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Diablo 3 Breaks PC-Game Records with 3.5 Million Sold on Launch Day

Post by Dan @ 09:16am 24/05/12 | 23 Comments

Boasting of their hugely successful launch, Blizzard has announced that Diablo 3 has set a new record for PC games, having sold more than 3.5 million copies by first 24 hours of its May 15 launch -- a figure the publisher is quick to point out, does not include the additional 1.2 million copies of the game that were included in World of Warcraft subscribers' "Annual Pass" promotion.

Notably absent from the release however, are any figures pertaining to Mac OS player numbers.

As of the first week of the game’s availability, that number had already grown to more than 6.3 million.* The above figures also do not include players in Korean Internet game rooms, where Diablo III has become the top-played game, achieving a record share of more than 39% as of May 22.†

“We’re definitely thrilled that so many people around the world were excited to pick up their copy of Diablo III and jump in the moment it went live,” said Mike Morhaime, CEO and cofounder of Blizzard Entertainment. “We also regret that our preparations were not enough to ensure everyone had a seamless experience when they did so. I want to reaffirm our commitment to make sure the millions of Diablo III players out there have a great experience with the game moving forward, and I also want to thank them for their ongoing support.”

As for the state of the game itself, the server issues plaguing the initial launch seem to have subsided and Blizzard are getting on with the balancing tweaks and the game's first hotfix notes describe some notable adjustments to both the Monk and Wizard classes.

For more on Diablo 3, swing by AusGamers' own in-depth review.

diablo 3 blizzard

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Scooter
Posted 09:23am 24/5/12

Boasting of their hugely successful launch

Thats a joke right? Sales were successful, lauch was woeful.

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Nathan
Posted 09:30am 24/5/12

"Skill Rune - Force Armor: Amount of damage absorbed from a single attack will now cap at 100% of a player's maximum Life"

I understand the issue they are trying to patch, but I cant get my head around what the new behaviour is. Wont capping attack to 100% of a player's maximum life, result in you dying?

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Tollaz0r!
Posted 09:33am 24/5/12

I think they mean that if you took 150% damage from a hit, 100% would be absorbed leaving a further 50% of your health to be damaged.

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Sile
Posted 10:04am 24/5/12

fuck that's a lot of money... /sigh

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Hogfather
Posted 10:19am 24/5/12

I understand the issue they are trying to patch, but I cant get my head around what the new behaviour is. Wont capping attack to 100% of a player's maximum life, result in you dying?

From what I understand, if the mob hits for 10k and you have 9k life max, then splat. If you have 10k life and the mob hits for 9k, then the hit is reduced to 35% of your max life (3.5k). The idea is that it doesn't work if the mob can 1-shot you.

The nerf prevents wizards running around with no vitality builds and abusing regen. I gather they designed the game so that everyone would need to consider health in their builds which sort of makes sense IMO.

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Khel
Posted 10:16am 24/5/12

Yeah, it used to absorb all of the attack, no matter how strong it was. I think the rune used to be something like "Any attack which would have brought you below 30% of your life is fully absorbed" and people were using it to solo Inferno because they could eat even the strongest hits. Now theres a cap on how much it will absorb, so if your health is say 6k, it will only absorb 6k of the damage and you'll still eat the rest.

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Hogfather
Posted 10:22am 24/5/12

Khel, current tooltip:

While Energy Armor is active, incoming attacks that would deal more than 35% of your maximum Life are reduced to deal 35% of your maximum Life instead.

Basically it does nothing if the attack is greater than your maximum hitpoints, but still works otherwise.

There is much wailing and gnashing of teeth, naturally.

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Khel
Posted 10:21am 24/5/12

Ah yeah, I was a bit wrong, heres an explanation I found of how it works now:

Case 1: The hit does less than 35% of your health. Here, force armor does nothing. It never did, it still doesn't.

Case 2: The hit does between 36% and 135% of your health. The hit will now do 35% of your health, as it does now.

Case 3: The hit does between 136% of your health and 199% of your health. The hit now does 100% of your health less than it would have done. For example, with 10k life, if you take a 17500 hit, you just took 175% of your life. Force armor will absorb 100% of your life, which is 10,000, and you will take 7,500 life damage yourself - the other 75% remaining.

Case 4: If the hit does over 200% of your total life and you don't have some sort of damage absorption up, it will kill you. No exceptions, son.

