Sometimes when I'm in a game and I choose to leave, I'm given a 10 second wait, with a button to cancel. Other times, however, I don't get any wait at all - the timer shows up and immediately reads 0, and then the game exits.
What causes the timer to pop up? Is there any way I can disable it completely? I'm trying to farm a particular random item in Leoric's Manor, and having to wait between runs is making me impatient.
Hit T to teleport to town, then logout, and it will log you out instantly
Logging out is instant if you have the In-Town buff, and the Teleport animation is faster than the logout timer (4 seconds vs 10 seconds)
In addition, you can do other things while casting, such as looking through your inventory, or at your skills, or admiring your character and/or surroundings (which is what I usually do when teleporting). This gives you the illusion that you are not sitting around doing nothing while you're waiting to logout, which reduces the aggravation caused by it :)
As far as I know, there is no way to disable the logout timer in unsafe places for the reasons tater596 mentioned
This is similar to the Logout timer from world of warcraft. If you are in a potentially dangerous area (i.e. outside of town, or in a dungeon) you will have a timer. This is done to prevent logging out to escape death and it's (minimal) consequences.
If you are in a safe place however, you will not have this timer.
T), 4 seconds + 1 second of loading ~= 5 seconds. – Nick T May 18 '12 at 16:35