There are FAR MORE than a few hundred people in the beta. Everywhere I look people give these miniscule estimates of the beta population. THEY ARE WRONG. The actual number is in the tens of thousands.
Peak numbers of public games have been ranging from around 50-75. I don't know how they at this exact moment, but that's pretty recent. The VAST majority of games are private. Generously, 10% are public. That means an average of 500-750 games going on most of the time.
Now, most non-diehard fans (which make up the majority of the beta) are not playing day and night. Even die hard ones aren't. The most hardcore ones have played through the content quickly, multiple times, and likely cut back to a few hours a day max.
So the wildest, highest estimate for the percentage of players online at any given time is about 10%.
So we're looking at a current number between 5000-7500.
THEN, we take into account that players are being phased in as old ones drop stop playing as much, to keep server population relatively stable.
Since this has happened twice (I think, it's hard to tell when waves happen), we can only assume that a significant portion of the previous players stopped playing frequently, or at all. So it's possible, even probable, that we have had a half of a server group of players cycle out over the course of the beta so far (about a month). Probably more.
So I would estimate (and this is still lowballing it) that somewhere between 7500-11000 people have been invited to the beta so far. This figure could easily go as high as 20,000.
I'm sure quite a few people will doubt this, because intuitively it seems like 10,000+ beta invitees would mean a bigger percentage of the community would be in the beta. We should have people all over the forums with beta keys, right?
Well, no.
Using the highest estimate, just to give these stats a chance, if there have been 20,000 invites so far, there are still millions of opt-ins and FF. Lowballing the hell out of it, call it 2 million. That means you have a 1/100 chance of getting an invite out of these waves. Probably less, since FF members make up a reasonable chunk of that total, and they are drawn from another pool.
Since only a small percentage of the Blizzard community posts regularly on forums related to the games, we hear from only a select few testers. So it's very easy to look at the few dozen beta posters and say "THERE MUST BE ONLY A FEW HUNDRED PEOPLE LOL."
This helps put the sweepstakes into perspective as well. 2000 keys sounds like a lot less after you know the actual number of opt-in testers.
I agree that there must be a lot more people in they beta than we think, I'm not sure how many, but you bring up a good point that not EVERYONE is going to post about it, or make videos, or say anything at all to anyone that they are in the beta. I for one never really used forums before, so if I got into the beta, I'd only be telling a couple of my friends, and not really posting about it anywhere. Plus I have no interest in public games, so I wouldn't show up there. I know a lot of people are looking at the public game numbers and thinking those are the only people playing, but it's definitely not.
I have no idea how many people are actually in the beta, but it doesn't really concern me too much, as long as they give feedback and help Blizzard get the game in a good state to be released! Though I think a lot of people who play in betas don't bother to give feedback anyway.
I dont ask open-beta for millions, but if there is no 20-50k active players, there is not much public/infrastructure testing going on.
And if there's not much public/infrastructure testing going on, that means that they're not ready for it yet. No point in inviting a ton of people if useful testing can't start until the new hardware is in. This isn't some advertising campaign- it's a test. When they're ready for large numbers of people, large numbers will get in.
Your post sounds like a whole lot of speculation to me, but I like where your heads at. Any way of verifying the amount of private games?
Quote from "33415594705" »
with a set of keys going out this next Monday/Tuesday for the Facebook Sweepstakes, consider this. If just those invites go out (no Opt-in), we can see how much the public game pop changes, thus allowing us to calculate a very generic ratio of how many players are playing privately, which then leads us to calculating the total beta population.
While these calculations must be taken at face value, it may be helpful down the road to be able to look back and formulate educated guesses as to how many players were in at any given time.
So you have no actual data on how many people are playing in public vs. private games, so you just assume it's 10% in public games for no apparent reason?
And then you say that the people speculating that the number of beta testers playing right now is low due to the actual numbers shown in public games is "bugging you."
So you have no actual data on how many people are playing in public vs. private games, so you just assume it's 10% in public games for no apparent reason?
And then you say that the people speculating that the number of beta testers playing right now is low due to the actual numbers shown in public games is "bugging you."
OK.
My thoughts exactly. Even if it was 10% (unlikely) that would only be a thousand or maybe a bit more, certainly not in the tens of thousands.
I wish people would stop speculating over something that is meaningless to us. You either get a beta key or you don't. Why let something so petty bother you? Blizzard knows the numbers, it's for their testing.
What are you basing the 10% on? What you feel to be accurate?
I agree that there's probably more than we think in the beta, but I also believe that you're overshooting by a wide margin.
I personally doubt that even 10% of players are playing in public games at this point. I almost never see anyone talking about playing with other people, or playing in public games.
That being said, that's my personal opinion based on my observations, only Blizzard knows how many private games there are at the moment and they have already said that they are not telling us!
