Lies, Damn Lies, and Diablo Statistics

Wednesday, July 2nd, 2008 | Market Trends

You have to be careful when you’re waving your data around. Context is everything.

The reason I’m thinking about this is because I was checking out our RPG stats. Our feeds right now show Oblivion to be far and away the most popular single player RPG out there right now. But if you look at our profiles, Diablo II crushes Oblivion, aka ESIV. Or does it?

The games have one thing in common besides genre: Both D2 and ES4 were sequels to monstrously popular games. There, I believe, the similarities end.

Oblivion launched on the Xbox and PC in March of ‘06. A PS3 port launched in March of ‘07. Diablo II launched at the end of June 2000. (In case you’ve been under a rock, Diablo III was announced exactly eight years later, as in “this past Sunday.” Here’s a rather good fan site I found, if you want more information.)

Diablo II was multiplayer. That means that there’s a certain peer pressure – “hey, pick up this game and play with me” – that you don’t get with the Elder Scrolls franchise.

One game is a gritty, richly detailed fantasy world with an unparalleled character development process, ensuring the player of endless replayability, if that’s a word. Also, PATRICK STEWART did some voice acting! Patrick! Rawr! The other is… okay, I have to shut up, I didn’t play it. I know it’s supposed to be this awesomely awesome landmark game that blah blah blah, but I picked up the box and said, oh, more isometric demons, I already played this, and I’m already playing one online multiplayer game, lord knows I don’t need another one. I liked Diablo: Original Flavor, though, despite the nagging feeling that absolutely none of the marketing had been done with me in mind.

D2 sold a million copies in two weeks. It appears in the Guinness Book of World Records for this, and in theory this record has not been broken. Oblivion… well, when I wield my Google-fu, it says the fourth installment of Elder Scrolls sold 1.7 million copies in that time period. Or is that shipped, not sold? Did Oblivion break the record, but it didn’t count because that was across two platforms? I can’t tell and I doubt anyone wants to clarify matters.

Okay, so let’s look at the actual GamerDNA numbers: 3350 profiles mention D2, versus 700 listing Oblivion. 700 is 1/5th of 3350, for those of you who aren’t mathletes.

When you add up all the factors, the advertising, the sales, the multiplayer angle, the platform availability… was there a crushing? Or not?

DivineHonor

Looks like if oblivion would've been mainstream like D2 I think it would've probably broken the record, cannot say that it would've on a single platform, but overall it seems to be a game many player enjoy, console that is. D2 on the otherhand was mainstream worldwide via the web/computer, so I feel like the playerbase for the two games cannot be compared. Also the MMO factor of D2 was a part of its huge success, the single player is just a way of saying hey, who needs friends when we can play games all day alone, on the other hand, people enjoy playing with friends more so than not, either way you look, D2 had them beat.

tekhedd

"One game is a gritty, richly detailed fantasy world with an unparalleled character development process, ensuring the player of endless replayability" Yeah, D2 was pretty cool I guess. But don't short-change Oblivion; a lot of people liked it. :)

Trapper Markelz

I know of no one on this site that enjoys Oblivion... no one. ;)

Jon Radoff

I'm hoping Diablo 3 is as good as D2 was.

tekhedd

Oh, and while you're at it. D2 had very lame multiplayer. It was there and it gave it a community feeling, but hackers rendered it useless. D2 survived because it's an amazingly fun grind, where each character class had its own approach to survival. This gave it a very heavy replayability with or without online functionality. Compare and contrast to Oblivion, where reviewers liked it. Reviewers play a game to finish it and move on to the next one. If this is what you want from a game--to finish it and get it over with in the default playstyle, Oblivion is the bomb.

5 years from now people will still be buying D2.