There’s a pony in there somewhere
Diablo is a supermassive franchise for Blizzard Entertainment, even though it’s been on the back-burner as World of Warcraft came to power as the king of the online gaming space.
I logged into Diablo 2 last night for kicks after flying through the Diablo 3 beta to see just how populated it still was. And just like a decade ago, there were still hundreds of games — unfortunately for me, each already full with eight players. It felt just as populated and vibrant as the same game that defined my early gaming experience in high school when I tried it out for the first time.
It’s nothing compared to Blizzard Entertainment’s most popular online role-playing game, World of Warcraft, which has around 11.4 million subscribers. But Diablo’s hack-and-slash and loot-seeking formula proved to be popular for more than a decade. It even inspired dungeon crawler copycats like Torchlight.
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Based on the number of people still playing Diablo 2, and the number that played at its peak — and also the subscriber base for World of Warcraft — the potential audience for Diablo 3 is in the millions. If the company has lost any ground since the franchise’s last iteration a decade ago, Diablo 3 is certain to bring it back.
