Highlights
- Paladin is the most popular class in Baldur's Gate 3, surpassing other classes like Sorcerer by a significant margin.
- The Half-Elf is the most popular race, followed by Human and Elf, with these three accounting for a large majority of character creations.
- The least popular race is the Githyanki, despite its novelty and lesser representation in past and present D&D games.
Larian Studios just offered fans a peak at some of the numbers from the first weekend of Baldur's Gate 3 being officially out, and this includes data on the most popular choices for classes and races. The long-awaited, third entry in the Baldur's Gate series is finally out of early access, and it's quickly winning over gamers and critics. In just a week, Baldur's Gate 3 has become one of the highest-rated PC games ever and is seeing players join the adventure in droves.
Contributing to the game's incredible popularity is just how open the world is and how many choices fans can make. From whom to side with in various conflicts to whether or not Baldur's Gate 3 players should let Astarion drink their blood, no two playthroughs are ever likely to be the same. These branching paths begin even before the story has officially started, with gamers being tasked with selecting a class and race if they're playing a custom character. Now, fans can see how their picks compare to those of other players.
In a tweet from the official Baldur's Gate 3 account, Larian Studios has released loads of data from the first weekend of gameplay, revealing the most popular class to be Paladin and the most popular race to be Half-Elf. The graphs show the number of players for all classes and races, displaying some interesting results. Paladin is the most popular class by a fairly large margin, beating out the next most popular, Sorcerer, by tens of thousands of characters. The Half-Elf, meanwhile won less dramatically. On the other hand, the next two most popular choices are Human and Elf. So, combined, Human, Elf, and a combination of the two account for a significant plurality of all characters created so far.
It seems that lots of players have been studying up on the best Paladin build for Baldur's Gate 3 while the Cleric has been getting far less love from fans. This is ironic as the Paladin and Cleric are similar in many ways, both being holy warriors known for being tough and durable in combat. It's quite interesting that one would be the most popular while the other would be the least. It's also worth noting that the Githyanki is the least popular race, despite being the one that is arguably the least represented in past and present D&D games. It seems that novelty hasn't won over many fans, with far more going for the traditional and familiar races.
In addition to race and class choices, Larian also revealed plenty of other cool stats. This includes how many characters have felt the sting of being romantically rejected by Astarion and the astounding fact that fans have spent over 1,000 years combined playing Baldur's Gate 3 so far. It's likely that many of these stats will change over time, so gamers should keep an eye out for updates in the coming weeks.
Baldur's Gate 3 is available now on PC and will release for PS5 on September 6. An Xbox Series X/S version is also in development.
