Diablo III adding 275,000 beta testers

Blizzard is inviting more than a quarter of a million additional testers to try out Diablo III ahead of the game's release next month, the company announced on its forums last night.

Into the mouth of hell, 275,000 gamers will march.

Blizzard is presently dispatching 275,000 Diablo III beta keys to opt-in testers, and gamers can check their Battle.net account to see if they've received a license. If selected, players can download the beta client and hop into the game in front of its May 15 release date.

Blizzard warned that Diablo III beta testers may experience a series of issues related to the "large amount of invites" it is sending.

"Keep in mind that with such a large amount of invites for our test hardware we fully expect a strong possibility of stress test issues, such as an inability to log in, disconnections, and potential lag/latency," reads a line from the statement. "We'll also be testing our queuing system, which you may see when attempting to enter a game."

Diablo III will launch next month without its multiplayer player-versus-player arena component. That part of the game will be delivered digitally to gamers at a later date via a patch.

Diablo III is the first title in the series since 2001's Diablo II: Lord of Destruction expansion and will add a variety of new features, character classes, and a new auction house system designed as "a new way for the company to pull revenues from the game."

For more on Diablo III, check out GameSpot's latest preview.