You can’t fail to have missed the fact that the Diablo IV beta has dominated March’s news cycle. With two separate weekends dedicated to stress testing and bug finding before June’s launch, newly published stats reveal how much effort players put in. And by these numbers the Diablo IV beta was popular, preparing for a spectacular launch this summer.

Over on the Diablo Twitter account, the stats reveal that over 61 million hours were played! Quite the figure considering the two-weekend window. It turns out that the Sorcerer and Necromancer were the two most popular classes, with players’ deaths reaching almost 47 million.

Diablo IV Beta was popular - stats

A monster slaughter

That’s nothing in comparison to the 29 billion monsters that were killed over those 61 million hours. While the basic grunt monster tally was always going to be high, stats for the bosses reveal how successful players were in getting all the way through the beta. The Butcher only died 576,662 times, whilst the harder Ashava succumbed only 107,426 times. Look a little closer and you’ll see that someone almost managed to kill Ashava solo.

By these metrics and the media coverage, the Diablo IV beta seems like a success. The direction Activision-Blizzard has taken with the game, both in terms of visual style and gameplay has been positively received. Sure, there were hiccups along the way, but that was to be expected. Both Fridays saw huge queue times to get into the beta and the team battled with so many players trying to join. Yet, by Saturday those times had been brought down significantly, making it far easier to delve into the entire beta.

The first pre-order beta only had three character classes available. By the second, open beta weekend all five were available including the Druid, Rogue and Barbarian. Players were able to level up their characters to level 25, unlocking plenty of special abilities to test various load-outs. And unlike Diablo III, you can actually customise your characters before you start your adventure.

Did you try the beta, what did you think? Let us know in the comments below.

Categories: Entertainment Games