Every so often I find a reason to reinstall Diablo 2. Since Diablo 3 was announced this weekend that reason smacked me upside the head leaving me little choice. The urge – no – the CRAVING to crawl through dungeons in a game that manages to pull off a storyline at the same time it delivers an online loot driven experience is a strong one.

This time around I am not going at it alone. I have Graev and my good friend Bartlebe hacking and slashing alongside me. Well, Graev is doing more summoning and cursing as a Necromancer and Bartlebe is smashing and smiting our foes as a Paladin. I originally created a Barbarian thinking I wanted to whirlwind and just slash stuff the whole time but I recently (this morning) decided to remake as a Werebear Druid because I have truly never played a Druid in D2. (Bartlebe, if you’re reading this you now know I have rerolled and I’m all caught up on a Druid!)

So far we have nearly completed Act 1 and plan to take it at a casual pace while enjoying the subtleties of the storyline (I say subtleties because we’ve all played through a dozen times and know it by heart). That’s something I like about D2 though. I always find something new in the story like a word, phrase, or name that forms a connection and gives me new insight.

For the first time ever the graphics of D2 looked old. I think that could be because I have been gaming on a widescreen monitor for over a year now and haven’t even looked at a game at a resolution lower than 1680×1050. Diablo 2 is limited to 800×600 and that really looks awkward and pixelated more than it ever has to me on this current monitor. I’m also playing an older game for the first time on Vista but I’m happy to report that I have had no issues. I simply run it in XP SP2 compatibility mode and run the program as administrator and it works perfectly.

This blog post officially adds Diablo 2 to my list of games I’m currently playing while waiting for something new. Not a bad place to be considering the game came out exactly (well, as of yesterday) eight years ago in the year 2000.

WOOOHOO!!! I was gone all day at a wedding and doing other stuff away from the house and comp and when I came home I had absolutely no expectations for a Blizzard announcement. I walked into “The Cave” (what we call our gaming room) and Graev tells me in the most nonchalant way, “Blizzard made their announcement today”. “WHAT?! WHAT IS IT?!”, was my reply. “Some stupid WotLK date or something”, he says again in that complete mellow tone. I went to my pc and turned it on, of course making my normal stop at Blizzard’s main site. Upon checking Blizzard.com I’m greeted by the epic words: ” And the heavens… SHALL TREMBLE”… I was floored at that point and spent an hour devouring every word of the new Official Diablo III website.

I’m almost at a loss for words right now. FINALLY a PC game worth waiting for that isn’t a mmorpg. If you haven’t already, get yourself to the official site immediately and digest all the information. A few notes I took in my head from watching the debut gameplay trailer, trailer, looking at screenshots, artwork, etc:

• The environmental graphics, animations, spell effects, and overall the entire game just looks amazing.
• DESTRUCTIBLE ENVIRONMENTS!!
• The Barbarian’s abilities look crazy. Lots more flying around, stomping, smashing, and fun.
• The Witch Doctor is a perfect class choice. The spells like the swarm and zombie wall provoked an audible “WOAH!” while I watched the debut gameplay trailer.
• Gear looks great and the effects on it will be spectular
• More randomized maps = more replayability
• Bosses looked epic
• An improved B.Net! (Graev and I both think they’ll charge money, heh)

There’s so much more to say but that’s enough for now. I’m stoked, elated, giddy, and all that good stuff. Seems like only Blizzard is capable of bringing that excitement out in me and it’s never been for a mmorpg. Go figure.

Guesses on a release date? Dibs on October 31, 2009!

I have been INCREDIBLY busy the past few days and today has knocked me off my feet completely. I hopped on the comp long enough to discover that the links for the June Newsletter had been leaked (Thanks WHA). Yippy! Time to go through them and give my thoughts.

• Guild Standards – Video of the Month
• Mongbat Guild – Video
• Paul’s Video Blogs – June Edition
• The Bastion Stair – Dungeon Sneak Peek
• Gates of Ekrund and Mourkain Temple – Scenarios 101 Part 6
• White Lion Grab Bag – Q&A
• Beta Journal GB / F / D / I / ES

The video of the month was once again the cornerstone of the entire newsletter. It gave out, mostly, clarification and detail on facts that we were already given a few newsletters ago. Toward the end of the Podcast Jeff mentions “Banner Scraps” that can be used to HELP buy some of the best RvR gear. These scraps come from taking enemy standards. Overall the standard system sounds like it’s been thought out and developed to be an additional layer to RvR combat in general because of the bonuses gained from the tactics that go along with it.

The Mongbat video…. …. ….. .. ….. Josh you scare me. *pets the banner*

Paul’s Video Blogs were once again fantastic. I recommend “Jumping Gyro”.

The Bastion Stair looks downright sexy. I hope all the dungeons in the game will look cool and contain lots of interesting content. If there’s anything in a mmorpg that turns me off of dungeon crawling or pve in general it’s ugly and monotonous dungeons. GET THEM RIGHT MYTHIC!

The last bit I want to comment on is the White Lion grab bag info. I can’t seem to shake the monkey on my back whispering “It sounds like the WoW hunter!” Well, it’s more of a melee version I guess. Overall the grab bag didn’t do much for me in the White Lion department. I’m still not hyped about that class much, but look forward to killing dozens of them on the battlefield.