What I find the best about this whole beta is how Blizzard now says majority of games are private games and not public. Yet they used the public games to "research" what people do in Diablo 2.
What I find the best about this whole beta is how Blizzard now says majority of games are private games and not public. Yet they used the public games to "research" what people do in Diablo 2.
Sorry... but this is an ignorant post.
All diablo 3 calculations are performed on the server. Thus... even private games go through the server. This means that blizzard can pull statistics on practically everything in the beta.
What I find the best about this whole beta is how Blizzard now says majority of games are private games and not public. Yet they used the public games to "research" what people do in Diablo 2.
Sorry... but this is an ignorant post.
All diablo 3 calculations are performed on the server. Thus... even private games go through the server. This means that blizzard can pull statistics on practically everything in the beta.
Yea...and? Blizzard is making this co-op friendly Diablo 3 where apparently a VAST majority of people are playing in private games, yet their goal is to have more public games. They virtually removed any player threat in a public game and yet people still choose private games. This points as a fail to me on Blizzards behalf. They shouldn't try to control the community like they often do, so lay off the kool-aid.
What I find the best about this whole beta is how Blizzard now says majority of games are private games and not public. Yet they used the public games to "research" what people do in Diablo 2.
Sorry... but this is an ignorant post.
All diablo 3 calculations are performed on the server. Thus... even private games go through the server. This means that blizzard can pull statistics on practically everything in the beta.
Yea...and? Blizzard is making this co-op friendly Diablo 3 where apparently a VAST majority of people are playing in private games, yet their goal is to have more public games. They virtually removed any player threat in a public game and yet people still choose private games. This points as a fail to me on Blizzards behalf. They shouldn't try to control the community like they often do, so lay off the kool-aid.
What I find the best about this whole beta is how Blizzard now says majority of games are private games and not public. Yet they used the public games to "research" what people do in Diablo 2.
Sorry... but this is an ignorant post.
All diablo 3 calculations are performed on the server. Thus... even private games go through the server. This means that blizzard can pull statistics on practically everything in the beta.
Yea...and? Blizzard is making this co-op friendly Diablo 3 where apparently a VAST majority of people are playing in private games, yet their goal is to have more public games. They virtually removed any player threat in a public game and yet people still choose private games. This points as a fail to me on Blizzards behalf. They shouldn't try to control the community like they often do, so lay off the kool-aid.
The point of what I was saying, and the moral of the story is. Even if people are in private games, blizzard can still use their statisics. Private versus Public games make no difference in the terms of beta testing.
It only affects the fan base as we do not have exact counts of how many actual beta testers there are.
I dont ask open-beta for millions, but if there is no 20-50k active players, there is not much public/infrastructure testing going on.
And if there's not much public/infrastructure testing going on, that means that they're not ready for it yet. No point in inviting a ton of people if useful testing can't start until the new hardware is in. This isn't some advertising campaign- it's a test. When they're ready for large numbers of people, large numbers will get in.
Do you know this for certain? Their servers could be perfectly fine for handling hundreds of thousands of players at a time and we wouldn't know unless Blizzard specifically told us or we saw it for ourselves.
There are FAR MORE than a few hundred people in the beta. Everywhere I look people give these miniscule estimates of the beta population. THEY ARE WRONG. The actual number is in the tens of thousands.
Peak numbers of public games have been ranging from around 50-75. I don't know how they at this exact moment, but that's pretty recent. The VAST majority of games are private. Generously, 10% are public. That means an average of 500-750 games going on most of the time.
So the wildest, highest estimate for the percentage of players online at any given time is about 10%.
So we're looking at a current number between 5000-7500.
Can I know where you take your numbers because I do not think you can say with 100% certainity that most games are private. Also I don't know where you take the 50-75 persons in public games because this is not the case since a week and a half. I didn't see more than 70 person in that period, I think the max peak I saw was 60. The average is 40.
So please, tell me your sources because I highly doupt your numbers, this invalidating ur argument.
Everything is based on your "generous" 10% number. Where are you getting that? This post should not be mistaken for evidence, it's just a bunch of paragraphs of assumptions.
If you present anything that might resemble proof, I'll believe you.
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"Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions."
-Thomas Jefferson
10% is generous in favor of a small test base. The actual number is likely somewhere in the 5-8% range, which would support an even larger test base.
My estimates are based on other online games, and then lowballed to all hell to make a point. I'm skewing the numbers wildly in favor of a smaller testing group to show that even then these insanely low estimates are nonsense. The majority of you vastly overestimate the number of active players on any given game at any given time.
These are not firm numbers by any means, but one would have to be borderline insane to believe the number of keys given out so far was anywhere under 10,000. The numbers just don't support that.
I know it's hard to grasp, but while these are all estimates based on the very tiny amount of data we have, it's the RANGE that's important, and it doesn't match the "few hundred" population total at ALL.