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Hogfather
Posted 10:23am 24/5/12

Wow that's actually a softer nerf than I thought ... is it not unreasonable to expect to die if something hits you with 2x your life with a single blow? :)

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Raisty
Posted 10:29am 24/5/12

The demon hunter fix was an interesting one, realy smoke screen just needed a cooldown to stop permanent stealth. However they've just halved the duration, without adjusting the other runes that worked on effect per second stealthed basis :(

Strangely even with the change you can still manage to keep stealth up on a near permanent basis anyway it just takes more effort now.

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Tollaz0r!
Posted 10:32am 24/5/12

Rofl, I was planning on using that skill for more soloing, without a pesky follower still.

Hmm, I'm playing on act 3 nightmare with my 46 wizzzzard and killing them quickly, they can generally 1-3 shot me but it seems that isn't much of a problem. A little bit of kiting and the double teleport spell with aOE damage tends to finish them off. The champions are bit more of a grind though.

That Ray-Of-Frost with Sleet Storm rune is ridiculous. It seems to do about 2000 damage (with 2400 DPS) to any creature in its AOE centered on me several times a second. Minces any non elite/champion in seconds. Elites withstand about 5 seconds of it and champions need a little kiting while AP regenerates.

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Eorl
Posted 11:36am 24/5/12

Currently it looks like Wizard and Demon Hunter are easy enough to complete Nightmare+ with, so might level up my Demon Hunter some.

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kirkoswald
Posted 11:36am 24/5/12

mean while barbs are still requiring act 3 and 4 inferno lvl gear to do act 2....

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Zapo
Posted 11:43am 24/5/12

I'm only level 50 so I haven't been able to use that Force Armour rune yet. That being said the changes do seem pretty reasonable IMO.

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Eorl
Posted 12:21pm 24/5/12

mean while barbs are still requiring act 3 and 4 inferno lvl gear to do act 2....

Don't worry man, Monks are getting boned as well, we had to actually use a spirit regen bug in order to complete hell/inferno, though they fixed it now so we die even more.

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Hogfather
Posted 12:23pm 24/5/12

Don't worry man, Monks are getting boned as well, we had to actually use a spirit regen bug in order to complete hell/inferno, though they fixed it now so we die even more.

Eh? You just finished normal.

What's this 'we' business? Don't buy into the cry-hype.

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Nathan
Posted 12:25pm 24/5/12

Completing inferno is intended to be really, really hard

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ravn0s
Posted 12:29pm 24/5/12

what's that game mode where it's game over if you die? i would like to see someone finish the game on that.

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Eorl
Posted 12:37pm 24/5/12

Eh? You just finished normal.

What's this 'we' business? Don't buy into the cry-hype.

Using 'we' as a general term for all Monks.

Rav, that's Hardcore, I've got a level 8 Barbarian at the moment in that mode, very tense.

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Khel
Posted 12:43pm 24/5/12

Yeah, the people crying on the forums that they can't complete Inferno mode without dying are missing the point I think. Inferno mode is meant to be really, really, REALLY hard to the point where you get your ass kicked up and down the level and have trouble completing it. So if thats whats happening to people, then I guess its working as intended :)

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Hogfather
Posted 12:46pm 24/5/12

Using 'we' as a general term for all Monks.

Rav, that's Hardcore, I've got a level 8 Barbarian at the moment in that mode, very tense.

Yeh I get that dude, but you have nothing to base your experience on :) The screaming on the official forums should be taken with a grain of salt.

For example, I got buttfucked solo in Hell when I got there. Bent over like nobody's business, would make some great pron for a lot of people around here. At the time a lot of WD posters were screaming about how hard it is because pets die blah blah.

Anyway, I went back and redid Nightmare, got some cash, reviewed my spec and geared up. Now there isn't a lot in Act I Hell that phases me.

Inferno is meant to be just like that but a lot worse, its where the replayability and achievement is. If anyone is being destroyed in Inferno its because you need to spend more time in Hell. Its not meant to be a place that you can progress in a week after release unless you haven't slept, at all.

A few ranged guys are skipping mortar and vortexmolten mobs etc and using near-exploits to advance through Inferno ahead of the curve. This shouldn't be taken as the standard gameplay experience, and more nerfs will be coming. I'd be crushed and frustrated if Inferno was being reliably beaten by the playerbase with standard gameplay and builds this early.

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Raisty
Posted 01:22pm 24/5/12

To be fair, we did somewhat help your WD push into Hell mode probably a litter faster than they should have :)

But yes, the issue is people completing inferno due to a very strong combination of abilities with no gear upgrading. When really it should be abilities + gearing from Hell mode.

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