Pumping Irony

My girlfriend has a meeting in Daytona tomorrow, so we decided to make a whole trip of it. It’s just a two hour drive from here, so we’ll be heading down in a few minutes to hang out. After her meeting tomorrow, I’m driving us over to Longboat Key near Sarasota for some quality beach action on the Gulf coast. She’s been very busy and we haven’t had time to get away or even take time for ourselves since our trip to the Keys in May for my birthday.

Back home Saturday, until then happy hunting everyone!

Today puts me halfway through Week #7 on medical leave, and I’m beginning to find I’ve just about MMO’d myself out. And I’ve barely touched MMO’s, actually. So I’ve spent time on my 360, picking up on games I’ve had awhile and never finished. Common theme with me, unfortunately. Up til now, I’ve only ever completed (as in, the single player campaign on normal mode, not completing every achievement the game offers) Gears of War and Rainbow 6: Vegas on the 360 platform. As of this week, I can add Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter (GRAW) to that list, which is great, now I can start playing GRAW2, which I’ve had for quite some time. Being the completionist that I am, and GRAW2’s story picks up right where GRAW ends, I wanted to see all of GRAW. I also managed to find time for a little bit of Mass Effect (got my first ME achievement, yay!) and even some Marvel Ultimate Alliance.

Microsoft’s Xbox 360 E3 panel had some very exciting announcements this week. First was the bombshell of the upcoming radical makeover of the 360’s Dashboard. This is major! It does look sweet, in a very Apple sort of way, though count me among the many who are somewhat unconvinced of navigating it quickly enough like I can now with the simpler Dashboard. The whole Avatar thing seems like it is competing with Sony’s Home and to a lesser degree, Nintendo’s Mii’s, though Avatars are less kiddie-fied than Mii’s. All Microsoft’s videos are also available on the 360 from the “Inside Xbox” selection on the Dashboard’s main blade.

Next up was the announcement of a new partnership with Netflix! Netflix will have their own presence on the Dashboard and users can stream their Netflix movies directly to the console, much like we can rent movies from the Video Marketplace currently. I’ve rented several movies and it’s a great experience being able to have full-quality (sometimes even HD!) movies directly to your TV without going to Blockbuster or waiting for delivery through the mail. The Video Marketplace’s selection continues to grow but the addition of Netflix will be huge, and may be enough to finally get me to sign up for their service.

Games. Yes, of course, the games. There’s no doubt that Gears of War 2 will be the heavy-hitter of the bunch. GoW was a massive title and remains one of the most-played games on Live. The sequel does everything a sequel should: take the best parts of its predecessor and kick it up a notch. I thought the addition of bots to the multiplayer game was ingenious, and about damn time too. I was able to add bots to my multiplayer games with Unreal Tournament back in 1999, for cryin’ out loud. UT is also an Epic game, so go figure they’d be the first (I think?) to bring the concept to the console platform. It should allow a player to setup a multiplayer game and fully populate it with bots, then when a real player connects, a bot drops out for him and will respawn if a player leaves. At least I’m hoping that’s how it will work.

Resident Evil 5. Wow, I haven’t played a RE game since… RE2? Been awhile and from the looks of it, the series has come a long way. I likely would have skipped this entirely if it hadn’t been for one attractive aspect: cooperative play! Single player is fine in short bursts, and multiplayer competitive PvP is also good but much like my MMORPG’s I prefer to group and play the content cooperatively, so if my friends happen to pick this up, I’ll be blowing heads off zombies in style right along with them!

Fable 2. I actually never played Fable, not sure that it’s quite my style of RPG. But Fable 2 does boast one feature that is very ingenious! It keeps track of your friend’s progress through the game, and if you and a friend happen to be adventuring in the same area at the same time, you’ll see a little glowing orb in your game. You can interact with the orb and *poof* you and your friend are now playing cooperatively! Many console games have completely separate single- and multi-player aspects of themselves, and even those that don’t require you to go into multiplayer menus, etc. to play over Xbox Live so it’s fantastic to see a (largely single-player?) game integrate the multiplayer directly into the game experience.

