Musk's Conquest of "Diablo 4": How Did He Manage His Time?

Original Article Title: "Musk Achieves 'Diablo IV' Top Rank, Leaving Everyone Wondering Where He Finds the Time"

Original Article Authors: Sarah E. Needleman, Becky Peterson, THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

Image Source: EMIL LENDOFWSJ, GETTY IMAGES, BLIZZARD

Throughout this past fall, Elon Musk released Tesla's new self-driving rental cars, launched dozens of rockets, and spent weeks campaigning for President-elect Trump. But that's not all he accomplished; some would say his latest achievement is even more impressive.

The billionaire has claimed to be one of the world's top players in "Diablo IV." "Diablo IV" is a popular dark fantasy world electronic game where players can craft potions and slay demons.

On November 20, Musk took to the social media platform X stating, "You can learn a lot about life by speedrunning a game on the hardest difficulty." He then announced that he had just speedrun through the highest level of "The Pit" in the game in under two minutes. He even shared a video clip to commemorate this milestone.

Such an achievement requires more than just monster-killing skills. Just reaching Level 150 alone takes dozens of hours of gameplay. "The Pit" was added to the game as recently as May of this year, and the latest season started on October 7th, resetting all players' progress to Level 1. This means Musk reached the highest level in 45 days or even less.

Musk oversees six companies, including the brain-machine interface startup Neuralink, the tunneling startup The Boring Company, and the AI startup xAI. He is a prolific user on the social media platform X, which he acquired in 2022. Serving as the Co-Director of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) in the Trump administration, he is currently helping oversee a comprehensive reform of the federal government.

He carried so much responsibility that everyone wondered: How did he manage to find time to play games at all?

At 29, Damir Sabic is a devoted player of the Diablo series of games, saying it took him about 80 hours to reach level 129 in the "Abyss" in 12 rifts. He stated that he stopped playing at that point as leveling became boring. He described Musk's claim of clearing level 150 in November as "too crazy".

"You have to sit in front of the computer and play the game every day," said Sabic, a 3D printing artist living in Houston.

Image Source: BLIZZARD

Musk claimed during his November appearance on Joe Rogan's podcast that he is one of the top 20 ranked players globally in Diablo 4. He also mentioned that the time he spent playing the shooter game Quake during his last year of college might have exceeded the time he spent in all his classes.

Musk's marathon gaming sessions often bleed into his business life. Walter Isaacson wrote in his biography of Musk that prior to publicly announcing the acquisition of Twitter, Musk stayed up until 5 a.m. playing the role-playing game Elden Ring with his then-girlfriend, Grimes.

In October last year, Musk shared a video on X platform of him playing Diablo 4, capturing audio of him also taking a phone call. In the call, he seemed to be discussing the Starship rocket test launch with his employees at his space exploration company, SpaceX.

Playing video games is not Musk's only time-consuming hobby. According to The Wall Street Journal, up to the end of July last year, Musk had posted about 13,000 times on X platform, averaging about 61 posts per day.

Recently, Musk spent over a week at Mar-a-Lago, Trump's resort in Palm Beach, Florida, attending meetings and interviews for cabinet positions, participating in calls with foreign leaders like Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, and recruiting friends and allies for key government roles.

Investors and analysts are questioning Musk's ability to balance the operations of all his companies.

This issue is particularly thorny now as Tesla prepares to appeal a Delaware judge's decision to strike down a 2018 pay deal that awarded Musk billions of dollars' worth of Tesla stock. One question in this dispute is whether this massive pay deal is necessary to keep Musk focused on running Tesla, a publicly traded company currently valued at $1.3 trillion.

Musk stated during the 2023 Wall Street Journal CEO Council that he tries to focus on only one company per day.

Other tech executives have also found ways to play games while managing large companies. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has long been passionate about the strategy game Civilization. Phil Spencer, the head of Microsoft's gaming business, plays various games on his phone during meetings.

Musk claims to have completed the 150th level of the Abyssal Dungeons in Diablo IV in less than two minutes, indicating he is one of the top players of the game, at least according to an official leaderboard based on user-submitted data. Blizzard Entertainment, a subsidiary of Microsoft, released Diablo IV in June 2023, but the company did not release its own leaderboard for the game.

On social media platforms like Reddit, some players say they do not doubt Musk's ability to clear the highest level so quickly, especially since this level can be repeated multiple times. However, they wonder how he achieved this in less than two months.

Some players speculate that Musk paid someone to help him "clear" to the highest level. "Clear" refers to the need to complete a series of usually monotonous tasks to make progress in the game.

Others point out that Musk's rapid advancement in Diablo IV may have been partly due to a glitch inadvertently introduced by Blizzard in October that allowed players to gain more power than intended. Blizzard has stated plans to fix this bug when releasing updates later this year.

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