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

I am a bit shocked by how popular this game is. All the signs were there, though.

- 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.

> I definitely underestimated the brand power of DnD and Baldur's Gate

I think you're trying to put too much of its success on "brand power". Social proof is a thing, but it's not powerful enough to overcome a bad game. Just look at what happened to the Call of Duty and Battlefield franchises.

I think it's doing so well because they nailed the execution. The graphics are great. The game hasn't had any opening week disasters despite getting more than 7x the expected numbers. The intro hook of the game really grabs you and keeps you wanting more (which is why everyone's still so excited about it 3 years later). Also, it's FUN to play.

That last one is probably the biggest factor. When was the last time a AAA game was truly fun to play? It wasn't too long ago that online streamers were publishing videos lamenting the lack of good games to play.

> When was the last time a AAA game was truly fun to play?

Tears of the Kingdom, Resident evil 4, Street Fighter 6

Interest in Tears of the Kingdom dropped off pretty quickly.

Is that all?

edit: I didn't play the other two games. One's a remake of a game I never played (I never owned playstations) and I don't really play fighting games. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

edit2: this is getting ridiculous.

According to Metacritic, in addition to the already mentioned people had fun with

Metroid Prime Remastered

Diablo IV

Persona 4 Golden

Dead Space Remake

Final Fanatasy XVI

Pikmin 4

Star Wars Jedi Survivor

Hogwarts Legacy

Remnant II

So this year actually seems to be pretty great w.r.t. AAA games, and the next months will be pretty ridiculous, with Armored Core VI, Starfield, Mortal Kombat 1, Forza Motorsport, Alan Wake 2, Spider-Man 2, Cities: Skylines 2, Super Mario RPG... all still being released.

So if anything, there's probably too much AAA games worth playing out there.

> Diablo IV

You must have missed the 2.2 score that it currently has after being review bombed due to recent development decisions.

On a personal level, I will say that they got the campaign right, but the rest of the game is incomplete. This game should have been released as a public beta — it’s currently not close to being a complete experience, imho.

User scores are completely broken, and probably beyond repair.

The low score is not completely unwarranted, though. The game itself is pretty wonderful. But the balancing and QOL decisions made by the developers has been; abysmal, and getting worse with each patch. It sounds like 1.1.1 is going to help a bit, but every the game started with serious issues, and each patch since release has made it worse. Add to the fact that many of the issues have been know since before release, and you get players getting really made about the game.

If you actively make decisions to upset the players, then don't act confused when your player rating tanks.