Blizzard announced 10 million sales for D3

[Gladiator2009]

Diablo 3 is a Michael Bay movie.

Infracted

[alemaite]

I haven't even cleared inferno because it just wasn't fun on my barb.

[Lothan]

It doesn't matter if people start playing and then stop. This isn't an mmo and there is no subscription fee, it doesn't need a massive end game. It could definitely use the pvp to get implemented soon however. The fact that this game is an always online game to me doesn't change the fact that it's still a single player game with some multiplayer features. I compare it to other single player rpg's I've played which never have an end game of any kind. At least the Diablo games have far more replay ability than those.

[Yuuki Asuna]

I'm just going to add that I love D3, not by myself, but with friends. I don't play a whole lot just when I have nothing to do until MoP comes. The game has it's share of problems, especially at the level 60 range. But I'm sure over time, Blizzard 'can' make the game better and are trying. Or they could disappoint me and the other people that still play. I won't give up hope as much as know there is hope, but I know there is problems with D3 and many many people out of the 10 million don't like it and want it fixed.

[Kiry]

Well my launch was pretty flawless also; but then again I'm an adult and don't feel like a special snowflake that needs my every whim catered too.

And SWTOR's launch was a hell of a lot worse then D3's.

I think it was pretty close. Both did a hell of a lot of brand damage to their respective companies. that's not a good measure of success. That's a hole to dig out of.

I love(d) the Diablo series. Play the heck out of both D1 & D2. D3 I played a lot but not nearly the same. I've stopped and so have all my friends. I'm not a measuring stick, and neither are my friends. But we are just part of the numbers that said, no thanks.

[Kosic]

Just because a lot of people bought the game, doesn't mean all of them are still playing. I bet a large chunk of those 10 million already quit.

This doesn't disprove what many people claim, that a lot of people are quitting.

^This.

I already quit the game, twice actually. Once was within the first 10 days, because I knew this game would be a drag and that inferno difficulty was set a little too high for elite packs. Which made it really boring, and was down to either using OP builds (which would be nerf'd) or rerolling class.
Came back after a month or so, cos my friends kept bugging me about the game. Rerolled to a more fun class (Was Wiz, then went Barb), had a small amount of fun for about a week (took a few days to hit level cap), got to act 3 inferno, made 10.5m gold, got bored. Game is just boring for me. Gave everything that was worth wild a way to friends, and uninstalled the game.

Everything beneath that number in drops is pretty normal for a game that is heavely played for 10 weeks long (and with no PvP yet).

Heavily played for a week, and dropped out. Pvp in D3, not interested in it at all, didn't care for it's information or it's release date. But I guess that's just me.

[anisadora]

Do yourself a favour and go and google "error 37" then come back to me, until then your opinion isn't worth shit to anyone and its just you spewing your uninformed shit everywhere.

Go ahead and try to honestly say that being unable to play a single player game because the company had shitty servers is a good idea. Go on, try it.

you sound so butthurt, it's kinda funny Methanar.

Infracted. Please don't provoke other posters

[Deleted]

Recently I noticed that:
-gold sold by farmers is cheaper than ever (7€ for 10 mil), that means bots are completely out of control
-less and less players participate in public games each day
-its much harder to sell anything in both AH and RMAH

Bottom line is: so what that they sold 10 millions copies, they could sell 10 billions for all I care, my personal enjoyment is diminishing fast lately.

[Lolsteak]

This game has made Blizzard around $500 million dollars.

Obviously, someone likes it

Deal with it.

just because alot of people bought the game doesn't mean they enjoy the service which was provided, or lack of it i should say

i can see D3 free falling like facebooks stocks

[Alilei32]

so where is everyone? Public games had 25k people in them 2 months ago now its prime time and not even 1000 and nothing sells on the AH no matter how cheap you price it. If 10 million people bought this game they must be using the game CD as a coaster and got it just for the nice pad of paper that comes with the game.

[ashybawls]

last time i logged on there was like 4 people in the trade channel and that was like 2 months ago

[Alilei32]

I haven't even cleared inferno because it just wasn't fun on my barb.

Yea Id imagine blowing through all of Act 3 in 40 minutes without ever losing a drop of health would get old after a while.

[JustaBigBird]

But how many still play it?

[melodramocracy]

It really doesn't matter how many people still play it, because the vast majority of income in this game was from initial sales, not long term RMAH activity (which is probably just icing on the cake in Blizzards eyes).

As far as folks still playing it, I and everyone else here have nothing but anecdotes to divulge about it. Did the game certainly feel like fewer were playing as time wore on? Yes. Is anyone I know personally (myself included) still playing it? No. But it doesn't matter.

It was a decent game, not amazing, but got stale VERY quickly, and is simply no longer interesting to me. I got my money's worth out of it, but haven't been compelled to reinstall it, and doubt I ever will.

