Diablo 4 concluded its second and final beta period last weekend, and the numbers are in. The two beta weekends—which ran from March 17 to March 20 and March 24 to March 27—made up the largest beta in Diablo history, with over 2.6 million players hitting level 20 and earning themselves a coveted wolf puppy backpack.
Players managed to collectively spend 61.5 million hours in Diablo 4 over the course of the beta, an amount of time equal to over 7000 calendar years. That's, uh, that's too much time. If we bottled all that time up to use however we liked, we'd be able to travel back to the construction of the pyramids and still have 2000 or so years to spare. Diablo is too powerful, and must be stopped.
With 62M hours played, thank you for making #DiabloIV the largest Beta in Diablo franchise history.This is just the beginning. Hell welcomes all on 6.6.23.Pre-purchase and get up to 4 days Early Access: https://t.co/73mjYSfJBO pic.twitter.com/woW7cRR7xsMarch 30, 2023
But there are plenty of other enormous numbers to distract us from Diablo 4's terrifying grip on our lives. For example, players managed to slaughter around 29.3 billion monsters during the game's six-or-so days of availability, only suffering around 47 million deaths in the process. Two of them were mine, sorry team.
Some monsters got their own back, though: 1.7 million players fell to the Butcher's cleavers (one of whom was PCG's Andy Chalk, who rather enjoyed it), while only around 577,000 managed to take him down.
The numbers for Ashava, the beta's world boss, are even more dire for players. The big mean dragon laid waste to over 10 million players in our brief time with her, but only died about 107,000 times. In fairness, she is designed in such a way that it should take 12 players to beat her, unless you're that one guy who managed to almost solo her before a Necromancer stole his kill.
Blizzard actually acknowledged that valiant solo attempt in the stats it released: Down in the corner, in small text, it reads "Solo Ashava kills: Almost 1?"
Apart from all that, Blizzard also revealed that the most popular classes were Sorcerer and Necromancer. Both classes have been called fairly overpowered by players, so I guess that's no surprise (they also both possess tremendous aesthetic power). Those were the two I chose to play, and I'm not sure if I feel vindicated by their popularity or put-out that I apparently picked the normie classes.
Impressive as these stats are, I imagine they'll be dwarfed pretty much instantly when Diablo 4 goes on sale on June 6. Who's up for another 7000 years?
