Diablo III PS4 Problems

So I guess Blizzard announced that they will be bringing Diablo to the Playstation 4. I suppose it is exciting that there is support from such a big developer for such a highly anticipated system, however I can't help but feel a giant "MEH" when I think about it.

Diablo III was quite fun for me when I first got it. I played through the first time very quickly, and then rapidly began playing with a number of my friends. We quickly progressed through the nightmare and hell difficulty levels, and I had a blast the entire time (playing my monk). Then, I thought that the game was really going to pick up. I fully expected to be on the hunt for amazing drops for the next year or two. However, what happened was that I got bored of playing the game.

On inferno, the difficulty gets much greater than any of the other difficulty levels. While I'm okay with a challenge, I think it's silly that the primary challenge is obtaining better stats by collecting items with greater stats on them. Since there are only about 3-5 stats that any character cares about, you are essentially trading up from one set of stats for another, and this is the exact thing about World of Warcraft that doesn't interest me. I don't care if I get 5 more strength from and item, because it doesn't change anything about how I play the game. I want to have interesting things happen when I get new items.

I believe the only thing Diablo III really needs to make it interesting, is to provide some passive abilities, or spell effects as a part of the item system. That way we're not faced with a choice between 50 strength, and 55 strength, but instead we have to choose between 50 strength with passive icebolts, or 55 strength with passive fire bombs. I'll take cool spell effects all day over silly stat points.

Also, I should probably have something to say about console controls, but meh. Diablo has few enough buttons that it'll probably work. I just think the controller will fundamentally change the way you play the game since you won't be targeting like you do with a mouse, and will instead be aiming like you do with a controller. Good luck Blizzard and Sony. I know you will make a lot of money from this partnership, and I hope it's enough to cover your costs, but no more. We should expect better from our game developers.

Diablo III Account Security

So I've played a lot of Diablo 3 in the last week. Probably too much. In the last couple days, a lot of reports started showing up on the battle.net forums and other fansites of people losing all of their gear or having their accounts hacked. Some rumors were posted that a Game Master command was somehow available to some players or that session ID spoofing was possible to allow other users access to your characters. I was kinda skeptical, but figured there was an outside chance that something like that had slipped through before the game was released. The one thing that the theories said was required for the "hackers" to gain access to your account, was your battle tag, which becomes available to others when you add them as friends, play with them in a multiplayer game, or post on the forums.

This forum post from Bashiok seems to indicate that they have not investigated any cases of accounts actually being compromised except through the traditional methods of password stealing. Furthermore, they "have yet to investigate a compromise report in which and authenticator was attached beforehand." If you play any Blizzard games and don't have an authenticator yet, I highly recommend either buying the keychain one from the Blizzard store (for about $6) or using a smart phone authenticator app.

'via Blog this'

Diablo 3 Launch

Diablo 3 will go live this evening at 1am my time. I have raid with my friends before, and I just got enough food and drink to last until I beat the game. I cannot remember any game I've ever been this excited before ever. The only possible exception is Final Fantasy 3(six) when that came out on SNES while I was in Junior High. I saved for months and months and I read every magazine about it multiple times leading up to the release. With the greater pervasiveness of information on the web, I've read way more about Diablo 3 than I did about Final Fantasy 3, however I still don't know all that much about the story that will unfold in Diablo 3. I hope everyone will enjoy Diablo 3 as much as I will.

Diablo 3: Wrath

On the reveal site for Diablo 3, they released an impressive video showing the conflict between angels and demons in the world of Diablo. I recommend checking it out over at reveal.diablo3.com or the video I have embedded here. While you're on the reveal site, be sure to collect the sigils by creating a banner for each class. They won't be available once the time runs out.

I really can't wait for this game to come out to be able to experience the story and play cooperatively with my friends and family. This is something I've been anticipating for nearly 10 years.

Diablo 3 Release Date

I'm super excited and just needed to mention that Diablo 3 finally has a release date. It'll be out on May 15, 2012. For proof, here's a twitter post. That is a time that works extremely well for me, meaning that I might actually get to play it a fair amount when it comes out.