And I don't really have a problem with that when it comes to single player games. *shrug*

[Alilei32]

It really doesn't matter how many people still play it,

How can that possibly be even close to the truth? The amount of people playing matters a lot. More people playing means more people buying and selling on both the GAH and RMAH. I keep getting back items every 2 days that Im selling for 1/5th of what a similar item was a month ago and they would sell in an hour. Now they dont sell after 36 hours for a fraction of the cost. Id say Blizzard screwed everyone over big time. Most people who were the first ones to farm Act 3 and got rich and looted tons of good items before bugs were fixed cashed out when the RMAH went live and then quit. Casual players have probably also quit because now theres such a huge catch 22 with gear it makes it impossible to progress without having a giant golden horseshoe wrapped in 4 leaf clovers shoved up your ass. You are lucky to sell 1 item for every 24 hours of farming and even if you do its only for peanuts. Sure gear that will let you get through Act 1 and maybe Act 2 is dirt cheap but then you are forced to buy retarded expensive gear to farm Act 3. But you cant sell the drops you get in Act 1 in order to buy the gear you need for Act 3 so you are basically screwed until Blizzard fixes loot again. They should just take inactive and banned accounts and redistribute the wealth among the remaining active accounts. Blizzard created this problem in the first place by letting a select few exploit bugs with loot like resplendent chests and then fixing it so only a small percentage of players actually got to take advantage of those bugs and letting them all make tens of millions of gold while the rest of us got screwed when they finally said OK time to fix this cant have too many people getting good loot.

[BenBos]

so where is everyone? Public games had 25k people in them 2 months ago now its prime time and not even 1000 and nothing sells on the AH no matter how cheap you price it. If 10 million people bought this game they must be using the game CD as a coaster and got it just for the nice pad of paper that comes with the game.

the calculation of public games changed after patch 1.03 (3 weeks after launch).

With the new calculation (which only tracks games which need to be filled up to 4 players as a full group) that number went from 1800+ to 1200+ on EU servers in prime time.

That's quite good as a retention rate for a game coming out of its launching weeks.
So your "decline" is based on wrong data.

Blue post from Blizzard can be found anywhere on the subject.[COLOR="red"]


http://diablo.incgamers.com/blog/com...ce-1-3-release

Read it and you'll understand.

---------- Post added 2012-08-03 at 05:32 AM ----------

But how many still play it?

Well since the active forming of groups number was set after patch 1.03 (3 weeks after launch), the in game public forming of games went from 1800+ to 1200+ in prime time in EU in the last 8 weeks...

So that's 66% daily retention rate after the launching weeks.

Although solo games, private games and friends's games can not be traced and the more difficult content will not be played in public games (hell and Inferno), it is a conservative guess D3 is played by around 5 to 7 million people on a regular basis.

As it is just a click away on BAttleNet, those people are not going anywhere either, since it can be played without a sub fee in a casual way from time to time.

This is not an mmorpg you need to keep playing to even participate. Those stating they "gave everything away and uninstalled" are just trolling and try to justify a "quit" post, which absolutely makes no sense in a non mmorpg like Diablo.

How do you "quit" a boardgame, a computer game or any game that is just a click away to try out and play without the need to do daily content "just to be competitive with others" (gearscore or attunement) is beyond me.

[Glorious Leader]

I had the the opportunity to log on a couple days ago out of sheer boredom. 700 people in public games. 10 million is interesting but they carefully avoid telling the share holders how many refunds they gave out and how much activity still remains... The stock lost 2% after trading

Since were all sharing personal anecdotes I know of at least 15 people who purchased the game they all stopped. Now the interesting thing isn't the number, the interesting thing is that they reflect a relatively broad swath of the player base. Some are casual gamers, some are more hardcore. Some are d2 vets and some were not. The only common theme among them was that d3 was the biggest disappointment of the year.

[Cairhiin]

This game had the worst launch of any game ever.

Beyond that there is no pvp, there is no real end game, everything is just repetitive and its a bad game that never lived up the years of hype it had.

Deal with it.

Don't use a hyperbole to try and make a point. Diablo III was not the worse launch by any means; Diablo II launch was.

Having said that the game has issues which most people would like to see fixed.

[Glorious Leader]

Don't use a hyperbole to try and make a point. Diablo III was not the worse launch by any means; Diablo II launch was.

Having said that the game has issues which most people would like to see fixed.

It was pretty bad for a game that is supposedly not an mmo. For a game that they have years of experience behind them with. Yea it was pretty bad.

[BenBos]

It was pretty bad for a game that is supposedly not an mmo. For a game that they have years of experience behind them with. Yea it was pretty bad.

As always putting up personal opinions as a general conclusion is a compete fail.

I say a confirmed 10.000.000 players with a proven in game retention rate of 60% public games ( see stats above) is PRETTY GOOD.

Also don't fake public numbers: you take non prime time clearly and you already faked other numbers in earlier posts whithout even taking into account patch 1.03 changes in the calculations..

Clearly proof of hating things by trying to put out 3 and 4 letter words which don't mean a thing really.