{"id":1767711,"date":"2026-02-13T16:17:59","date_gmt":"2026-02-13T13:17:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1767711"},"modified":"2026-02-13T16:17:59","modified_gmt":"2026-02-13T13:17:59","slug":"theres-actually-millions-of-people-that-still-play-it-blizzard-insists-diablo-3-still-has-a-massive-playerbase","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1767711","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;There&#8217;s actually millions of people that still play it&#8221; &#8211; Blizzard insists Diablo 3 still has a &#8220;massive&#8221; playerbase"},"content":{"rendered":"<article class=\"article \" data-ads=\"true\" data-article-type=\"news\" data-article-group=\"news\" data-paywalled=\"false\" data-premium=\"false\" data-sponsored=\"false\" data-type=\"article\">\n<header class=\"article_header\" data-component=\"article-header\">\n<div class=\"breadcrumbs\">\n<nav class=\"nav_breadcrumbs\" data-component=\"nav-breadcrumbs\" aria-label=\"Breadcrumb\">\n<ul class=\"nav-links\">\n<li>\n                <a href=\"https:\/\/www.eurogamer.net\/\" data-active=\"false\"><br \/>\n                      Home<br \/>\n                <\/a>\n            <\/li>\n<li>\n                <a href=\"https:\/\/www.eurogamer.net\/news\" data-active=\"false\"><br \/>\n                      News<br \/>\n                <\/a>\n            <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/nav><\/div>\n<div class=\"headline_details\" id=\"main-content\">\n<h1 class=\"title\">&#8220;There&#8217;s actually millions of people that still play it&#8221; &#8211; Blizzard insists Diablo 3 still has a &#8220;massive&#8221; playerbase<\/h1>\n<p class=\"strapline\">But is it larger than Diablo 2&#8217;s?<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<div class=\"headline_asset\">\n<figure class=\"headline_image_wrapper\">\n<p>        <img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"headline_image\" src=\"https:\/\/assetsio.gnwcdn.com\/media_gallery_2.webp?width=570&amp;quality=85&amp;format=jpg&amp;dpr=3&amp;auto=webp\" alt=\"Diablo 3 artwork showing the demon hunter class - an armoured woman with a hood up aims a crossbow.\" loading=\"eager\" data-uri=\"media_gallery_2.webp\" data-lightbox width=\"570\" height=\"321\"><figcaption>\n          <span class=\"attribution\">Image credit: <cite>Blizzard<\/cite><\/span><br \/>\n        <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<div class=\"metadata\">\n<div class=\"avatar\">\n<p>    <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Robert Purchese avatar\" src=\"https:\/\/assetsio.gnwcdn.com\/user-9946-originalxoriginal-14-03-23.jpg?width=2048&amp;height=2048&amp;fit=bounds&amp;quality=85&amp;format=jpg&amp;auto=webp\" style=\"aspect-ratio: 1\" width=\"1024\" height=\"1017\"><\/p>\n<p>  <img alt=\"Robert Purchese avatar\" data-autosize=\"crop_lossy\" data-uri=\"user-9946-originalxoriginal-14-03-23.jpg\" loading=\"lazy\" style=\"aspect-ratio: 1\" width=\"1024\" height=\"1017\">\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"text\">\n<div class=\"byline\">\n                  <span class=\"article_type\" data-slug=\"news\"><br \/>\n                    News<br \/>\n                  <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span class=\"by\">by<\/span> <span class=\"author\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.eurogamer.net\/authors\/robert-purchese\">Robert Purchese<\/a><\/span>                    <span class=\"job_title\"><br \/>\n                      Associate Editor<br \/>\n                    <\/span>\n            <\/div>\n<div class=\"published_at\">\nPublished on <time datetime=\"2026-02-13T16:17:59+00:00\">Feb. 13, 2026<\/time>              <\/div>\n<div class=\"comments\">\n      <a class=\"comments__link comments-bubble\" href=\"https:\/\/www.eurogamer.net\/millions-of-people-still-play-diablo-3-insists-blizzard?view=comments\" rel=\"nofollow\"><br \/>\n          4 comments<br \/>\n      <\/a>\n    <\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<div class=\"mypop-header-wrapper\">\n<p><button class=\"mypop-button button wide\" data-state=\"follow\" data-type=\"tag\" data-uuid=\"c14a30e0-fed1-4bf4-bd66-40aba0e60247\" data-name=\"Diablo II: Resurrected\" data-follow-text=\"Follow Diablo II: Resurrected\" data-unfollow-text=\"Following Diablo