-D3 year one broke records and sold over 12 million copies. (in large part due to the D2 players who loved the franchise).
-Year two (2013 into 2014) Diablo 3 sales were reported to be around 20 million cumulative units (so another 8 million during those 12 months).
-RoS WEEK ONE sales in 2014 were 2.7 million.
-By 2015 Diablo 3 had sold over 30 million units, they did not specify if those were Vanilla, RoS, or console. This did not include the newly opened China market.
RoS sales break downs outside the first week were never given.
Sales figures for units sold since 2015 have not been given, however we know most anyone playing is playing RoS.
So, since the RMAH was removed in early 2014 they sold another 10 million + copies of the game during that year. We can only assume since 2015 (last sales data report), the game has continued to sell.
Source for data comes from the ATVI quarterly public reports to stockholders.
What are you talking about? I am honestly really confused about this comment. What does getting fired or journalists have to do with offline mode or free trade?
Diablo 3 isn’t for sell in china. All chinese players get diablo 3 for free and they’re charged for MTX and those same MTX that they pay for we get for cosmetics here in the west for free.
The fact is RoS didn’t sell enough for them to continue workin on the next expansion and released all the content they made for the next expansion and completely abandoned ship.
It’s why we have the cube and nothing done with the new zones they added with that patch. It’s completely unfinished content and makes no sense other than trying to apologize to the player base. It was a step in the right direction to apologize to the Diablo community.
The fact is they won’t release the numbers for RoS and just bundle it along with vanilla D3 sells because it looks better than admitting they failed miserably and that 90% of the players quit the game and went onto other games.
They’ll need to continue working towards pulling those players back in and by offering offline option and mod support something which PoE lacks and has no way of doing. They need to compete with PoE and not just make a casual arpg with no RPG elements like D3.
I believe in the dev’s working on the next Diablo but they need to tell their bosses that this is what’s needed to succeed.
Isn’t it sad that someone was going to use sales figures to justify their claims… like i dunno this…
Appealing to popularity is a fallacy. Just because something is popular does not mean it’s good.
And selling units isn’t the only defintion of success. Since diablo 3 figures piggy backed off the legacy and don’t pretene that didn’t play a massive role.
I am saying, it’s easy for developers to say no to free training when their game comes out and it’s rejected by the community when you have organizations defending you and insulting the customers.
Honestly, smartloot was a bandaid fix due to the complete mess that was vanilla D3. Diablo 3 couldn’t even get that right.
It broke a system that wasn’t even broke and I never seen that much of a fail in a long time.
People think smart loot is a good mechanic, forgetting no other arpg game to this date required such a mechanic.
People who designed D3 should’ve been fired.
You can hide behind numbers all you want, but life isn’t that black and white nor is sells numbers the only defintion of success.
The word is called nuance.
Edit: I want a developer, or misscheetah to explain why they can’t invent in bot detection like we invest in locks and cameras.
If they’re too lazy to do it, I’m sure someone would do it for free.
Totally open trading is possible, but is unlikely.
Now, offline mode? No way guys, unless they stopped caring about ladder boards, balance, etc… I was an offline requester, I still think about the good part of it, but when you try to see the problem as a dev or a company, it is just not worth it.
The experience with D3 and D2 speaks for themselves. Don’t get me wrong, I would like to see offline mode and mods supports, but D3 on console with offline mode showed that, at least for now, it is just a big risk to destroy a lot of game systems and the players arguing about the presence of a lot of cheats in the game (bots alone are enough headache).
Lastly, when you look at the numbers, while there are a vocal minority requesting offline mode, the sales stay fine, and even the majority of the people asking for it will buy the game anyway.
Only the base Vanilla D3 is free in China (or was last I checked). RoS is sold as a unit in China and does count for units sold. As for MTX, I am aware of those, but they have not provided stats on income from those sales. All we were told was that the Premium packages sales were over 1 million units before official release. It apparently was a record for pre-sales of a PC game at the time.
My understanding is that the decision to not do any more expansions after RoS was made before RoS release. Morheim made that call in 2013 or early 2014 based on the pushback to the original release of D3. RoS was close enough to release by then, they went with it anyway. Rest of the expansion content was released for free - something Mike firmly believed in. Also keep in mind, a HUGE part of the pushback to the Vanilla release was the loot drop rates and Auction houses. That is why they ditched them, in part.
MissCheetah Why do you think that china get’s cosmetics they can pay for but here in the west we don’t get that option? This is not a bait or gotcha comment just curious of your perspective.
No YOUR demanding this.
I for one am lobbying for 4 player , Restricted Trade and NO OFFLINE MODE.
Please speak for yourself and NOT the collective of players.
Sorry I’m having a discussion on my forum thread. I think I’ve made my points clear earlier and don’t need to continually bang the drums for freedom of choice.
