‘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.

Divinity 2 did about 700k units in the first month. I think this is about on par with expectations with a bigger brand.

I think Larian’s approach to multiplayer is the important bit. I would be curious about the stats of how people play it.

I feel like once you have done a couple CRPGs you’ve kind of seen it all. I’ve done divinity and kingmaker. I can’t really be motivated to do tyranny or the other pathfinder game by owlcat. It’s just so samey.

I will grant, Larian’s divinity 2 did feel a bit different. They managed to make combat feel more interesting. And playing split screen with the wife made it much more enjoyable. Optimistic they’ve done it again here.

Yeah the Divinity: Original Sin 2 combat system had the huge emphasis on elemental effects and surfaces and interactions which I found a lot more fun than the traditional RPG systems which feel more like solving a math equation.

So far there has been a lot less of that in BG3 which is disappointing but maybe I just need to level up my spellcasters more. (I hate the DnD spell preparation system but that's another matter)

The element interaction from Divinity: Original Sin 2 are still there. Grease works and will catch fire, you can get ice spike and it'll create an ice surface where enemies and players will slip, then turn into a puddle next turn. They will also slip on a sufficiently large puddle of blood. The intro ship has vats of mysterious liquid that will catch fire.

Huh. Interesting. Grease in kingmaker is probably the most powerful early game spell. I would think this translates to Baldurs gate too. Not so much in real world dnd where there will be fewer enemies and more theatre of mind.

Making it flammable sounds very powerful.