Primetime. A new channel called Xbox Live Primetime is a collection of virtual game shows. One in particular, 1v100 sounds intriguing. It’s very cool to see some innovation and taking the console (and online gaming in general) to new and unexplored areas, especially like this where we’ll always have fresh, live, relevant content to jump into with others.

After the drama this weekend of Flagship Studios closing down (in full denial, however) and both the Hellgate: London and Mythos IP’s being taken from them, Tiggs put up a statement to the contrary on HGL’s official forums:

Flagship Studios Still in Operations

San Francisco, CA (July 14, 2008) — Flagship Studios has announced today that despite rumors to the contrary, the company is still operating.

“It is with deep regret that I must announce that Flagship Studios has laid off most employees. However, the core management and founding team members are still at Flagship.” said Bill Roper, CEO of Flagship Studios. “The past five years have been an incredible experience for us, but unfortunately, we couldn’t sustain the size of the company any longer.”

Flagship Studios owns the rights to all its technology and IP, including Hellgate: London and Mythos. Due to the current situation, Flagship will not be taking any new subscribers for Hellgate: London, and all current subscriptions will not be billed.

Flagship wishes to extend their heartfelt thanks to those that have supported the company and games over the past five years.

Unlike James Cameron’s Titanic movie, there’s no romantic story and Bill Roper won’t be yelling “I’m the king of the world!” anytime soon. Much like the movie, however, we do have the entire studio and staff being left floating in freezing water as Flagship is pulled under.

I’d written an article about this yesterday, since everyone else was distracted by the Warhammer content reduction announcement, but took it offline to verify a few facts in the story. Turns out more developments have occurred, and rather than re-writing the entire story, I’ll refer you to Hellgate Guru’s article which now has all the goods. Gamasutra and VE3D are also following the story.

The very short version: yesterday a Korean site published a story saying that HanbitSoft was attempting to wrest control of the Hellgate: London IP from its creators and developers (but apparently not owners), Flagship Studios. An attorney representing HanbitSoft issued a statement on the matter, which also mentioned Mythos, Flagship’s beta F2P Diablo-esque MMORPG. Simultaneously, Gamasutra was reporting that Flagship was allegedly laying off some of their Hellgate: London staff.

Today, it has been confirmed that it Flagship Studios has closed, all staff has been terminated, and their IP’s now belong to Korean companies. HanbitSoft now owns Mythos outright and will continue its development while Comerica now owns the Hellgate: London IP and promises to continue development and content updates for its large Asian market. Given HGL’s poor reception from English audiences and Mythos’ superior business model, future development of HGL for the Western market is unlikely at this point.

And we thought it was bad when the Sigil guys were fired in the parking lot…

I will say one nice thing: the story did say that three members (no names mentioned) of Flagship’s top management paid the employees an additional 30 days of salary out of their own pockets. Brad McQuaid couldn’t even be bothered to be present at Sigil’s parking lot party.

Arena.net updated their Guild Wars 2 FAQ a few days ago. One particular item was of interest — and concern — to me:

How will character progression work? Will you be raising the level cap

Guild Wars 2 will have the kind of extensive character advancement appropriate to a persistent world RPG. It is our priority to avoid forcing players into the grind-based gameplay that too often accompanies a high level cap.

Also, to allow players the freedom to play together even if their friends are at a much higher (or lower) level, we are planning to implement a strong sidekicking system, similar to that used in City of Heroes.

We’re applying this same philosophy to competitive play. Players will be able to engage in organized, balanced PvP (similar to GvG in the original Guild Wars) without needing to first level up characters, find equipment, or unlock skills. While inside the organized PvP area, all characters will be the same power level and will have access to the same equipment.

