‘Baldur’s Gate 3’ Prepared for 100k Concurrent Players, They’ve Gotten 700K

- Their previous game Divinity: Original Sin 2 was critically acclaimed, very popular for a pretty hardcore CRPG, and had long legs.

- DnD has a lot of brand power and has been strongly in the zeitgeist for years.

- There's a big cohort of millennials who have strong nostalgia for Baldur's Gate and who have plenty of money to buy games (if not time to play them).

- The Early Access release for this game was wildly popular beyond the developer's expectations, and maintained interest for years.

I definitely underestimated the brand power of DnD and Baldur's Gate because they aren't very important to me, personally. But also there have been a load of really good CRPGs in recent years and there seemed to be a pretty low ceiling to how much interest they could get. Tyranny, Pillars of Eternity, Pathfinder: Kingmaker, and a few others were amazing and beloved CRPG games but were lucky to have a tenth of the success of BG3. But those games were generally less accessible, mostly not multiplayer, and again lacked the brand power.

1. As it's been said before, if you go at it MBA style you'll end up with a crap soul less design by commitee game.

2. DnD has a lot of brand power? The only thing related to DnD that I did was play some computer RPGs. The Infinity Engine games could have had any other RPG system in the background and they'd have been as much fun.

3. Getting Early Access wrong too. It got popular in early access because some people considered it good.

4. You may be right about Baldur's Gate nostalgia, that is probably the greatest driver behind this. Personally I will get the game because of said nostalgia, but I'll wait for enough reviews to have something to read between the lines and decide if the game is any good.