By skewing all the numbers in favor of a small test base, I'm showing that even under ideal circumstances the few hundred estimate doesn't make sense.
If that's too tough to understand, well, you should probably go take another remedial math class.
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There are FAR MORE than a few hundred people in the beta. Everywhere I look people give these miniscule estimates of the beta population. THEY ARE WRONG. The actual number is in the tens of thousands.
Peak numbers of public games have been ranging from around 50-75. I don't know how they at this exact moment, but that's pretty recent. The VAST majority of games are private. Generously, 10% are public. That means an average of 500-750 games going on most of the time.
Now, most non-diehard fans (which make up the majority of the beta) are not playing day and night. Even die hard ones aren't. The most hardcore ones have played through the content quickly, multiple times, and likely cut back to a few hours a day max.
So the wildest, highest estimate for the percentage of players online at any given time is about 10%.
So we're looking at a current number between 5000-7500.
THEN, we take into account that players are being phased in as old ones drop stop playing as much, to keep server population relatively stable.
Since this has happened twice (I think, it's hard to tell when waves happen), we can only assume that a significant portion of the previous players stopped playing frequently, or at all. So it's possible, even probable, that we have had a half of a server group of players cycle out over the course of the beta so far (about a month). Probably more.
So I would estimate (and this is still lowballing it) that somewhere between 7500-11000 people have been invited to the beta so far. This figure could easily go as high as 20,000.
I'm sure quite a few people will doubt this, because intuitively it seems like 10,000+ beta invitees would mean a bigger percentage of the community would be in the beta. We should have people all over the forums with beta keys, right?
Well, no.
Using the highest estimate, just to give these stats a chance, if there have been 20,000 invites so far, there are still millions of opt-ins and FF. Lowballing the hell out of it, call it 2 million. That means you have a 1/100 chance of getting an invite out of these waves. Probably less, since FF members make up a reasonable chunk of that total, and they are drawn from another pool.
Since only a small percentage of the Blizzard community posts regularly on forums related to the games, we hear from only a select few testers. So it's very easy to look at the few dozen beta posters and say "THERE MUST BE ONLY A FEW HUNDRED PEOPLE LOL."
This helps put the sweepstakes into perspective as well. 2000 keys sounds like a lot less after you know the actual number of opt-in testers.
I have no idea how many people are actually in the beta, but it doesn't really concern me too much, as long as they give feedback and help Blizzard get the game in a good state to be released! Though I think a lot of people who play in betas don't bother to give feedback anyway.
And then you say that the people speculating that the number of beta testers playing right now is low due to the actual numbers shown in public games is "bugging you."
OK.
My thoughts exactly. Even if it was 10% (unlikely) that would only be a thousand or maybe a bit more, certainly not in the tens of thousands.
10% of 100 is 10 (factor)
(50 to 75)10
500 to 750
I agree that there's probably more than we think in the beta, but I also believe that you're overshooting by a wide margin.
I personally doubt that even 10% of players are playing in public games at this point. I almost never see anyone talking about playing with other people, or playing in public games.
That being said, that's my personal opinion based on my observations, only Blizzard knows how many private games there are at the moment and they have already said that they are not telling us!
Sorry... but this is an ignorant post.
All diablo 3 calculations are performed on the server. Thus... even private games go through the server. This means that blizzard can pull statistics on practically everything in the beta.
Lets stay on topic.
The point of what I was saying, and the moral of the story is. Even if people are in private games, blizzard can still use their statisics. Private versus Public games make no difference in the terms of beta testing.
It only affects the fan base as we do not have exact counts of how many actual beta testers there are.
Can I know where you take your numbers because I do not think you can say with 100% certainity that most games are private. Also I don't know where you take the 50-75 persons in public games because this is not the case since a week and a half. I didn't see more than 70 person in that period, I think the max peak I saw was 60. The average is 40.
So please, tell me your sources because I highly doupt your numbers, this invalidating ur argument.
Everything is based on your "generous" 10% number. Where are you getting that? This post should not be mistaken for evidence, it's just a bunch of paragraphs of assumptions.
If you present anything that might resemble proof, I'll believe you.
-Thomas Jefferson
My estimates are based on other online games, and then lowballed to all hell to make a point. I'm skewing the numbers wildly in favor of a smaller testing group to show that even then these insanely low estimates are nonsense. The majority of you vastly overestimate the number of active players on any given game at any given time.
These are not firm numbers by any means, but one would have to be borderline insane to believe the number of keys given out so far was anywhere under 10,000. The numbers just don't support that.
I know it's hard to grasp, but while these are all estimates based on the very tiny amount of data we have, it's the RANGE that's important, and it doesn't match the "few hundred" population total at ALL.
By skewing all the numbers in favor of a small test base, I'm showing that even under ideal circumstances the few hundred estimate doesn't make sense.
If that's too tough to understand, well, you should probably go take another remedial math class.