Also, I'm happy they decided to remove PVP from the game at least at launch. I think that the best thing for a game like Diablo would be to maybe allow PVP but completely ignore it and just let players do whatever they think is best. If they allow PVP balance to affect the main part of the game, then they will be doing a huge disservice to the players that actually wanted to play the game.

How I've played Diablo 3 beta so far

As a mentioned in my last post, I'm most excited about getting Diablo 3 this year and the class I want to play primarily is the monk. I thought I'd take this chance to post a few of the abilities that I've enjoyed as I've played in the beta.

First, I find that the basic attack I enjoy most is Deadly Reach because it does a good job of hitting a cluster of enemies. Blinding Flash or Lashing Tail Kick I like to use as my primary spirit dump. Then the main signature ability, and the one I enjoy the most is Dashing Strike, because it allows the monk to quickly dash around the battle and get to the high priority targets quickly to then be able to clean up the minions later. It is a good thing that abilities will be able to be modified with runes, otherwise I feel like every monk would feel the same by always needing the Dashing Strike ability for mobility.

This year in gaming

There are a couple things I'm quite excited for that are coming out this year and will affect the gaming part of my life. The first one is on "early release" today and that is the PS Vita. I'm the kind of person that is always excited about a new piece of hardware, and since gaming consoles are released so infrequently and are relatively inexpensive, it's a good chance to get the latest and greatest for me. The bundle I'll be getting is the one releasing next week that comes with an 8GB memory card and the Super Stardust download game. The only other game I plan to get at release is Escape Plan. If I remember, I'll post something about my thoughts on the games and the hardware after they come out.

The second gaming item for this year that I very much look forward to getting is Diablo 3. This is a game I have wanted since I was much younger. It will give me a chance to play satisfying hack-and-slash rpg game play with my brothers and friends that live all over the place. I've been in the beta for a while and I can say from experience that it is a very enjoyable experience to fight your way through hordes of beasts and demons on the way to collect shiny new gear. For the record, I plan to play a monk as my first "main" class. Oh, and Diablo 3 is supposed to come out in Q2 of 2012, so I presume that I should get the full release version by the end of August.

Finally, I want to talk a little bit about the new expansion for World of Warcraft, Mists of Pandaria. MoP will bring a quite large redesign to the classes in WoW, probably one of the biggest changes to happen to WoW yet. I think this change is much needed, and will show the rest of the MMO industry that it is important to actually rethink things instead of just sticking to what everyone else has done. For those that don't know, the design of talents in MoP will change from the talent trees (dump a bunch of points in early talents to unlock new tiers) that have been in WoW since it first came out to a much different system. Talents will appear every 15 levels or so, and will effectively be a choice among 3 options, each providing a meaningful decision. Now, everyone gets the basic necessities of their spec and instead can have actual variation that isn't just choosing to be worse than everyone else.

Diablo 3 Beta soon (tm) and Gameplay Preview

If there's one game I'm really looking forward to it's Diablo 3. I've really been wanting to play a Diablo game with my friends for a very long time and I'm excited that it's finally getting close to release. The beta is rumored to be coming out any time with the most recent batch of info about the game becoming public in this last week. To celebrate, here's a video from G4 showing some gameplay previews from the upcoming game.

PC Games - E3 2012 - Diablo III

Diablo 3 Follower Preview

Blizzard has recently talked a bit about how followers will work in Diablo 3 and I thought I should say a little something about it. Based on a particular blue post on the subject, the point of followers is to give people playing through on single player a bit of the feel of having a friend with them. The balance of the followers is such that they will be useful on the first playthrough, but will have a severe dropoff in usefulness on the harder difficulties, making multiplayer the much better way to play in the long run. Also, they can provide an introductory feel to multiplayer.

Followers also stop following you when you play with a friend. I personally plan to play the game with friends as often as I possibly can because I really enjoy the social interactions that come along with most of the games I play. To hopefully give you a feel for how followers work in game, here is the video Blizzard released showing follower gameplay.

Diablo 3 Beta Tentative Date

Okay, I've posted a lot today already but I feel like I need to add one more thing because of how important Diablo 3 is to me. According to the Blizzard post tracker on d3db.com, the Diablo 3 Beta is planned to begin somewhere between July 1st and September 30th, 2011. I am very excited.