Diablo III Beta Weekend Boasts 300k Concurrent Players

[Greg Tito]

Diablo III Beta Weekend Boasts 300k Concurrent Players

The open beta stress test netted lots of data for the imminent launch.

I know quite a few poor individuals - some of whom might be in this office right now - who have anticipated the release of Diablo III with a posture resembling a heroin addict's. The loot. Oh, the clickable loot. Many players received a sweet taste this past weekend [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/116869-Diablo-3-Beta-Goes-Public-This-Weekend], just to see if the product was worth it, with Blizzard's open stress test designed to flex the muscles behind Diablo III. The queues to log in may have been frustrating, but one of Blizzard's community managers Micah Whipple reported the servers had a peak concurrency rate of more than 300,000 players and a total population much higher than that.

"I think we peaked at around 300k concurrent," Whipple - known as Bashiok on the Blizzard forums [https://twitter.com/#!/Bashiok] - Tweeted on Saturday. "Total users? I don't know... a lot."

The concept of an open beta stress test on the servers is something that Blizzard has used in the past. The plan is to basically open the flood gates and get an approximation of how much traffic the servers and code will get when the game launches. The data isn't a perfect snapshot of what you'll get when the game goes wild, but it gives the engineers something to work with.

All the testing you can muster can predict the real world though. I participated in the World of Warcraft open stress tests back in 2004, and thought they went swimmingly, but when no one predicted the deluge of subscribers when the game launched. Blizzard doubled the number of WoW servers in a month, and they were still unstable for a good six months before they got a handle on it.

I don't know if Diablo III will prove as wildly popular as WoW, but I'm happy to see Blizzard is testing as much as they can.

Source: Twitter [https://twitter.com/#!/Bashiok/status/193861650254790657]



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[MetalMagpie]

Brilliant, addictive game. Needing a connection to a server to play single-player still annoys me, but damn... they made a good game. Not sure I'll pay full whack release price (not when the first week stands a chance of still having queues), but I'm definitely going to be playing the rest of this game at some point.

 

[Ferisar]

The queues were a little bit of a derp when I tried to get a couple of my friends to play with me, but we got there eventually. See (or rather, never see ever again) everyone at release.

 

[therandombear]

I played the open beta, had some fun as Barbarian.
Did take a while to log in though, bit "excessive" traffic. xD

 

[castlewise]

Played through multi with a friend. I like how everyone gets their own loot, but you can still share it if you want.

 

[CardinalPiggles]

Every time I tried to log in it said that the servers were too full, and on top of that, I worked pretty much all fucking weekend! So I didn't have time to just keep trying.

I'm still buying it a week or two after release though, just based on YouTube videos I've seen.

 

[Therumancer]

Despite not liking their RL money auction house system, I have this one pre-ordered. I played the Beta a bit but didn't want to spoil it too much, especially seeing as they did not seem to be interested in active feedback/bug reporting given the lack of response (they seem to be observing purely passively). It's a pretty solid game, and should be a good time waster on and off with other things.

That said, I do not think that it will be as wildly successful as WoW. WoW was fairly innovative in the way it did things and pretty much re-defined the MMO for a generation. Diablo 3 is more or less a sidegrade on other, similar, games. The graphics and such are better, but the actual game is one of those "step forward, step back" type things where for every decent upgrade they did something annoying, or overly simplified things. Those who played "Diablo 2" with the expansions will notice a lot of the abillities they are used to included in some of the character types, but overall you will probably feel the number of character types and actual play styles feels pretty limited compared to the previous menu of options.

Decent game, worth playing assuming the RL AH and planned microtransactions don't gut it (which they might), but don't expect it to light the world on fire (so to speak).

This will probably scandalize some people, but despite being polished better and having better technology I actually think some of the more involved Diablo clones like say "Sacred 2" are at their core better, more innovative games within the genere. While good (and don't misunderstand that) I was disappointed given what I saw other ARPGs doing over the years, figuring that when Diablo got it's chance it would outdo them all by taking these ideas, polishing them, and expanding further on them... and really that didn't happen.

 

[tacotrainwreck]

I must say that I am not one of them. There are so many hack/slash action RPGs out their. Granted Blizzard has a huge fanboy collection, but it would have to be something pretty amazing to go beyond that.

And I also loved Sacred 2... and not just because Blind Guardian was in it \m/

 

[Baresark]

And yet, some people could not get on at all. My buddy who is the biggest Diablo fanatic around was never able to get on. I played through the beta as a Monk and I really liked it. I didn't try MP, I was waiting for my buddy, but it never happened. I felt bad for him, I'm not even buying this game anytime soon. It's a great game, but with so many great games coming about, many of which are cheaper, it's hard to pick this over others.

This weekend... Guild Wars 2... it's on.

 

[Signa]

"Sacred 2"

Sacred 2

Hell yeah! Sacred 2! I remember when I played it when it came out, I said "Fuck Diablo 3, I got Sacred!" Now that Diablo 3 is on the horizon, I don't feel unjustified in feeling that way before. I was very unimpressed with the beta, and the RMAH/DRM problems makes Diablo 3 too much to stomach for me.

 

[vxicepickxv]

All the testing you can muster can't predict the real world though.
I can give you one real world prediction from this beta. Beginning Nine months after date of release, the United States will experience a record drop in birth rates.

So you're saying that the first time battle.net goes down after the D3 launch we should look for a spike 9 months later?

/Gaming is nice and all, but sometimes, it's okay to log off.

 

[tzimize]

I was one of them and I want mooooooooooaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaar!!!!!

Thank GOD our national day is may 17th!! Hopefully their servers will be stable by then. I'll stock up on chips, soda etc and throw all flags and suits out the window. Fuck national day, hello Diablo 3!

 

[Abedeus]

Wait... PEAK 300k?!

Imagine if the beta actually started on Saturday and it wasn't down for entire day.

...Not that I complain, I have the game till May 1st, when beta ends.

"Sacred 2"

Sacred 2

Hell yeah! Sacred 2! I remember when I played it when it came out, I said "Fuck Diablo 3, I got Sacred!" Now that Diablo 3 is on the horizon, I don't feel unjustified in feeling that way before. I was very unimpressed with the beta, and the RMAH/DRM problems makes Diablo 3 too much to stomach for me.

Weird, I played Sacred 2 and was "Ehhhhh it's okay... back to Diablo 2."

 

[SEXTON HALE]

wow! peak 300k? that is crazy.
It was an excellent game though had great fun with a couple of mates of mine.
Will definitely be getting the full thing once it comes out.

 

[DanielBrown]

Never had much issues with logging in myself. A friend tried for hours, but I managed on my second try.
Anyways, it seems like it's going to be an awesome game. Got bored after just a few hours, but I reckon it's because it feels so pointless to play on characters that are gonna get wiped.
Gotta keep myself occupied until the 15th. <.<