/sigh

I’ve always felt one of the sources of confusion many players had in their attempts to adapt to Guild Wars was having levels at all. It’s a skills-based game, and the majority of the game takes place at level cap. The leveling phase is fairly quick and serves only to introduce you to the basic concepts of the game, nothing more. If you come into Guild Wars with the levels-and-gear-based mentality that most MMO’s have, you’re doing it “wrong” and will only walk away in disappointment.

When Arena.net originally announced Guild Wars 2 would be raising the level cap, or possibly have no level cap at all, I was immediately concerned. This takes away from everything Guild Wars stands for and lowers it to the sewer standards of a typical MMO. Having no level cap raised questions of balancing with mobs and other characters, then I thought of Asheron’s Call. AC is also a skills-based game, but it does have levels. However, your level is not an indication of your power like it would be in other MMO’s, but merely an indication of the total xp you’ve accrued on that character. Vanity abounds in Guild Wars, from elite armors, to green weapons, to title tracks, to mini-pets, and even Collector’s Edition emotes. Guild Wars also keeps track of your total xp (since you still “ding” repeatedly after reaching “level cap”) but it’s only available to you, no one else can see it. Within that context, a limitless level cap would actually make sense in the Guild Wars universe.

However, with this recent FAQ update, and the mere mention of a CoX-like sidekick system, I am very concerned that in GW2 levels, and all their associated problems, will suddenly matter. I think part of me just died inside…

Ok, I spent entirely too much time in June working up my monk’s Norn reputation mostly for the Ursan Blessing skill to cheat power my way through the Norn Fighting Tournament. Currently at Rank 8, which is probably enough, I thought I’d give it one last shot “for real” before turning in despair to Ursan. Someone suggested I modify one of my 55 builds to cut down on the enchantments since I’m only fighting one opponent at a time (well, usually) and use a few other skills to let my opponents kill themselves. My primary weapon of choice would be Spoil Victor, followed by Necrosis and Reversal of Damage. The remaining skills were more or less typical of a 55 Monk designed to minimize damage and keep a positive health regeneration.

In one time through the tournament with the new 55 build, I not only went every round to win the tournament and gain the Bison Cup item, I also gained Zehtuka’s Horn and unlocked the final Hero, Kahmu!

Such a weight off my shoulder, finally getting the last Hero in the game, not to mention two new items some of my Heroes can possibly put to good use and the satisfaction of winning the Tournament with a legitimate build rather than resorting to the cheesy, über-powerful Ursan Blessing.

However, one final task remains: I did not fight Zho to win her Journal, which is one of the steps required to eventually gain the much sought-after Black Moa Chick…

We poked fun at Turbine last August when they announced LOTRO had “over 4 million characters.” Earlier this month Funcom proudly announced they had reached their “One Million Copies Shipped” milestone. Shipped. Not subscribers, not boxes sold, just boxes shipped. Today Funcom’s at it again with their press release stating they’ve surpassed 700,000 registered users.

I’ll give Funcom the benefit of the doubt: since Age of Conan’s release last month, they’ve sold over 70% of those shipped boxes. It’s been on top of NPD’s sales charts. However, this is right up there with “4 million characters” in that it is not an accurate representation of how many active subscribers the game has. Within the small circle of blogs and forums I frequent only a minority of those users planned on continuing their subscription beyond their initial free month, and many of those remaining only planned on playing until Warhammer. Even on the test server this past month, the global chat had many long-time beta testers who, like myself, were not interested in playing the live game. I freely admit that is a small sub-section of players, but based solely upon that and my own blatant “meh, been there, done that” attitude toward the game, I can’t help but wonder if Age of Conan has already peaked?

On the other hand, I do think it has enough grit to attract a lot of people from the tamer environs of other titles once the more serious issues have been addressed. Perhaps by releasing prematurely and taking advantage of the summer dry spell when no other AAA titles were releasing, Funcom saw a huge spike but will also suffer a huge trough as they see a mass exodus. However, in a few months when performance is better, content is patched in, and overall “things work” perhaps word of mouth will cause another influx of players, both new and returning, who may actually stay for more than a short visit?

