Blizzard’s community manager, Bashiok, has shared some interesting new information about the open beta weekend of Diablo III and the features that will be supported in the final version of the game. According to Bashiok, Diablo III had 300k peak concurrent users. Truth be told, we’d expected to see more concurrent users as Diablo III is one of the most anticipated games of 2012. Although Bashiok didn’t share any total numbers, he reasured us that the number was quite big.
Bashiok has also revealed that all achievements and characters will be wiped and that the beta achievements are just for fun. Moreover, Diablo III will not feature a D2-like map where players could turn it on and have it overlayed on their screen but click through it. The development team thought that it was ‘lame’ as back in the days, it became the best way to play the game. In other words, if D3 had such a feature, most players would use it and would not appreciate the game’s graphics.
Furthermore, Bashiok said that the old monk had a more complex combo system. It sounded great back then and some players thought that the monk would be a character for all hardcore fans. Unfortunately, Blizzard decided to scrap their plans and remake that character, meaning that it is quite easy even for the casual gamers. Bashiok said that there’s plenty of room for finesse, but don’t expect miracles.
Diablo III is currently slated for a May 15th release and won’t need a high-end machine. If you can run the beta, you won’t encounter any major issues with the final version. Naturally, at later levels there will be more characters on-screen and as you progress, you will unlock ‘flashier’ abilities, but those things won’t have a tremendous impact on the game’s requirements. So rest asured that the game will perform identically when it hits stores in May.
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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