II: Resurrected\" data-aria-follow-text=\"Follow Diablo II: Resurrected\" data-aria-unfollow-text=\"Following Diablo II: Resurrected\" data-popup=\"true\" data-force-login=\"true\" aria-label=\"Follow Diablo II: Resurrected\" title=\"Follow Diablo II: Resurrected\"><br \/>\n  Follow Diablo II: Resurrected<br \/>\n<\/button>          <\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/header>\n<div class=\"article_body\" data-component=\"article-content\">\n<div class=\"article_body_content article-styling\">\n<p>It&#8217;s tempting to believe that the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.eurogamer.net\/games\/diablo-iii\">Diablo 3<\/a> playerbase has been eclipsed by a resurgent <a href=\"https:\/\/www.eurogamer.net\/games\/diablo-ii\">Diablo 2<\/a>: Resurrected on one side, and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.eurogamer.net\/games\/diablo-iv\">Diablo 4<\/a> on the other, but according to Blizzard, that&#8217;s not the case. Apparently there&#8217;s still a &#8220;massive&#8221; playerbase playing Diablo 3, and it counts players in the &#8220;millions&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Each game has its own core players,&#8221; Diablo Legacy executive producer Matthew Cederquist told me during a group interview at Blizzard recently &#8211; Diablo 3 technically falls under the Legacy team&#8217;s jurisdiction. &#8220;There&#8217;s actually millions of people that still play Diablo 3.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Even when Diablo 4 came out, some players were cannibalised and brought over to D4, but there&#8217;s still a massive player base for Diablo 3,&#8221; he added. &#8220;Every single ladder season that comes out, you will see people transition from D4 back to D3 and play for that opening weekend, or that week or so, and they&#8217;ll transition right back to D4. And vice versa D2.&#8221;<\/p>\n<figure>\n<div class=\"video_wrapper youtube\">\n<a aria-label=\"Diablo 30th Anniversary Spotlight\" class=\"video-facade full-size\" data-platform=\"youtube\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/KnAsWN-6hvw?autoplay=1\" title=\"Click to play video from YouTube\"><br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Cover image for YouTube video\" class=\"video-facade__image\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/i.ytimg.com\/vi\/KnAsWN-6hvw\/hqdefault.jpg\"><span class=\"video-facade__title\">Diablo 30th Anniversary Spotlight<\/span><\/p>\n<p><\/a>\n<\/div><figcaption>This week&#8217;s big Diablo anniversary bonanza, which announced a triple warlock drop.<a class=\"video\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=KnAsWN-6hvw\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Watch on YouTube<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Cederquist&#8217;s remark was made when I asked about a comment by previous Diablo boss Rod Fergusson &#8211; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/feed\/update\/urn:li:activity:7363590883784466434\/\">who left Blizzard about five months ago to join 2K and lead BioShock<\/a> &#8211; who <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gamefile.news\/p\/diablo-iv-\">told GameFile<\/a> in March that, &#8220;We have more Diablo 2: Resurrected players than Diablo 3 right now.&#8221; But that statement only reflects a fleeting state in the series playerbase, Cederquist said. The Diablo audience&#8217;s playing habits are more fluid when opposed to something like, say, World of Warcraft.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"injection_placeholder\" data-position=\"1\"><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;That&#8217;s the cool thing about our community,&#8221; Cederquist went on to say. &#8220;It&#8217;s less like World of Warcraft: Classic, where that&#8217;s your home, you don&#8217;t move; that&#8217;s mine, I don&#8217;t go to retail. There&#8217;s so much inter-cannibalisation.&#8221; (That&#8217;s the first time I&#8217;ve heard that phrase.)