Ok, so my Delorean just made a pit stop in 1987 with the title… deal with it!

I was going to briefly mention this in my June Summary, but it was already rapidly becoming one of my trademarked Wall of Text posts.

My stint this month rolling with Van Hemlock’s Tuesday N00b Club was my first-ever static group! I was already a working pilot when I got into the MMORPG scene, and our schedules prohibit the very notion of static groups. A pilot’s schedule is totally different each week and each month. No two weeks are alike, much less two months. As such, it’s impossible to commit to playing on a certain night of the week. My job is why in every new game I decide to stick with I have to put so much effort into finding a casual-friendly guild with a “family feel” but who is also understanding of my schedule and allows me to raid when I can without penalizing me because of my job. In addition to its many other flaws, the DKP loot system does exactly that, so adamantly refuse to join any DKP guild and will leave any guild that adopts it. I have the will, I have the skill, but paying the bills takes priority and I will not tolerate a system which penalizes me for that.

Michael Zenke wrote today that he’s always had a static group but is in search of a good guild. The great thing about his position is that he’ll get into an awesome guild while also keeping his static group. The best of both worlds. Whether he’s “getting pretty tired of it” or not, don’t look the static group gift horse in the mouth. The guilds are out there, and they’re great, trust me! But having experienced a static group now and knowing they are even better than I suspected they would be, I have a very keen sense of exactly what I’ll be missing out on when I return to work soon.

I’ve been on medical leave all month, so I’m bored and ready to return to the *cough* “friendly skies” *cough* though I fully realize that as soon as I’m pronounced fit to return and I set foot in my domicile again I will immediately say something to the effect of “oh my gawd is this over with yet so I can go home?” The grass is always greener, indeed.

In spite of having the entire month off, I really didn’t delve into very many MMO’s. In fact, I spent the majority of game time in Guild Wars, which is not an MMO at all. I spent a lot of time adventuring and farming (boo hiss!) with my monk.

Guild Wars: Early in the month I happened to see Darren in-game and he was in dire need of assistance completing a quest and a mission. I didn’t realize his character was (still is?) still on Istan, which is the “noob island” of the Nightfall campaign. His dervish is level 18 and Darren gave me the impression he’s one of the millions of people who just don’t “get” Guild Wars design. It has levels but it’s not about levels like most MMO’s are so he was curious (and perhaps concerned?) about what was next. I gave a short explanation that hopefully at least got him pointed down the right mindset. Turns out his quest was a Master difficulty quest so even though I’m level cap and had a decent healing and protection hybrid build loaded, as well as good builds on my heroes, we had a rough time of it. Or perhaps I should just say I had a rough time of it since I was the healer. I think he actually made me perspire trying to keep them alive. SOE unleashed their Living Legacy promotion so Darren is in EQ2 now for the duration, enjoying that game’s chapter of Karen’s Revelry and Honor guild!

