Diablo 3 Beaten in Just 7 Hours?

Diablo 3 is officially out the door and in the hands of PC gamers worldwide after a long 12-year wait. The game was actually announced by Blizzard on June 28, 2008 but went into development long before that -- just one year after Blizzard published Diablo 2 in 2000. Needless to say, for Diablo fans, the wait was horrendous whether it was four years or 12 years.

With that timeframe in mind, there are reports that a group of four Korean gamers completed the campaign in seven hours -- that's from the opening sequence to defeating the final boss, Diablo himself -- playing on the normal difficulty setting. A second group of Chinese players also defeated Diablo in the same amount of time. Both parties even took screenshots of the defeated boss lying dead on the ground as proof of their victory (Korea shot, China shot).

As previously reported, Diablo 3 offers four difficulty levels: Normal, Nightmare, Hell and Inferno. Naturally as each mode increases, players will be faced with deadlier enemies packed with additional skills and higher levels of heath. But they also drop better loot in return for the player's hard work. That said, we'd like to see the same parties hack their way through Inferno -- once their characters have leveled up of course -- to see how long it will take.

Still, given that they completed the game in only seven hours on Normal mode, the campaign seems rather short given the extremely long development time. Maybe they didn't stop to read all the text? How long will it take for a single player to complete the campaign?

"This launch is a culmination of many years of hard work by our development team, and many years of passionate, dedicated support from gamers around the world," said Mike Morhaime, CEO and co-founder of Blizzard Entertainment. "We're grateful for the enthusiasm of our players, and for the help of our beta testers in getting the game ready for release. Now that Diablo 3 is live, we hope everyone's ready to have a hellishly good time slaying demons and collecting loot in Sanctuary."

Diablo 3 is available for Windows XP/Windows Vista/Windows 7 and Macintosh at a suggested price of $59.99 USD for both the retail DVD-ROM version and the digital version sold directly from Blizzard. There's also a special alabaster-white Collector's Edition, sold exclusively in retail stores while supplies last, for a suggested price of $99.99 USD.

  • tical2399
    Well not really surprising. Its the trend with games these days. Prettier visuals and shorter play time. :(
    Reply
  • hotroderx
    tical2399Well not really surprising. Its the trend with games these days. Prettier visuals and shorter play time.
    Keep in mind this person most likely rushed everything and did nothing but D3 for 7hrs. Most likely they didnt explorer anything. They did not take the time to read or watch quest dialogue and anything that was not needed to progress the game forward was ignored.
    Reply
  • halls
    7 hours seems pretty short, but they no doubt skipped everything that wasn't directly tied to the main story. Also, this game is very replayable, so I'm not worried about how long the story takes. Hell, I probably beat SC2's campaign in ten hours but have been playing its multiplayer mode since it came out almost two years ago. If you've polished the basic gameplay to a shine, the story is just icing on the cake. I'm level 10 and I can't wait to keep playing later.
    Reply
  • dgingeri
    lol, they haven't seen anything yet. Everyone should already know that normal difficulty is just the training mode. I defeated the first act during the beta in less than two hours. Defeat Inferno difficulty in anything less than a month and I'll be impressed.
    Reply
  • -Jackson
    So, who else knew exactly what was going to be mentioned (namely, asians.) in this article when they clicked? :lol:

    Don't get me wrong, I'm asian too. Just having a bit of a laugh :P
    Reply
  • Kamab
    The beta wasn't the entire act 1.
    Reply
  • thorkle
    7 hours is not short for the normal mode for anyone who has ever played Diablo 2. Diablo isn't about the campaign, it's about getting loot, and making a great character. You spend countless hours playing, for the objective of better items and leveling, not beating the game (even though this is something you do while leveling eventually). After this game has been out for a while people will be able to beat the campaign in probably 1-2 hours or less with the help of a high level friend.
    Reply
  • -Jackson
    KamabThe beta wasn't the entire act 1.Only this wasn't the beta.
    Reply
  • LeetSpeak
    Difficulty:

    Normal
    Nightmare
    Hell
    Inferno
    Asian
    Reply
  • thorkle
    Sorry for the double post, but the harder difficulty levels take immensely more time to complete because the difficulty increases more than any game I've played in the harder difficulties.
    Reply