Blizzard has revealed that the Diablo IV beta, which took place over the past two weekends, was the biggest ever for the series. We now have information on how many players died, which classes were played the most, and more thanks to the official Diablo Twitter account.
The Sorcerer and the Necromancer were the most popular classes in both betas. The Necromancer could only be played in the Open Beta, while the Sorcerer was available in the Early and Open Betas.
In our review-in-progress of the Diablo 4 beta we wrote that all three of the initially available character classes in the beta were “pretty great,” saying of the Sorcerer, “The Sorcerer has a similar set of mostly long-range skills based on fire, electric, and ice attacks, but I found them to be better at controlling large groups of enemies (like with a chain lightning attack that zaps six enemies with every blast) rather than doing high damage to a single opponent. Plus, dealing elemental damage and freezing enemies in their tracks or lighting them on fire is great – they even have different death effects.”
We also called the Necromancer “among our favorites” out of the gate. “The fantasy of raising a private militia and making atrophy and death your wicked allies is wonderfully realized, and once I got aboard the dastardly train the Necromancer was all I wanted to play,” reviewer Travis Northup wrote.
A popular beta
Over two million players earned the Beta Wolf Pack during the six days Diablo IV was available, which equates to a little more than seven thousand years of gameplay time.
Over twenty-nine billion monsters were defeated by players over the course of all those hours spent playing the game. However, forty-six million deaths were also recorded, with Ashava causing ten million deaths and the Butcher causing over a million deaths among players.
Despite the fact that both of these beasts were the principal justification for some individuals kicking the bucket, players figured out how to kill the Ashava more than hundred thousand times and the Butcher over five hundred thousand times.