My next celebrity run-in was the Stormbringer himself: Van Hemlock! I was given an honorary induction into his little Tuesday N00b Club guild, meaning I received a guest invitation that allows me to travel to their Guild Hall for 8 hours. Since I had the month off I ended up making a point of meeting the TNC each week for adventure, fun and hilarity. Last week was our first foray into PvP. We started off doing the Zaishen challenge, which is “practice PvP” against a team of NPC’s. Van Hemlock set up the NPC teams to be single professions. I forget what the first team was, but we mowed them down and got a bit cocky about it. The second team was all rangers loaded with a trapper build. They cut through us like soft, warm butter. Repeatedly. Finally, our heads hung in shame, we proceeded to try PvP against, you know, other players. Rather than the dangerous and competitive world of the arenas we went to Cantha for some Alliance Battles. The TNC is a Luxon guild, while I’m in a Kurzick alliance but I’m fairly certain I can build up Luxon faction without harming my Kurzick standing. We did two battles. The first one, we (Luxons) won (yay! oh wait…) making a dramatic comeback at the end to score the final points. Kurzicks did the same on the second battle. Luxons started off strong and maintained a very healthy lead until the very end when the Kurzicks made an incredible comeback to win. Probably the most fun all month with the TNC was running the Catacombs of Kathandrax dungeon, which received brief mention on the most recent episode of the Van Hemlock podcast. One of the TNC guys was commenting how it was so different running with a real healer. Apparently they’ve grown quite accustomed to having high death penalties in their adventures. Just getting to the dungeon itself is a bit of a challenge, but we pulled it off with only a few casualties. We proceeded through the first two levels of the dungeon in relative caution with only one character dying (twice, sorry mate) then we entered the third level and challenged the boss, Ilsundur, Lord of Fire. I’d never been in this dungeon before so I didn’t know what to expect. Just this one boss in his chamber, easy pickings right? Right… If his massive AoE attacks weren’t enough to immediately put me on a feverish healing defensive while the flame-licked group scattered about, in my concentration on the health bars I just barely caught notice of “something else” in the periphery of the screen. I then heard a rumbling sound slowly growing louder. Just as I started to ask “Hey, what’s that sou…” *KABOOM* I became a crispy, flaming pancake, run over from behind by a gigantic rolling fireball! Ilsundur sets two of these monstrosities rolling, each in opposite directions around the chamber so not only are we fighting him but we have to watch out for the approach of these fireballs, both in front and behind us. Luckily “death by flaming steamroller” is on the rather short list of occurrences which do not contribute to death penalty so despite at least five full wipes, the only death penalty anyone incurred was due to legitimate combat deaths.

Oh, just to explain the “Stormbringer” thing, Van Hemlock seems to be cursed. Every single Tuesday, shortly after logging in and grouping up with him, storms appear. Two weeks ago they became so violent the power was knocked out in this section of town for nearly an hour. Last week, I had just come in from a several mile walk. Perfect day, not a cloud in the sky, not extremely humid or anything. Van Hemlock logs into GW and within 15 minutes I’m hearing thunder! Ten minutes later a full-on storm is roiling.

It also turns out that despite having completed the Nightfall campaign late last year, I did so in a manner that completely skipped at least three entire zones and two towns! Possibly more, but those were the latest discoveries. I skipped them so entirely that my map didn’t even show the zone portals, so I had no idea anything should have been there until just by chance I compared my map to a fully explored map of Elona. I don’t have the zones fully explored yet but they are on my map and I’ve reached both towns so I can map travel to them now. Farming? Initially I was farming Norn reputation from the Eye of the North expansion to build up my Norn skills, most notably Ursan Blessing which gives extreme bonuses to armor and strength. Yeah, my character is a monk so he’ll have less armor even in Ursan than a warrior would, but I’ve been unsuccessful with every other tactic to get through that Norn Fighting Tournament to unlock the final hero, Kahmu (and a few other items) so in desperation I’m looking to Ursan to power my way through it. Rank 8 so far, and not looking forward to repeating this on my warrior someday. I’m also wanting to get my Lightbringer reputation to maximum rank because of the Lightbringer AoE healing spell I’ve recently been introduced to and fallen in love with, but that particular reputation is very slow to increase so I’m definitely not looking forward to repeating it on any other character.

Finally, this month I finally got to see both the Underworld and Fissure of Woe, two of the most famous elite areas in the game! I’ve only been in one time to each, but I’m definitely looking forward to more and being able to learn my way around and which mobs drop the most sought-after items! The alliance I’m in has a daily schedule so I should be able to get involved with more and more high-end content as I get to know everyone better. If I can get into a Domain of Anguish group, that should be of great help with my Lightbringer reputation as well.