The person who manages to do that is going to be so rich it is not funny.
Bots are programs running on the player’s PC that mimic the player motions to auto play the game. Differentiating between the player and a program is not as easy as it seems. Yes, they use libraries of software signatures like antivirus, but the bot makers change constantly, just like virus makers change constantly.
Further, botting can be done now with overlays and other sneaky methods.
I am sure someone out there can tell you why nobody has managed to defeat bots, but that person is not me, nor even a game dev most likely. You need a security person. We only manage to ban waves of them then they change software and the cycle repeats.
EDIT - we COULD probably do it - but that would involve massive privacy intrusions that are outright illegal in many places. You don’t want a game company controlling every single process and every bit of software on your PC. As of now, they scan what is operating with the game, but leave the rest of your PC alone.
It has to do with the expectations of the customer market. In China that business model is common and well tolerated by players. Blizzard knows that. They also know, esp back in 2012 when D3 released here, that Western markets are not fond of tons of MTX. This issue persists today which is why Western players are worried when China game companies get involved in game dev. Many fear games made by/for China will be filled with MTX. It is just the model they use.
Oh boy. Should we stop investing in locks and security cameras to?
I haven’t read anything else and the point is going over your head, it’s not the point to completely stop RMTing… it’s about not letting a few ruin the fun for everyone else.
Again, apply your logic to stores. People steal from stores. Should we not have stores?
What about credit cards? Should we not have credit cards? People steal them and get their numbers all the time.
I feel like I’m explaining things to a little kid and I don’t like it.
You do not let criminals dictate your fun and way of life.
We had this discussion already. I answered your question about why bot software has not been defeated in games, as best as I could.
RMT has many many negative impacts besides just botting. You want Blizzard to allow RMT, despite the negatives because it is fun to you. They feel the negatives far outweigh the “fun” factor. That is their call. If it sells, it sells, If it does not, it does not. They tried having the RMT version already and that did not go over well.
The bottom line is always online games suffer from DDoS attacks and ruin hardcore diablo. A shared online world with world quest’s is the last thing diablo fans want. We don’t need world bosses to take on WoW style. We want an actual Diablo game. We don’t want an immersion breaking random talking head or disembodied voice talking to us telling us what to do. Nor do we want to see some guy dressed up like a clown or robocop via mtx going past us in game.
I’d totally be down with a token system where I have the option to play offline for periods of a time and when that token expires I have to login again to get another one to continue my hardcore characters journey. I’d even accept no trading on hardcore at all for an offline choice.
I get that. But that doesn’t mean you stop trying, you do not let the criminals win, that’s the point Cheetah.
Trust me when I say most of us realize how hard it is. It doesn’t mean you stop, it means you get better.
Hire those bot creators to work for you instead of sueing them and leaving it be. I understand how hard it is when there’s like 30 kids in every college trying to crack drm and creating bot software.
Write the software, see who cracking the software, hire those people to write anti bot programs or put then in prison.
This is what the fbi and other national security agencies do. They don’t give up and let criminals win.
Edit: Hell, you don’t even to hire them. Just take their software and reverse engineer it. It wouldn’t be that hard.
It won’t have offline don’t care about the trading .
So will buy it anyways .
This is going to turn out like the pokemon shield game with a few moaning but the game selling millions.
Haven’t they explicitly stated they’re taking community feedback into consideration and have even changed a few things due to it? I don’t think it’s too far-fetched to request broad trading at all. It seems like this is the sort of feedback they’re looking for. They say one thing, you say another. Who do we listen to?
I honestly don’t think so. I see a shift in what people are willing to accept. I’m very confident that trading and offline will be added. The steps they’ve taken to win back their fans with giving us an actual skill tree and dark looking mature themes and an intro harking back to The first Diablo.
They’re trying hard to pull on those early childhood strings for us adults. I applaud their effort with the cut scene but they need to continue to build up good will with their customers.
An offline mode will do wonders.
Unrestricted trading will do wonders.
Mod support will do wonders.
Combine all of them and PoE offers no competition.
offline, probably impossible given the type of game is it (light mmo elements). open/broad trading? 100% possible. this is the type of thing they can easily manipulate because it has to do with itemization.
i bet they’ll have a completely solo game, probably the possibility to hide other players and so on but I don’t see it going offline at all.
That is clearly not the case though? Plenty of companies cave to customer pressure. Even when they should not.
I certainly hope Blizzard changes their stance on trading. Trading should be extremely limited, or not exist at all.
We are obviously not getting an offline mode - Blizzard don’t do those anymore. But it is not like all companies are moving online only. Like 95%+ of the games I played this year was offline games. And more or less all PC.
People should not expect any direct answers from Blizzard at this point. But I dont see the problem with people saying what they would like to see, even if it is as unlikely as an offline mode.