Diablo 4: How To Instantly Improve Lag & Fix Stuttering

You may be able to improve lag in Diablo 4 with this simple setting change.

Server Lag is a serious issue right now and players are looking for anything that might help. Even if this fix doesn’t work for you, this setting is worth toggling. Ever since the massive launch, Diablo 4 servers have been hammered by thousands of players trying to play at the same time.

Hardly the best launch in Blizzard history, the Diablo 4 release has been hit with outages, players unable to login (or required to use weird means to login) and extreme slowdown. For what is ostensibly a solo experience while playing through the campaign without a party, that’s a pretty big annoyance. And it’s still going on for many, many players.

If you’re struggling against the Server Slam still, try changing this setting.

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More Diablo 4 guides:

All Guides & Walkthroughs | Class Overview | Necromancer Shadowblight Minions Build | Barbarian Unconstrained Berserk Build | Golem Summoning | Accessibility Options To Change First | Potion Upgrades & Increase Max Capacity | Unlocking Horses | Silent Chests & Whispering Keys | Secret of the Spring Quest Solution | Early Game Loot Farm

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How To Improve Lag | One Setting To Change

Server issues can make Diablo 4 a slog. Rubberbanding back and forth, freezing the action mid-battle against a major boss, or making gameplay impossible as you wait for the server to catch up with what you’re doing — they’re all common problems we experienced while playing through Diablo 4. The community believes there’s a quick fix to this problem, and it absolutely helped us get through some frustrating lag spikes.

The setting is ‘Cross-Network Play‘ — normally something we’d cheer for. By default, Cross-Network Play is enabled, allowing players from all platforms to work together and party up. While this is great for connectivity, it can also seriously lag your server. By disabling this setting, your realm may become a ghost town, but you may also experience way less lag.

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How To Disable Cross-Network Play

On the Character Select Screen, select Options from the pause menu.

• In Options, select the Social tab.
• Select ‘Cross-Network Play‘ and disable.

From this menu, you can also disable ‘Cross-Network Communications‘ — strangely, even with Cross-Network Play disabled, you’ll still get chat notifications from players on other platforms. If you’re going to disable one, you might as well disable both.

Disabling Cross-Network Play will drastically reduce the number of online players in your realm. This will make encountering other players less likely and teaming up with random heroes rarer. Completing World Bosses and other large events will be more difficult. If you’re blazing through the campaign or grinding solo, this is an ideal setting to change.

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More Simple Ways To Improve Performance

Disabling Crossplay is a simple fix that works on all platforms — PC or console. But, if you’re a PC player, there are more steps you can take to improve performance. It’s all down to the resource load of the Battle.net Launcher.

• For PC Users: To improve lag, go to the Battle.net Launcher Settings and set the launcher to close after launching a game.
• You can also disable Hardware Acceleration for the Battle.net Browser.

These are extremely simple changes we recommend trying first. If these fixes don’t work, you’ll need to really get in the options for your PC and test everything. Console players don’t have that luxury, so having at least one option to (maybe) improve your performance is a godsend.