The Glade 4.0

Upon my move down to south Florida, I found myself without reliable internet. Apparently elderly, retired Jews don't really have much use for bandwidth.

AT&T finally came through for me late last week, but for the past two months, connection for me has been spotty at best. Hell, even at work we're running a paltry 20 down/1.5 up. The experience has made it readily apparent just how many things I use that rely on internet in order to function. Being without it utterly gimps my job and my entertainment. And if I plunk down $60 (or more) for a single-player game, I don't want to be without just because my ISP didn't pull its head out of its ***.

Most of us are connected to the internet 24/7 already. Most of us met via a game that required an active internet connection to play, and had no offline play capabilities. Requiring an active internet connection is not a controversial decision that's going to have huge negative implications for the game. It might cause some of us to not want to play Diablo. That's fine. That's sort of like how I don't like sports games. I don't pretend that each new Madden game is controversial move by whoever the **** makes those games.

Over the past twenty to thirty years, we've played tons of games that we couldn't mod, and we had a great time at it. I know mods have become all the rage lately, but I came to the realization when Dragon Age: Origins was big that most of you guys weren't playing the same game I was playing. People raved about the game, at the same time they talked about all of the mods that were necessary to enjoy the game. It's like everyone thought the unmodified game straight from the box was crap. Well, news flash. This is **** Diablo. You've played it before. You've played dozens of clones, too. No matter how much we dress it up as having new mechanics and new ideas, it's **** Diablo. If Diablo is old and boring, and you'll need mods in order to enjoy the game, than Diablo just needs to **** die already. No mods is a good idea. The last thing the gaming industry needs is for third-party mods that Blizzard had nothing to do with and didn't pay the developer for getting you assholes amped up for Diablo 4.

Blizzard's got two ideas: Diablo and Warcraft. Frankly, Warcraft wasn't even their idea, it was Games Workshop. Starcraft was just Warcraft set in space, and ripping off Aliens along with Warhammer 40,000. World of Warcraft is just Diablo Online with Warhammer oops, Warcraft characters.

As for that third point, at least they're trying to adapt to the market. That secondary gold/item market is always going to exist. In order to control it for their game, they have to get involved beyond simply banning and suing people.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

Don't care about having to maintain an internet connection.

Don't give a rats *** about mods; never have. Along the lines of what Coro said, if I don't like the core game enough, I just won't play it.

Auction house: doesn't affect me at all.

So, still waiting for a release date...

For the record, Coro, Tyrannids predate Starcraft Zerg. So Starcraft rips off Warhammer 40k and Aliens by way of Warhammer 40k.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

I don't know enough about 40k to spot what Blizzard ripped off, outside of the space marines. I only have a passing familiarity with the Warhammer fantasy setting, which sort of underscores just how blatantly Blizzard copied it.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

Starcraft is a lot more of a ripoff of the aliens/predators/humans thing than Warhammer 40K. Zerg are sort of similar to Tyranids in the whoel "horrible alien menace with a hive mind" thing, but really there's not a whole lot of ways to justify an alien menace that relies entirely on biology anyhow. Frankly, the bio-wankery that all three races embody gets a bit old but.. what the hell, people like it and it does make for 3 meaningfully different races in Starcraft.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

ummm this could suck even worse for account hacking.

the Diablo III auction house is going cash...real cash!

http://www.mmo-champion.com/content/

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"Life isn't divided into genres. It's a horrifying, romantic, tragic, comical, science-fiction cowboy detective novel. You know, with a bit of pornography if you're lucky."
— Alan Moore

Spoilered for size:


Pictorial list of different Tyranid units.

Granted, some of the 'Nid units post-date Starcraft, so there's been some cross-pollination both ways. But I know Hormagaunts and Carnifexes were both original units. Trygons might be more recent, or they might be older than I'm aware (with artwork and lore) and only the model is new, etc.

DE, the reason I think it's fair to speculate that Tyranids are the Zergs' more direct influence (rather than going straight back to the Alien/Aliens source that definitely influenced Tyranids) is that Aliens' Xenomorphs are one species with, like, 3 stages in the life cycle, or whatever. Whereas Tyranids and Zerg both are a psychic hive-mind-esque race comprised of multiple evolutionarily divergent strains that have either consciously evolved or been subjugated and incorporated into the evolutionary process of the race as a whole.

So, taken that way, it's much more plausible for me to believe that GW said "let's make something for our Space Marines to fight like those Aliens movies. Hey, what if we make it a race of different strains that have specific roles?" and then see Blizzard copy that than for both of them to make the same leap (and arrive at similar extrapolations of the Alien Xenomorph style for multiple strains) independently.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Back to Diablo III.

