Blizzard has issued an interesting disclosure of information about characters created and leveled, monsters killed, gold collected, and more, over the course of Diablo 3′s first year. The infographic is below, and I typed some of the quotes out of it for easier absorption/conversation.
67.1 million characters created worldwide. (91% normal, 9% HC)
- Barbarian: 12.8m (1.6m HC)
- Demon Hunter: 13.5m (1.2m HC)
- Monk: 13.5m (1.4m HC)
- Witch Doctor: 10.1m (.9m HC)
- Wizard: 13m (1.1m HC)
Pre-game the WD was clearly the least popular character, (or at least the one most complained about) mostly driven by embittered Necromancer fans. I haven’t heard many such complaints in the past year, but clearly the pre-game unpopularity amounted to something, in terms of total play time. (That and the WD was badly hobbled pre-v1.04, until minions got a big buff.)
Anyone else surprised that the DH has the most characters created? I am not surprised that the Barb and Monk take the lead in HC chars though, as they’re by far the most sturdy and survivable. (Though not true for me, as I’ve made many more DHs in HC than any other class, thanks to them all fricking dying!)
Characters created by Region:
Americas: 22.2m. 20m SC, 2.2m HC
Europe: 22.1m. 19.4m SC, 2.7m HC
Asias: 22.9m. 21.7m SC, 1.2m HC
Amazingly close on the total characters created per server. I guess Blizzard knew what they were doing when dividing up the world and assigning different regions to each server?
Look at the HC char numbers though. We might have to take back all those “Asians are hardcore gamers” memes, given the very small % of HC in Asia? (Though there are probably good reasons for not doing hardcore from a gaming cafe, such as risk of interruption and/or disconnect and/or performance issues on rented hardware.)
Difficulty progression:
33% cleared Normal
23% cleared Nightmare
18% cleared Hell
6% cleared Inferno
Total # of Level 60 characters: 12.7m.
24.9% of all characters have reached level 60.
The first part adds up to 80% of characters, which means 20% have not cleared Normal. I’m surprised the number isn’t higher, but I guess the limit of 10 characters per account keeps people from having a dozen mules and inflating this figure. It’s also interesting that almost 25% of characters have reached level 60, while only 18% have cleared Hell.
I wish the data that formed this was available, or that more details were provided. A few other questions I’d love to see the answer to:
What’s the average level of death for Hardcore characters? Broken down by class?
What % of Hardcore characters are still alive?
Average level/paragon when completing each difficulty level?
Total number of legendary items found? Average number per character?
Stats on the Auction House would be fascinating. Total and average items sold and bought per account, total and average gold spent and gained, etc.
Anything you guys learned from this chart, or additional details you wish it contained? Click through to see it full size, inserted into the post.
experience and 
(Or gets passed on again. I know it’s something we’ve relayed before, and the developers agreed that it would be great-to-have feature.)
