#1 - Sept. 7, 2011, 9:07 p.m.
Once again, welcome to the Bug Report Forums! I am very excited to work with all of you.
Now that I've spent the morning going through all of the posts from last night and today, I wanted to touch base with you on what I am looking for in bug reports. Please read through this guide as it explains some Do's and Don't's for bug testing and reporting.
Alright, let's get started.
Ground Rules
First off, feedback is NOT a bug. Anything related to feedback, class balance, boss suggestions, etc. belongs in the Beta Feedback forum.
I read every single thread that is posted on the forums. However, I will not always respond to them. Please DO NOT bump posts. I will ignore and possibly delete any post that simply says "Bump" or calls out for a Blizzard poster.
When reporting a bug, please make a thread for each bug you find. Threads that contain multiple bugs are difficult to manage, especially if I am unable to reproduce any of them on my end.
Please use the Search feature to search the forum and see what bugs are post. If you have a duplicate thread, I will lock it and point you to the current thread where the bug is being discussed.
Finally, please only discuss bugs within the threads. Avoid completely off topic discussions or other things not related to the bug in the thread.
Bug Writing
Ok, you found a bug, congratulations! But now what? This guide will explain how to accurately write a bug report.
When posting a bug, please include a Summary that attempts to accurately describe the bug. I should be able to understand at least 75% of the issue you are reporting simply by looking at your Summary. I understand that the size of the Summary has to be short, but please do your best.
Good summary: Tooltip for the skill Bash has a typo
Bad summary: Bug with smash skill
After your Summary, include a brief description of the bug you experienced. Include as much RELEVANT information as you can. Where you in multiplayer? Could you reproduce the issue? I need to know this stuf.f
If you have steps and can reproduce them consistently, write them out. This will help Quality Assurance get a must faster turn around time reproducing the issue and reporting it to the Diablo III designers.
Finally, it always helps to attach a link to Photobucket (or another picture hosting site) that displays a screenshot of the bug. If you need to include a video, link to a video as well.
Types of Bugs
Below are some different types of bugs you will encounter in Diablo III. I also have included the specific information I would like for each bug reported of this type.
Combat bugs - These are pretty simple. If there is a broken skill in the game, include the name of the skill and the class that uses the skill.
Example: The Barbarian's skill Bash does not knock enemies away.
Quest bugs - These can be complicated. For them, I ask that you include two things. The first is the name of the quest and quest step that you were on during the quest. The name of the quest is the name that displays at the top of your quest log, while the quest step is the specific instructions for you to complete in the quest.
The second thing I ask is if this happened in multiplayer or solo play.
Example: During the quest "The Fire From The Sky : Slay a Wretched Mother", you cannot kill the Wretched Mother in multiplayer.
Environment bugs - Finally, Environment bugs round out the specific types of bugs I need more information about. For Environment bugs, please describe the issue you and tell me where it is located. The level area you are in can be found above the minimap. Every location in the game has a level area, and it helps to know this before I start looking.
Screenshots are perfect for Environment bugs as well. They will accurately display the issue you are seeing.
Example - In New Tristram, one of the houses is bright pink.
Crashes
Crashes are getting their own section because of their complexity. Anything from your client closing to the entire server going down can be a crash. For these, you just need to be as specific as you can. Is this reproducible? Is this multiplayer only?
For my required information, I would like you to copy paste the beginning of your DxDiag (or config file for Macs). This will tell me what your computer's specs are, what video card you are using, and what your drivers are. If a crash log is generated, please copy the crash line and the first few lines of the stack trace as well.
Again, welcome to the Beta Bug Report forums! Following these guidelines will allow all of us to work together as efficiently as possible. Thanks for reading and enjoy the game!