<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"pullquote right\"><p><em>&#8220;It&#8217;s less like World of Warcraft: Classic where that&#8217;s your home, you don&#8217;t move; that&#8217;s mine, I don&#8217;t go to retail. There&#8217;s so much inter-cannibalisation&#8221;<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>&#8220;The player habits are just different in a long-form progression game,&#8221; added Tim Vasconcellos, lead designer on the Diablo Legacy team. He said you spend longer doing things in World of Warcraft &#8211; levelling up your character, organising groups and raids. In Diablo games (&#8220;except maybe Diablo 1, which is unique in its own right, where I would consider it to be more of a survival horror&#8221;) it&#8217;s different.<\/p>\n<p><!-- code from Primis - Eurogamer.net - eurogamer.net --><\/p>\n<div class=\"primis_wrapper\">\n<div class=\"primis_video\">\n<p><span class=\"embed_placeholder\" data-type=\"targeting\"><br \/>\n<span class=\"message\">To see this content please enable targeting cookies.<\/span><br \/>\n<button class=\"optanon-show-settings link\"><br \/>\nManage cookie settings<\/button><\/span> <\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><!-- code from Primis --><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;There&#8217;s not the same class-role dynamic saying hey we need a healer, we need a tank and then DPS,&#8221; Vasconcellos said. &#8220;Every class is DPS. Furthermore, the social expectation isn&#8217;t that we&#8217;re going to commit to having to play together to progress content.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"injection_placeholder\" data-position=\"2\"><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Is it more efficient? Yes. Is it more enjoyable? We think so. You can continue on your own if you want to and the social pressure doesn&#8217;t exist there, and so people are easily able to flow between one game to the next. That&#8217;s more feasible in today&#8217;s modern age where we have so many demands on our time, and the playerbase has also aged and they have more responsibilities to see to. I&#8217;m a Diablo dad myself. That&#8217;s just the reality; I think Diablo suits those players.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s an interesting take, and a surprising dig at sibling World of Warcraft, but it doesn&#8217;t answer whether Diablo 2 consistently commands a larger audience than Diablo 3. So I pushed the point again.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;No, no &#8211; it&#8217;s not necessarily like that,&#8221; responded Cederquist. &#8220;Our games fluctuate wildly, and it&#8217;s because you have those seasonal contents. Everyone comes back for a ladder race, and actually the way we produce them is we separate them for that to happen, so we&#8217;re never going to have a D3 ladder stepping over a D2 ladder stepping over a D4 ladder. We want players to be able to say, Okay yeah, let me jump into this flavour of Diablo today, maybe this flavour of Diablo two weeks from now and so on.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Whatever the player numbers, I expect there&#8217;s been a surge in Diablo 2 activity this week, after <a href=\"https:\/\/www.eurogamer.net\/blizzard-announces-diablo-warlocks\">Diablo 2: Resurrected surprise-released a new expansion called Reign of the Warlock, which introduced a new warlock class<\/a> to the game &#8211; the first new class the game has had in 25 years. The game also launched on Steam and on Game Pass, which I&#8217;m sure is bound to drive up numbers. Consider that Cederquist told me in a separate article that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.eurogamer.net\/blizzard-may-expand-diablo-2-more-if-warlock-class-goes-well\">there were already &#8220;millions&#8221; &#8211; and he emphasised the word &#8220;millions&#8221; &#8211; of people playing Diablo 2: Resurrected<\/a>, and I wonder how high the playerbase will go.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"poll_wrapper\" data-fixed=\"true\" data-hashid data-init=\"false\" data-poll-position=\"1\"><\/span><\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<div class=\"preferred-source\" data-component=\"preferred-source\">\nLove Eurogamer.net? Make us a <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/preferences\/source?q=https:\/\/www.eurogamer.net\">Preferred Source on Google<\/a> and catch more of our coverage in your feeds.  <\/div>\n<\/article>\n<div class=\"article_body\" data-component=\"article-content\">\n<div class=\"article_body_content article-styling\">\n<p>It&#8217;s tempting to believe that the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.eurogamer.net\/games\/diablo-iii\">Diablo 3<\/a> playerbase has been eclipsed by a resurgent <a href=\"https:\/\/www.eurogamer.net\/games\/diablo-ii\">Diablo 2<\/a>: Resurrected on one side, and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.eurogamer.net\/games\/diablo-iv\">Diablo 4<\/a> on the other, but according to Blizzard, that&#8217;s not the case. Apparently there&#8217;s still a &#8220;massive&#8221; playerbase playing Diablo 3, and it counts players in the &#8220;millions&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Each game has its own core players,&#8221; Diablo Legacy executive producer Matthew Cederquist told me during a group interview at Blizzard recently &#8211; Diablo 3 technically falls under the Legacy team&#8217;s jurisdiction. &#8220;There&#8217;s actually millions of people that still play Diablo 3.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Even when Diablo 4 came out, some players were cannibalised and brought over to D4, but there&#8217;s still a massive player base for Diablo 3,&#8221; he added. &#8220;Every single ladder season that comes out, you will see people transition from D4 back to D3 and play for that opening weekend, or that week or so, and they&#8217;ll transition right back to D4. And vice versa D2.&#8221;<\/p>\n<figure>\n<div class=\"video_wrapper youtube\">\n<a aria-label=\"Diablo 30th Anniversary Spotlight\" class=\"video-facade full-size\" data-platform=\"youtube\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/KnAsWN-6hvw?autoplay=1\" title=\"Click to play video from YouTube\"><br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Cover image for YouTube video\" class=\"video-facade__image\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/i.ytimg.com\/vi\/KnAsWN-6hvw\/hqdefault.jpg\"><span class=\"video-facade__title\">Diablo 30th Anniversary Spotlight<\/span><\/p>\n<p><\/a>\n<\/div><figcaption>This week&#8217;s big Diablo anniversary bonanza, which announced a triple warlock drop.<a class=\"video\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=KnAsWN-6hvw\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Watch on YouTube<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Cederquist&#8217;s remark was made when I asked about a comment by previous Diablo boss Rod Fergusson &#8211; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/feed\/update\/urn:li:activity:7363590883784466434\/\">who left Blizzard about five months ago to join 2K and lead BioShock<\/a> &#8211; who <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gamefile.news\/p\/diablo-iv-\">told GameFile<\/a> in March that, &#8220;We have more Diablo 2: Resurrected players than Diablo 3 right now.&#8221; But that statement only reflects a fleeting state in the series playerbase, Cederquist said. The Diablo audience&#8217;s playing habits are more fluid when opposed to something like, say, World of Warcraft.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"injection_placeholder\" data-position=\"1\"><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;That&#8217;s the cool thing about our community,&#8221; Cederquist went on to say. &#8220;It&#8217;s less like World of Warcraft: Classic, where that&#8217;s your home, you don&#8217;t move; that&#8217;s mine, I don&#8217;t go to retail. There&#8217;s so much inter-cannibalisation.&#8221; (That&#8217;s the first time I&#8217;ve heard that phrase.)<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"pullquote right\"><p><em>&#8220;It&#8217;s less like World of Warcraft: Classic where that&#8217;s your home, you don&#8217;t move; that&#8217;s mine, I don&#8217;t go to retail. There&#8217;s so much inter-cannibalisation&#8221;<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>&#8220;The player habits are just different in a long-form progression game,&#8221; added Tim Vasconcellos, lead designer on the Diablo Legacy team. He said you spend longer doing things in World of Warcraft &#8211; levelling up your character, organising groups and raids. In Diablo games (&#8220;except maybe Diablo 1, which is unique in its own right, where I would consider it to be more of a survival horror&#8221;) it&#8217;s different.<\/p>\n<p><!