OK, anecdotal evidence perhaps but the most popular blog post on this blog for both last year and this year is the one I wrote about Diablo clones/ Diablo-like games last year.
Most popular search terms? “diablo like games”, “games like diablo”, “diablo clones” — that’s most popular over all time, since the blog began.
Oh yes, people are interested in Diablo.
Welcome to Spinksville! 
The attention span of players today are so short that I bet in 6 months Diablo will be left to just the die hards. Long gone are the days of spending 2, 3 or more years devoted to a single game.
I’d bet anything that a far larger number of people have been playing a game for 2 years+ now than 10 years ago. 10 million WoW players for instance. And there’s still people playing EQ, UO and so on.
My old Diablo 2 guild is alive and well and people still make games. It’s consolidated onto US East now where it used to be well represented across 3 zones but there’s still people playing.
Are they interested in Diablo? Or are they interested in playing a game that is NOT Diablo? Hmmm
I suspect people are just interested in playing a game like Diablo, and Diablo 3 may or may not fill that need. The beta is . . . interesting . . . as Blizzard clearly STILL haven’t decided what it is they actually want to do with the game, as evidenced by recent major mechanics changes.
Interesting. I’m surprised that there wasn’t more interest in SWTOR as I’d expect people to get excited around release.
D3 could still be months off.
My own most popular all time posts are about: 1. Rift, 2. Eve, 3. Eve, 4 SWTOR 5. General MMO theory.
Yes, it surprised me because it’s really not the main focus of the blog. I’m not sure what that proves (maybe I should be writing more about single player games?) but … it proves something!
Do you write your blog for your hit rate or for yourself? If you want hit rate you should write about Justin Bieber’s love life or something but it might not be so fun to write.
Stabs, how often have I ever mentioned the hits? I write to follow my own interests and hopefully readers share them, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t sometimes interesting to look at the stats.
With expectations so high, anything less than ‘teh awesome!’ would be viewed as a failure. Especially given that D3 has already had delays, and Skyrim is doing fairly well for itself.
See, I think all it has to do is be like Diablo and Blizzard would fail pretty hard if it wasn’t.
Just my two cents but I think a lot of the interest in D3 is from the RMAH aspect. People are either upset about the feature, or they think they are going to get rich off it. Either way it is generating a lot of added interest in the game, so Blizzard has to be happy about that.
A reasonable expectation, but since your blog talks about Diablo 3 it’s more likely to rank in Google for keywords related to it. A Google tool called insights for search is slightly more accurate:
http://www.google.com/insights/search/#cat=0-8-41&q=games%20like%20diablo%2Cmodern%20warfare%203%2Cdiablo%203%2Cmass%20effect%203%2Cbattlefield%203&date=today%2012-m&cmpt=q
Diablo 3 will be immense, have no doubt about it. But the biggest game of the year? I don’t know if it will beat the hordes of Battlefield 3 & Modern Warfare 3. Sadly.
Oh, cool Trouble with that search is that MW2 and BF3 are already out, so people searching for those may be looking for tips or servers to play an existing game rather than expressing interest in the next version (although I suspect you’re right and they’ll buy them when they come out.)
Biggest game this year? http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-01-25-resident-evil-6-is-capcoms-biggest-ever-production Resident evil 6.. cmon they have 600 people working on it, it has to be huge! Oh maybe you meant sales? ^^
I am extremely pumped to play Diablo 3. I’m still a bit cynical about it because I always felt Diablo 2 was great but not “worth as long as it took great.” There is also some parts of me that say “it will be another StarCraft II.”
I liked StarCraft II. I bought it at release and do not regret that. I played the campaign and some multiplayer but I did not see the mileage I got from the original.
Perhaps it was too familiar. Perhaps it lacked the same charm. I don’t know. At any rate. I think Diablo 3 will be an exceptional supplemental game to my MMORPG. I just hope they don’t spill too much MMO into a game that isn’t exactly built for it.
It doesn’t mean it will be the biggest. It is the most expected and wanted. Can be the biggest disappointment too!
I think I know what I’ll get in Diablo nothing original but a well finished product. While sales wise diablo might be the ‘biggest’ I think the biggest game with original features is guildwar 2. This game I have high expections and i think we need some games to innovate as I am so sick games being clones of others.
If D3 and GW2 come out at the same time GW2 will win my attention.