I want so much to play a Demon Hunter. And Wizard.

Just release already!

Blizzard isn't selling items in there, it's other players. You can make real money off this ****. That's kinda crazy. I thought it was Blizzard selling items, not players putting things up for sale. I wonder how much of a cut Blizzard is going to make off the real money transactions? They aren't saying how much, just that there will be a transaction fee. This really is a good idea on Blizzard's part. The real world market for Diablo 2 items was pretty booming back in the day. Those same people are going to be playing Diablo 3. Blizzard wasn't making money on that **** back then, but they will be now.

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Los Angeles Kings 2014 Stanley Cup Champions

"I love this **** team right here."
-Jonathan Quick

not sure if this has been linked already. Sorry if it's redundant.

Video from Beta
http://www.slashgear.com/diablo-iii-bet ... -01168730/

Hmmm. Interesting.

But all three arguments I pretty much shrug my shoulders and said "Meh" to. I am all for making a game harder for pirates and cheaters to play, so the first two don't phase me.

Number three intrigued me, but it didn't shock me. They are absolutely right that this thing is going to happen anyway. Hell, I paid for a few unique paladin battlenet items myself years and years ago. Diablo is an item-driven game. Far, far moreso than world of warcraft. And when an item-driven game has items that are all random, you are going to create a supply and a demand that are going to naturally come together in many different ways.

I am impressed that they are attempting to regulate it and keep it more safe and secure (the transaction between seller and buyer). Although I am curious if they are going to charge a fee to list an item (my guess: they will).

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Les Zombis et les Loups-Garous!

You guys are missing something - two auction houses, one for in game gold, and one for RL money... and they will charge per listing for ANY auction, although they have said there will be a certain number you can get for a sale only fee, while any past that will be a per list fee

http://www.mmo-champion.com/content/239 ... Life-Money!

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I can definitely see strong Tyranid influence in the internal design of the Zerg race. I was referring more to the overall nature of the Starcraft universe and the roles each of its races play. Zerg are pretty similar to Tyranids in how they are set up as different strains of a common biological pool, but in terms of how they relate to Terrans and Protoss they're much more similar to Xenos.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

3 more reasons beyond "Its Blizzard" that I won't play D3.

Its becoming a goddamned joke.

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Holy shitsnacks!

I didn't mind 1 and 2 on that list - everybody bought items and pirating is bad for business. Blizzard can *claim* that 1 was simply because they wanted to avoid inconvenience with regards to moving characters from open realm to closed realm, but in my mind it inevitably boils down to piracy prevention with a dash of anti-cheat. Neither of those are bad, really.

2 kind of bothers me on philosophical grounds - for chrissake, don't convince players that their digital goodies are actually worth real-life money. They aren't. I suppose that bears rephrasing, though. I don't think they deserve the value people attribute to them.

3, on the other hand, bothered me a ton. User-made content was what made all of their other games for me. I'd been meaning to get started on Diablo I with a difficulty/enhancement mod that's been all the rage on the Internetz, and Diablo II, while it can hold up on its own as a fun game, was always made fresh and interesting by the use of mods every time I came back to it. Warcraft III had such a vast plethora of custom maps that one could enjoy it without using the ladder at all - DotA is now its own genre of games. Same goes for Starcraft.

To me, it seems like Blizzard's just slapping their fan base in the face and saying, "Well, because we want to be careful to preserve the value of our community's digital swag, we can't allow mods for this game." That's fine for an MMO, but this is Diablo. Diablo's single player experience is just as important for many players as its multiplayer, and mods give that experience longevity. Plus, playing mods over LAN was always damn good fun, too.

Beta!

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/blog/3542796

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Hokanu
Duty is a magnificent blessing because it is the sign of trust from the universe.
END OF LINE.

Hmmm. This is one of those games that I would rather not beta, I think. Mostly because I am going to have my first run through for story, and I'd prefer that to be as bug-free as Blizzard allows.


Very cool though.

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Les Zombis et les Loups-Garous!

Hmmph.

Went to opt in for beta... Downloaded the required "system checker" to give Blizzard your system specs.

Ran it.

Immediately after it runs, my AV software catches a trojan that I thought I'd gotten rid of almost two years ago.

My guess? The trojan was to capture login information for WoW. Hence, since I stopped playing it about the same time, I never realized I'd left traces of it behind.