Overall… mediocre newsletter. Nothing blew me away or made my jaw drop in awe – except Josh petting the banner. As more links become available I’ll add them to the list.

I guess it’s WAR video day. Found another movie, this time on Gametrailers, of epic places we can visit in Warhammer Online. One word: Amazing Atmosphere. Okay, that was two words.

The above video is the SD version. If you can, I highly suggest you go to Gametrailers and watch the HD version. Looks amazing!

UPDATE (another video)

Gametrailers released another video this afternoon.  This one is a fast… almost bullet point format interview.. of what the game is about.  I really like their explanations; some great one liners in there.  The video also contains lots of game-play footage.

“We take everything that is great about Warhammer; about the intellectual property – All of the great ideas, the big world, the great history and lore, and we ram it into an awesome huge magnificent online roleplaying game.” – Jeff Hickman

Found a cool Warhammer video of some members of the Destruction realm participating in what looks to be a Public Quest. The video is shot from the Shaman’s point of view and includes what looks like a full group+ fighting mounted NPCs. In the video I also noticed the Marauder’s tentacle ability being used, what looked like a Squig Herder coming out of a Squig, a ranged squig attacking, and some really neat spell effects.

.. But it isn’t.  That alone speaks volumes of the strength that the subscription model continues to have in the mmorpg marketplace.

“We didn’t want to charge a subscription, but as we researched market conditions, we realized that wouldn’t support us.” – Rob Pardo [Source]

More like, “We didn’t have plans to charge a subscription but when we researched the difference in quality of design and future development, combined with the potential revenue, we realized that we would be foolish not to.”  There’s no question in my mind that the subscription model is here to stay.

Even though I openly hate on what WoW was allowed to become, I consider Rob Pardo to be a brilliant and incredibly talented designer. Reading through his comments that he made at Paris GDC I found one statement in particular that stood out amongst the rest.  In response to how Blizzard moved forward into the MMO genre:

“Very naively, or else we might not have done it.” – Rob Pardo

Think about it.  The most successful, popular, and arguably revolutionary mmorpg (of its kind… *sprays the flame retardent*) ever made was developed by a company that was naive and probably more cautious and unknowing compared to many developers today.  The results speak for themselves.  Even as I speak I guarantee there are dozens of developers locked up in a room somewhere racking their brains trying to think “How can we be like WoW?!” or “How can we beat WoW?!”.  The solution isn’t to make your game like WoW, it’s to make your game like like WoW was made.  Make your game the best it can be with the elements you feel will make your game a success in today’s mmo landscape, and move into the mmo scene like Blizzard did.

The alternative isn’t pretty.  You end up with a game that wreaks of over thinking (AoC anyone?) the simple, yet beautiful, aspects of mmorpgs.  In many ways that is precisely why WoW took a turn for the worse years ago.  Blizzard lost the innocence and naivety.

These are always fun.  Blizzard has a new splash page teaser up today.   What is it?  It looks frozen (the image is even called ice1.jpg) or icy so perhaps it’s something to do with WotLK.  Anyone dig anything up yet?

Back in May of 2007 Graev and I had a lot of fun guessing what the splash page leading up to the announcement of Star Craft 2 would be.  We even made an event out of it by taking the Blizzard games and writing about them one by one in order that we played them.

Hopefully this is more than a release date for WotLK or another announcement that they’ll be having open-world PvP or achievements.

Massively released an interview a few days ago that they did with Richard Bartle to find out how he would make World of Warcraft better. Whatever the real point of the interview, if it had any, he went on to answer the following question with an answer that blows my mind:

Massively: “Are you planning on playing games like Age of Conan and Warhammer when they come out?”
Bartle: “I’ve already played Warhammer. It was called World of Warcraft.” …

First thought that came to my mind: People PAY for that opinion?! How can you be a consultant when you’re THAT out of touch with the current mmorpg landscape?

After that dumb comment he rambled on for a few paragraphs talking about Age of Conan, mostly with incoherent rhetorical questions, all while taking every opportunity he had to point out the fact that he is a designer. I get that Richard Bartle is the “grandfather of Muds”. I acknowledge that he is a very intelligent man with a lot of great ideas and knowledge. But saying something as ignorant and downright stupid as he did proves he has not even looked into WAR (and some of his ideas for WoW are also beyond bizarre).

World of Warcraft is a game centered around PvE with raiding treadmills and Battleground/Arena based e-sport PvP. Warhammer Online is a game centered around open-world RvR with tiered gameplay focusing on RvR and PvE split progression. That is the quickest and most basic way that I can explain how these games differ. For more information you’re welcome to view my (somewhat old) post on how WAR does not equal WoW. Both are fantastic games, but so very different. Lumping them together and writing them off as the same game is an insult to both.

Surely as a designer and the “grandfather of Muds” he looked past the superficial cosmetic similarities. Perhaps he even meant it as a joke, in which case Massively owes him a huge apology for making him look like an ass spouting asinine remarks like that of a forum troll. For being a consultant, “grandfather of Muds”, teacher, and veteran in the virtual worlds industry he brought his credibility to question several times throughout the interview. I was not impressed with the interview at all and now I’m not sure how impressed I am with Richard Bartle. As Graev pointed out, “It appears as though the “grandfather of Muds” has gone a little senile”.

Dr. Bartle, I urge you to educate yourself on the differences between these games so that you may avoid further embarrassing yourself.