DIABLO 3 RELEASE DATE ANNOUNCED

An interesting graph on the recent US population levels of SWTOR.

author=Antilurker77
I'm surprised that most of them went back.

(psst.. this is a secret, but that graph is misleading! Tuesdays at around 1am is when the servers have their scheduled maintenance)

the difference between pre and post Diablo 3 is the peak population in the evenings.

author=Craze
Playing a Fem!Monk named Mercy

I haven't played much with the Monk yet, but he seems like an interesting Paladin/Assassin hybrid (Diablo 2). He has the combo attacks of an Assassin but without the combo points, which is much more intuitive for such a fast-paced game. He executes his finisher automatically every third strike which also generates his Spirit, so you can get into a nice rhythm where you hold down left-click until he's completed his third attack and then dump Spirit with a right-click, optimizing your damage-per-second and looking like Bearded Aang the Last Airbender while doing so. I think his basic combat mechanics are butter and possibly more fluid than even Blizzard had planned.



Anyway, I'm deep into Act 2 (Hell) on my female Barbarian who is completely visceral and satisfying to play. I leap into a cluster then furious charge out to frontload my fury. This usually gets the bad guys' attention and they start forming a convenient line in front of me where I can seismic slam them and send them flying.

My furious charge has a rune which lowers the cooldown by two seconds for every enemy I pass through, so there are many enemy clusters that I can furious charge continuously without stopping. It's like some crazy anime action where I dash through a horde and bodies are perpetually knocked up into the air or propelled several meters away from each apogee of my furious orbit. In danger? Furious charge out of the fray and start throwing an axe into their faces long enough to setup another leap attack that boosts my armor by a massive 300%, giving me over 80% damage reduction so I can go into man-mode again.

A Barbarian's defense is integrated into his offensive, using insane mobility and crowd controlling slam dunks that can often render you untouchable while you wail on demon faces at close range.

Demon Hunter has similar mobility except it is more defense/escape oriented rather than being direct damage attacks, and that mobility makes it fun.

be wary of hacking! It sounds like a ton of people are having their accounts hacked into. Blizzard is blaming the victims (which isn't cool!) and suggest that you use a Blizzard Authenticator (only $6.50!), but after very little digging it sounds like hackers are exploiting a security vulnerability and hijacking sessions. They even go as far as DDOS attack the victim to prevent them from re-logging onto Diablo 3 and creating a new session!

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Diablo-3-Authenticator-Battle.net-Bashiok-Password,15724.html

People have all their items and gold drained.

Sounds like this is just prep by the hackers before the real money auction house goes live... I would recommend not even logging on when that goes live (for a few days at least).

Still, this is not very cool, and very uncool to blame the victims, Blizzard. This happens to people who have strong passwords and authenticators.

I didn't buy the game at launch (because I can't afford to at the moment!) but I am kinda glad I didn't. The many debacles with the FOREVER-ONLINE thing is very offputting.

Spoilers: The weak point of authentication is very rarely the password. The biggest weak point is the user, second is the system itself. Security in itself is such a huge field and Blizzard keeps showing their ignorance, they need to hire somebody who knows what the fuck they're doing in both network engineering, network security, and PR *.

Besides all the shitty circumstances surrounding the game (15 years after D2, always online, shitty network issues, and now hacking accounts) it is a clear evolution of D2 and blows it out of the party in every aspect. The narrative actually flows better than shoehorned in quests and you actually accomplish something besides follow Diablo. The writing is still bad but it is steps in the right direction. The interface got a shit ton of clean up and modernization and a lot of the boring tedium got cut (fucking belt shit, identification and TPs, inventory management and transferring items between characters). Combat isn't the shitty awkward attempt at an action RPG of D1/2 and it actually has some decent action now. Bosses got a huge improvement where they feel like actual bosses and not enemies with huge bars of HP (and a resistance ignoring freezing aura!). The whole skill system and attributes is a lot better too. You don't run out of things to learn at level 30, new runes are always breathing new life into your skills and you can see what works or try something different when you're bored. Respeccing is easy and cheap (a respecced skill slot has a 5 or so second cool down) but not really planned into the interface; There's no quick switch to a different build such as if you have a mob killing spec and a boss killing spec. It is a natural progression of D2 and if you enjoyed that you'll probably like D3 (depending on what you liked about D2).

The biggest problem with D3 isn't the game, it's all the shit Blizzard threw on top of it.


*:

Kentona
Blizzard is blaming the victims (which isn't cool!) and suggest that you use a Blizzard Authenticator (only $6.50!)

Get fucked Blizzard.

vvvvvvvvvvv
This isn't so bad if the authenticator is free. It's still low to immediately blame the user but not repulsive. Thanks for clearing that up UPRC.

Massive screenshot alert (also spoilers, but seriously, the story's a shitstorm, just look at 'em):



And then Karsuman and I sat under a giant cleaver for a few minutes, because why the hell not?

Despite
This game looks retarded.

I really fail to see the appeal.

i thought this too before playing and falling in love with it; still, game that is not for everybody is not for everybody

thanks for shitting on the topic; -1 compassion

think ill just get torchlight 2 instead

My barbarian looks pretty cool right now.

bahleted