DDO: I didn’t get nearly as much DDO time as I’d hoped, mostly because of Guild Wars. I did manage to sneak around solo into the new Three-Barrel Cove wilderness area, but the second any mob noticed me I had to run for my life back to the inn. Wizards being super-squishy and all… I did do a few quests I’d never seen before, and in interesting groups. Oh, for the record, the new Monk class is awesome! I don’t have one to actually play myself, but just from what I saw being grouped with some, it looks like a blast. The only real gripe about them I’ve heard is from clerics, especially those from guilds who take things slower or perma-death guilds in particular. Monks need to keep going in order to maintain their ki so they tend to run ahead of the group and start fights to keep their ki up while everyone else sighs. I’m sure players will find a synergy soon though. In any event, my wizard did finally go adventuring once more, though someone needs to give me a lesson on DDO inventory management. Do I actually need all these robes, scepters, staves and wands? They each seem to have very unique properties so I’ve been reluctant to sell them but I’m nearly out of bag space now.

Hellgate: London: I put a little bit of time into HGL this month. Mostly in hopes of catching up with Hudson and Bildo in-game but that didn’t happen. It’s a shame the game was marketed as an MMO, for it definitely isn’t. In fact, Flagship seems to excel at marketing single-player games as MMO’s. Both HGL and Mythos seem to be solo-oriented with almost zero need to group with anyone other than “just for the hell of it.” I haven’t gotten far in either yet, so maybe that changes, but it seems silly for now. I thought HGL did a great job of nailing the shooter “feel” within an RPG context, far better than Tabula Rasa did. Although I’ll partially attribute that to HGL’s first-person view. Both HGL and TR do a horrid job in third-person. Why do console developers do such a great job with third-person shooters and the PC guys can’t pull it off to save their lives? Anyway, my only real gripe about the shooter aspect of HGL is the unlimited ammo. Sure, in LOTRO I love that my hunter doesn’t have to waste bag space stocking up arrows like I did in WoW (and risk running out in the middle of a raid), but HGL having unlimited ammo really trivializes the combat. All I have to do is hold down the fire button and move the reticule over the mobs until they die with no worries whatsoever about strategy or keeping track of my ammo. It did seem like they’ve squashed a lot of bugs in the months since I last played, and the performance is awesome now, but I still notice that it takes a very long time after quitting the game before resources are released. Memory leak? My Guild Wars alliance also has an HGL chapter, so perhaps I’ll try catching up with some of them and see how the grouping is. Speaking of Mythos, I guess a huge new makeover is coming to the test server. It’s already received the Overland treatment, where the whole game is open rather than being instanced. I haven’t been able to play in a very long time because there was a bug in the game that interfered with the Zune wireless networking services, causing Mythos to not react to any input (ie. I could login but not move). Sure, I could disable those two services and reboot (and I did once) but the Diablo click-fest game play just doesn’t interest me enough for it. Regardless, the latest update to Mythos’ test server fixed that bug so maybe, maybe, I’ll put some time in if I’m extremely bored and in a masochistic mood. I hear a future update will give an “MMO view” so maybe that will make it a more enjoyable experience. Then again, I absolutely cannot stand Dungeon Runners, so maybe not…

