There’s just over a day to go until the launch of Diablo 4’s early access period, but it’s never too early to go absolutely out of your gourd. As sand slips through the hourglass, eager Diablo fans are hitting fever pitch, engaging in ever more elaborate rituals to kill time and prepare their minds, bodies and souls for The Event. Frankly, I’m terrified.
Take, for example, the Ashava Trophy Club (ATC), that contingent of players who managed to nab themselves a time-limited world boss cosmetic during the previous beta period and who have been having a deeply normal one about it ever since (to be fair, it’s all very tongue-in-cheek). To gird themselves for the full game’s launch, club luminaries have been printing special t-shirts to mark themselves as a better and higher tier of person, as one does. Also, this one fan wants to commission a physical horn to sup mead from as they play, so hit them up if you have connections in the horncrafting world.
But it’s not just the ATC coming unglued, even the hornless bare-mares over in the regular Diablo community are working themselves into a froth as the launch approaches. At least one player has compiled a “Salt tier list“: a scientific proof of exactly how risible your grievances with the game are. Whining about the Ashava trophy? S++ salt. Carping about having to buy the deluxe edition for early access? F-tier salt. Rookie salt. Salt barely worthy of the name.
Another, a 43-year-old mother, says her kids think she’s “nuts with how excited I am and how much I talk about it”. “They don’t seem enthused about a ‘click to move’ (their words) game,” says mum, an offhand and childish criticism that is nevertheless utterly devastating.
There’s plenty of other stuff going down in the community—including some pretty cute fanart and someone’s Diablo 4-themed celebratory cake—but special shoutout to the Europeans trying to game a way to buy KFC in North America. At least one plucky Euro has managed to get their hands on some limited edition cosmetics by buying a chicken bucket 2000 miles away, an event which seems funny now but will probably be used by future historians to mark the point at which modern civilisation collapsed under its own weight. Maybe Diablo 4 was a mistake.