-- code from Primis - Eurogamer.net - eurogamer.net --><\/p>\n<div class=\"primis_wrapper\">\n<div class=\"primis_video\">\n<p><span class=\"embed_placeholder\" data-type=\"targeting\"><br \/>\n<span class=\"message\">To see this content please enable targeting cookies.<\/span><br \/>\n<button class=\"optanon-show-settings link\"><br \/>\nManage cookie settings<\/button><\/span> <\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><!-- code from Primis --><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;There&#8217;s not the same class-role dynamic saying hey we need a healer, we need a tank and then DPS,&#8221; Vasconcellos said. &#8220;Every class is DPS. Furthermore, the social expectation isn&#8217;t that we&#8217;re going to commit to having to play together to progress content.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"injection_placeholder\" data-position=\"2\"><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Is it more efficient? Yes. Is it more enjoyable? We think so. You can continue on your own if you want to and the social pressure doesn&#8217;t exist there, and so people are easily able to flow between one game to the next. That&#8217;s more feasible in today&#8217;s modern age where we have so many demands on our time, and the playerbase has also aged and they have more responsibilities to see to. I&#8217;m a Diablo dad myself. That&#8217;s just the reality; I think Diablo suits those players.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s an interesting take, and a surprising dig at sibling World of Warcraft, but it doesn&#8217;t answer whether Diablo 2 consistently commands a larger audience than Diablo 3. So I pushed the point again.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;No, no &#8211; it&#8217;s not necessarily like that,&#8221; responded Cederquist. &#8220;Our games fluctuate wildly, and it&#8217;s because you have those seasonal contents. Everyone comes back for a ladder race, and actually the way we produce them is we separate them for that to happen, so we&#8217;re never going to have a D3 ladder stepping over a D2 ladder stepping over a D4 ladder. We want players to be able to say, Okay yeah, let me jump into this flavour of Diablo today, maybe this flavour of Diablo two weeks from now and so on.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Whatever the player numbers, I expect there&#8217;s been a surge in Diablo 2 activity this week, after <a href=\"https:\/\/www.eurogamer.net\/blizzard-announces-diablo-warlocks\">Diablo 2: Resurrected surprise-released a new expansion called Reign of the Warlock, which introduced a new warlock class<\/a> to the game &#8211; the first new class the game has had in 25 years. The game also launched on Steam and on Game Pass, which I&#8217;m sure is bound to drive up numbers. Consider that Cederquist told me in a separate article that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.eurogamer.net\/blizzard-may-expand-diablo-2-more-if-warlock-class-goes-well\">there were already &#8220;millions&#8221; &#8211; and he emphasised the word &#8220;millions&#8221; &#8211; of people playing Diablo 2: Resurrected<\/a>, and I wonder how high the playerbase will go.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"poll_wrapper\" data-fixed=\"true\" data-hashid data-init=\"false\" data-poll-position=\"1\"><\/span><\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Home News &#8220;There&#8217;s actually millions of people that still play it&#8221; &#8211; Blizzard insists Diablo 3 still has a &#8220;massive&#8221; playerbase But is it larger than Diablo 2&#8217;s? Image credit: Blizzard News by Robert Purchese Associate Editor Published on Feb. 13, 2026 4 comments Follow Diablo II: Resurrected It&#8217;s tempting to believe that the Diablo [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[226,253],"class_list":["post-1767711","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-crawlmanager","tag-eurogamer-net"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1767711","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1767711"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1767711\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1767711"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1767711"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1767711"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}