Diablo 3 Player number Health

[Lorderan]

Hey guys,
Just something I've been collecting over the last couple of weeks. Thought some of you guys might be interested.

Its a bit of a break down of Xfire Diablo 3 play time and its decline.

I know Xfire is only used by a small group of people and all the caveats associated with that. However, the sample sizes are pretty huge and will give a good proportional representation of the players, NOT numbers but proportions.

Basically, I've been seeing a ~20% decrease in player number each week every week for the last 10 weeks. This weekend we hit 81.51% loss is player number from the peak on 25 May (I don't have data earlier). This weekend jumped up to 25% loss, most likely due to the lack of the usual player number bump from a patch.

It's strange and worrying we haven't seen a levelling out of player number losses.

Anyway, hope people find this interesting.

[AlexanderBarin]

D3 dead 2 weeks tops, WoW dead 1 month tops, Blizzard dead 2 months tops.

Next Blizzard killer: LOTRO, AoC, WAR, Aion, Rift, SWTOR, GW2, TL2, PoE.

[krischan]

So it becomes more and more unexciting for people to reveal themselves as being bored by the game and to post another repetition of what's wrong with D3?

Besides, the less people play it, the better IMO . A few thousands per realm would be enough IMO.

P.S. I accidently made this post as a Guide some how, can modes please remove that.

Fixed.

[Muggs]

This was sort of expected to be honest. I know a lot on here were expecting to play d3 for years but I think many in the general public only played it through a few times max. I even remember the devs say that they never expected most people to play past normal and that was part of the reasoning they were originally going to make followers normal mode only. (someone can correct me if I am wrong)

What we get here on incgamers is a subset of players that are extremely dedicated and invested in d3 but I think we are a definite minority of the actual gaming population.

[flooble]

I wonder how those numbers line up against current (well, pre D3 launch) diablo 2 player counts.

Edit: @Mugs, I would have counted myself amongst those people expecting to play it for years. Yes, perhaps unrealistic, but I sure as hell expected longer than it did hold interest for :(

I've reserved some cautious optimism for 1.04, not to fix issues you understand, but to serve as a pointer for the overall direction it's taking moving forward.

[Carisma]

So it becomes more and more unexciting for people to reveal themselves as being bored by the game and to post another repetition of what's wrong with D3?

Besides, the less people play it, the better IMO . A few thousands per realm would be enough IMO..

If it was not for people posting the what wrong with diablo 3 threads this forums would of had very little going on. As you see the rate of new post since the merger of complaint threads has decrease a lot, or at least I think it has from what i have noticed. I could be wrong though.

If to many people stop playing DIII and they start taking loss on the servers, they will shut it down. So the less is not better, and a few thousand will not sustain what they need to keep the game running. I have seen this trend in other games, mostly MMO's, some are no longer here, other are offering their game free hoping to live off of micro-transactions. That second group will surely disappear also.

Blizzard has to fix the game soon, do something amazing to bring people back, and give us the incentive to reach out to old friends and bring them back. I guess you can label me a "troll" because of the tone of my post towards Diablo3 has greatly decline in positivity, but as this graph has shown I more or less have spoke many truths, some might of been exaggerated, but more or less honest.

[krischan]

They can reduce the amount of servers instead of shutting them down, things are running on more than one. They even offer the playgrounds for D1 until this day.

D3 is completely different from MMO. They need team efforts which need hours of undivided attention for dozens of people at the same time. You can play D3 all alone, there's nothing of significance which needs cooperation, so much less participation of a big community is needed to keep things running.

[IncubatorJones]

How did you get the statistics from so far back? I tried to see May stats a while back but I couldn't see anything older than a couple weeks, am I just stupid? :/ Or did you collect these yourself? Just curious.

[Capt Goodman]

It'll be interesting to see these charts once 1.04 hits, and there is actually something useful to hunt for again. I know I'm biding my time until that point. Playing some heavily modded TL, til that time

[Carisma]

They can reduce the amount of servers instead of shutting them down, things are running on more than one. They even offer the playgrounds for D1 until this day.

D3 is completely different from MMO. They need team efforts which need hours of undivided attention for dozens of people at the same time. You can play D3 all alone, there's nothing of significance which needs cooperation, so much less participation of a big community is needed to keep things running.

When they start reducing the amount of servers proves they are grasping for straws. I bet Blizzard sunk more money in the battle.net2 servers for Diablo 3 than they have made. I am sure they have not hit a profit for this game, and the cost of huge servers will slowly cripple them if they continue to loose people and can not bring them back.

I know that Diablo is very different from in MMO in many ways, which is why it annoys me they adopted an MMO type motto with D3. The fact as I mentioned, they need to micro-transactions to make there money back, and to make a profit. If they start loosing to much money, the servers will be slowly shut down. Enough players might stay on where they keep a couple servers up, but that will end if they need the serves for something else, maybe like Titan?

Also the economy of Diablo 3 depends on a massive amuont of players contibuting time, effort, items, and currency to keep it going. The less amount of people means the Economy will get slower and more expensive, which I bet will cause more people to quit. I predict, if Blizzard does not turn stuff around by October, Diablo 3 will be no more. I hope I am wrong, as I am a fan of the Diablo series, and I would like a sequel to one of my favorite games succeed, but Blizzard keeps putting nails into that coffin.