On running another Blizzard program, it hit some trigger and came back to the surface.

So, 6 hours later, I've wiped, reformatted, and reinstalled everything... But I think I'm going to hold off on this Beta

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Darksiege: You are not a god damned vulcan homie.

I recommend getting the Blizzard Authenticator if you feel it's a potential problem. It's absoultely free if you have a smart(er) phone.

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Les Zombis et les Loups-Garous!

Oh, it's gone now. I never had any account security problems when I used to play WoW, either- although that was a few years ago.

I was more commenting on the long pain in the *** process of removing a trojan from my hard disk controller.

Looking forward to D3, though.

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Darksiege: You are not a god damned vulcan homie.

Doesn't the ability to purchase items, either for gold or real money, take away the essence of what made Diablo, well Diablo?

The thrill of finding that rare item, set item, unique, etc.

I don't like it. I don't like the idea that because I don't have the gold from playing hours upon hours (since I don't have the time IRL), or because I don't want to sink more real money into a game so I can enjoy it more, I will have to rely on finding my rare items. Whereas, those with nothing else to do in their lives but play and "farm" gold and those where money is no object will always be "ahead" in the game, well loot-wise, at least.

I have never stood a chance online either in terms of acquired loot or play-skill because I just don't have the time anymore to play and acquire such items to make for more enjoyable experience or to hone my skill so I can compete. I don't have a chance to purchase items since I just never will have more gold than those who play all day long.

I don't like the fact that such outside influences can affect ingame abilities. I just can't compete (gold) or I just don't want to (real money).

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This must be Thursday. I could never get the hang of Thursdays.

My concern is inflation, really. What prices would be considered fair for the good stuff? With any sort of game modification being banned, it seems like items will lose their value as more and more players discover them, or it will necessitate extremely f*cking rare items. I don't like either of those things, but I've never been a fan of online trading. More of a "Oh, hey, guys [my friends], does anyone want this set item I found?" type of fellow. Unfortunately, those bastards haven't enabled LAN play either, though I find myself thinking that someone will at the very least create an offline crack for this otherwise-promising game.

I probably won't buy it until such a crack exists, to be honest. I hate the thought of having to be jacked in so that I can play a game I've already purchased's single player mode. It's not completely intolerable, mind you, but, then again, I'm easygoing enough that I'd hold off on my whining and skepticism until DRM starts to require a direct interface with the brainstem.

The thing about Diablo is, it's not an MMO. You do not need to play with other players to advance in the game. So the "Always be behind" is only if you want it to be there. I played DII battle.net a lot. A lot. Most of the time I was playing through nightmare and hell levels all by my lonesome, because that is what I chose to do.

DII battle.net had players who were certainly decked out entirely in the extreme rare stuff, many of which likely purchased online. And there were a lot of players who weren't. The DII playerbase mindset was never "Holy ****, your gearscore sucks mucho ***." It was always "All right, another body to increase the difficulty and better chance for better drops." The only thing that came close to gear-elitism was if you were 10 - 20 levels lower than ideal trying to run the same stuff they were. THEN they would have issue with you being there.

But even so, I found just being a warm body to increase the difficulty was fine by most players. I leveled up very quickly by joining baal and bloody foothills runs, asking if I could quest in the lower level areas. 95% of the time they were cool with it. I was getting insane exp and drops by soloing 8 player stuff, and they had one person less to click on the rare drops from the big guys.

This is not an MMO. It will never be an MMO. And the mindset of the players is much different than in an MMO. It's a massively multiplayer-optional single-player random-drop clickfest online. Or, MMOSPRDCFO.


As for rare drops, you must not have played Diablo or Diablo 2. Many of the stuff in those games make whelpling drops look like linen cloth drops. It's the nature of the beast, and it should come as absolutely zero surprise to anyone who's played the previous games.

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Les Zombis et les Loups-Garous!

Perhaps I didn't articulate my issue very well, or it's dumb and being addressed directly, but my main problem was just the forced internet connection and lack of mod support (or rather, presence of direct mod opposition) that exists, I think, purely to safeguard the value of the playerbase's accumulated loot. It's more of a principle thing than anything. I feel like it takes away from the game's potential, despite it still being a good game. I actually think that's a big thing most cavey boycotters run into - they think the game's still good, it's just that the developers aren't letting it reach its full potential.

EDIT: I guess player-created content being part of that potential is in the eye of the beholder, but I've always been a fan of that sort of thing. Let people do their own thing. DotA's become its own genre. Killing Floor is no longer a mod for UT but a full game.