F2P: Nothing says “I’m bored!” more than going F2P. That also says a lot about EQ2 that I’d rather play any number of F2P games than login to EQ2, which I did re-install for the Living Legacy thing, and thus far haven’t managed to stay interested in playing for more than 5 minutes total this month. For no good reason in particular I always keep several F2P games installed but I never actually play any, at least not for any length of time. One thing I’ve noticed is that an awful lot of the F2P games seem to be all about soloing. You can create a warrior, mage, hunter, or priest-type character but that seems to make little real difference and only appeals to how you personally like to see your character kill things. I rarely see any incentive to group, unless the high level PvP/PK is better or safer in groups. Archlord has “auto looting” when you’re grouped, so you don’t have to waste time actually picking your loot up off the ground; it goes straight into your inventory. Other than laziness, I’ve seen no benefit to grouping there. The exception so far has been Rappelz. My initial impression is that it actually has a fairly helpful in-game community and I constantly see groups looking for more players, usually a cleric but often seeking a “damage dealer” (DD) class (which we’d call a “dps” class in other games). The classes in Rappelz do matter and they fit their roles more like a “real” (ie. Western AAA subscription) MMO “holy trinity.” There are several dungeons in the game, so you’ll see LFG’s for dungeon parties (DP) all the time. From the very little I can tell, dungeons are where the Cash Shop comes in: players buy the Stamina Savers to help keep them alive and earn extra XP and JP (Job Points for skills) while in the dungeons. Otherwise, the cash shop is aesthetic fluff items, for the most part, and not needed. In fact, in the little time I’ve put in I have received two or three stamina savers either as drops or quest rewards, so it’s entirely possible that the CS wouldn’t be needed at all? In addition to dungeon parties, which anyone of a certain level or rank can join, Rappelz has guild-only dungeon sieges which is a combination of PvE and PvP to own that dungeon, which gives some benefit to the guild. If my guild owned a certain dungeon, another guild can challenge my guild by first applying to raid the dungeon. If they kill the bosses before the timer expires they proceed to the actual siege, where both guilds fight for ownership of the dungeon.

I do notice that yes, F2P games have shallow game play (or at least don’t go to lengths to disguise the grind like our AAA ones do) but they do push the envelope in other areas. Rappelz seems to have a rather complicated pet system. Mabinogi allows your character to age, which I don’t think has been done in an MMO before. If the rumors of a Harry Potter MMO are true, I feel this would be a great aspect of game play where as students of Hogwarts, not only do we “level up” but each year of school our characters actually age and grow, just like the characters in the novels and movies do. If I understand correctly, Archlord seems to have some system set up where after a grueling set of dungeons or keep assaults, one player can become the archlord of that server, and receives super archlord armor and weaponry and a dragon mount, complete with AoE fire breath. Of course, he immediately becomes a target for whomever is waiting in the shadows with aspirations of becoming archlord himself. Who knows, I may actually put in more F2P time with the goal of exploring their specific features where they’re innovating into areas we haven’t really seen in our AAA subscription games.

This is why I don’t typically jump on the “news” thing, but what the hell, I’ll be the umpteen-bazillionth blogger to spout off on Blizzard finally announcing Diablo 3.

Diablo fans are rejoicing as their heavens tremble! I suppose that leaves me as the singular voice of dissent. I owned the original Diablo, played it a bit on and off over its first few years. The Diablo game play just doesn’t speak to me. I couldn’t get past the extreme downgrade in graphics to even purchase Diablo 2, despite having several friends continuously raving about it. I’m in the same boat with Mythos, I just don’t care for that clickfest hack and slash game play, and so far I haven’t been able to tolerate playing for more than 15 minutes. Diablo 3 promises, as usual with Blizzard games, multi-player over Battle.net. Ya know how everyone (including myself) complains about all the swearing, trolling kiddies on Xbox Live? That’s Battle.net in a nutshell. There was a time in WoW (perhaps still is?) when I often heard comments blaming the “quality” of WoW’s in-game community (ie. “Barrens Chat,” Chuck Norris jokes, etc. et al) on “Blizz kidz from Bnet.” I didn’t like it in 1997 when I had Diablo, and I’m pretty darned certain now that I’m 11 years older that I won’t like today either.

Go check out the new Diablo 3 site though. Per usual, Blizzard has a cinematic teaser that is of phenomenal quality. Blizzard should really look into setting up a CGI movie studio… A lengthy video of in-game footage introducing us to the Barbarian and a brand new class, the Witch Doctor which looks very fun and interesting.

Who knows, I won’t totally rule out getting the game, but that will totally depend on having a number of friends to play with because, just like I don’t do public XBL games, neither do I do public Bnet games.