Diablo 3 Beta Weekend Reached 300,000 Concurrent Players
Blizzard's first public test brought 300,000 concurrent players and lots of problems to the Diablo 3 servers.
Blizzard's community manager "Bashiok" claims on Twitter that the number of concurrent users playing the Diablo 3 beta over the weekend peaked at 300,000 gamers. The total number of users test-driving the highly-anticipated Diablo sequel is currently unknown, but Bashiok said it was "a lot."
The purpose of the beta weekend was to see how the servers could handle the load all at once. Given that fans have waited since 2000's Diablo 2 for another installment, it's only natural to assume that every single fan was waiting for the doors to swing open on Friday, especially those who didn't make it into the closed beta. Just imagine a mad crowd waiting for the doors to open on Black Friday, and you'll understand why Blizzard wants to be fully prepared for May 15.
"Every time we tried to log in this weekend and failed, we were doing our part to help Blizzard,"Forbes reports, describing its difficulties in loggin into the game and staying connected during the flood of anxious gamers. "This would help explain why their response to all inquiries was “keep trying.” They wanted people to copy/paste their passwords every four seconds and try to log in. That’s exactly the sort of 'stress' they need to test."
"Shortly after the beta opened up on Friday, fans were greeted with login errors - particularly server full errors," GameZone states. "Error 37 was the most frequent as servers reached their capacity. According to Blizzard, 'this was likely due to us lowering the concurrency cap to address an issue or error.'"
The public beta reportedly contained the same content seen in the closed beta: access to the five characters, and a portion of Act I which concludes by defeating the Skeleton King. The difference was that it only allowed characters to level up to 13. But like the closed beta testers, all characters will be killed off once the actual retail version goes live on May 15. Bummer, we know.
With the beta weekend now over, does that mean the Diablo 3 Starter Edition was more than a mistaken beta client? Probably not. As reported last week, those who downloaded and played the leaked client was asked to purchase the full game. What's possible is that Blizzard provided the Starter Edition to beta testers for the weekend stress test, but turned off the nag screen and activated other limitations like level caps and more.
That said, it wouldn't be surprising to see the actual Starter Edition launch before the full version goes retail in order to see how the servers handle the load over a longer period. Yet Blizzard didn't take that route with StarCraft 2, so we may have to wait until May 15 before he get a taste of Diablo 3 again. Let's hope not.
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Kevin Parrish has over a decade of experience as a writer, editor, and product tester. His work focused on computer hardware, networking equipment, smartphones, tablets, gaming consoles, and other internet-connected devices. His work has appeared in Tom's Hardware, Tom's Guide, Maximum PC, Digital Trends, Android Authority, How-To Geek, Lifewire, and others.
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kategra84 Diablo 3 - the RPG for teenages. Way too easy, just click click. I didn't even use a healing potion, i got bored by the time i reached lvl 6. Great music, but way to much colour and glitter!Reply
No story, no credible characters, kids will love it. -
slomo4sho kategra84Diablo 3 - the RPG for teenages. Way too easy, just click click. I didn't even use a healing potion, i got bored by the time i reached lvl 6. Great music, but way to much colour and glitter! No story, no credible characters, kids will love it.Reply
Playing the tutorial level really isn't much of an indicator of difficulty. -
rantoc Checked out the stress test and it was well executed, had some issues to login but generally it was a positive experience even as a stress test. The class balance was soo soo but it usually changes later in the game. The atmosphere in the game were good and i really look forward to the release.Reply
Kategra84: Anyone who knows the Diablo history knows they always been at kid difficulty in act one much like a tutorial for new players. Both Diablo one and two got progressively harder with the added difficulty levels.
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Flying-Q I'm no spring chicken and I enjoyed it. having seen pre-view vids I thought the graphics would be too cluttered but was happily proved wrong. Once I had played it through several times I noticed certain musical elements and game content changed as achievements were reached. Subtle reminders of DII appeared after the 4th run through.Reply
I found blue magical items too frequently for early game and the mobs were a bit weak, but then so was DII in the earliest levels. The lack of damage numbers on the abilities was annoying so choosing which runes to use was haphazard at best.
Overall, allowing for the friday night saturday server disconnections it was a good test.
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kategra84 Slomo4shOPlaying the tutorial level really isn't much of an indicator of difficulty.Reply
LVL 6 and still in tutorial? haha -
unionoob kategra84Diablo 3 - the RPG for teenages. Way too easy, just click click. I didn't even use a healing potion, i got bored by the time i reached lvl 6. Great music, but way to much colour and glitter! No story, no credible characters, kids will love it.Reply
Learn it once Diablo is not an RPG.
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tomfreak just like BF3 beta test, players can be a lot since it is FREE. So lets see number again when it launch the live diablo 3.Reply -
officeguy 2 words. Not ready. When everybody can login successfully the first time and not having 10 different error messages when you log in and having the servers go down because of maintance then it will be ready, until then they still have a lot of work to do. I think they need one more weekend of testing, IMO.Reply