Chinese Gamers Already Way Better Than You at Diablo 3

Not so hard to kill, apparently.

Western gamers are already used to the idea that Asians tend to dominate Blizzard games like World of Warcraft and Starcraft. Heck, Korea is so good at Starcraft they made it a high-paying professional sport. Still, you might have been forgiven for thinking you might have a chance to compete in Diablo 3, a game that hasn’t even been released yet. Sorry, but you don’t. It may not have been released, but there was a beta, and Chinese gamers are already way better at it than you!

Specifically, in the past few days the Chinese gaming sphere has been buzzing over this video, which shows a Chinese gamer defeating the Skeleton King, the final boss of the Diablo 3 demo, in three seconds. If you’re not a gamer or you’re not familiar with the Diablo 3 beta, let me break it down for you: the Skeleton King is hard to kill, and three seconds is really fast. You can check it out in the video below. The battle starts around 24 seconds into the video, the first time the Skeleton King glows red, and it ends, well, about three seconds later. Holy crap!

This video has already been uploaded repeatedly to Chinese video sharing services from Youku and Tudou to Sina and Tencent video, and collectively the video has racked up hundreds of thousands of plays in just a couple of days. The version embedded above, for example, has been online for one day and has been viewed over 20,000 times. Another copy on Youku, also online for only a day, has over 30,000 plays.

After the battle ends, the video goes on to describe how to equip and build up your character to make them this powerful, but let’s be honest, none of us will ever be as good at Diablo 3 as this guy, and we might as well just give up.

Anyway, Diablo 3 is poised for a very successful launch in China, and it has been making headlines daily on most Chinese gaming sites for weeks now. Unlike most Western games, which never seem to find a market here, Blizzard games seem to include some sort of magic spell that attracts gamers globally like flies to honey. It’s a formula that Chinese and global game developers have been trying to copy for years, with little success.

Diablo 3 is scheduled to be released in Q1 of next year, and although it’s not yet clear when it will be officially released in China, you can bet that hordes of Chinese gamers will be playing it within a day or two of the official launch date. And like as not, they’ll already be better at it than you are.

[Via QQ Games, image via Diablo 3 Wiki]