms (PlayStation 5, Xbox Series, PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One). He was on his way to the final boss fight when suddenly, the game dropped him from the server. He restarted the game, and as we’ve reported in other cases, his character died. That’s the challenge of hardcore mode: permadeath. Once you die, you can start again.

But when it’s not the player’s fault (no tricks to quit on low HP to restart…), the game just f_cks it up with noble simplicity…

Source: VGC