Diablohead origins

On the eve of Diablo 3's release, a lot of blogs that discuss the game's various aspects have popped up. Diablohead is yet another. While some of you will be entirely new readers, others will be familiar with my other gaming blog, wowalone.blogspot.com. I am a long-time World of Warcraft player but have abandoned the game after reaching the burnout point, and I'm past the point of no return.

Diablo 3's been teasing fans for years but finally it is within our grasp. By many accounts (and also if we are lucky), it will be out this year, in 2011, or in the worst case in very early 2012.

As a quick background, I've retained my Wowalone persona, Darth Solo, because many readers know me by this name. My gaming credentials are fairly solid. Gaming is one of my main hobbies. No matter what other interests I have, I always fall back on gaming - when there's a good game to play.

I won't mention the dozens (hundreds?) of games I have played over the years. Suffice to say that when I first laid my eyes on Diablo, back in, oh, 1997 or so, it was love at first sight. I played it, along with its unofficial expansion Hellfire, for a long time. Well, I played it until Diablo 2 was released. Then I played that one, and the Lord of Destruction expansion, to death. I must have played Diablo 2 for 5 years or even more. I would still play it today except for one little problem: the 800x600 graphics have become really bad for my eyes. Modern graphics have spoiled it for me. Yet, in my heart, Diablo 2 is immortal.

Back in the "old days" I hooked up with a bunch of buddies (5-6 of us) and found out these guys had an awesome geeky tradition: every year they would take a week off from work, grab their computers and go to a cabin in the mountains where they would link them up over LAN and spend the whole 7 days playing games. And yes, the main game back then was Diablo 2. Once I discovered this group, I was IN! Our main goal was to start new characters and level them as high as possible. By the end of the week we'd be in our mid 80s. We would stay up all night, with a bottle of wine or beer at hand and slay countless hordes of monsters until dawn. Then we'd go to bed only to wake up after noon and keep going from where we left off. In the late afternoons it was usually time for barbecues. Occasionally we'd take a break from Diablo and switch to Starcraft or Counterstrike or Quake 3 but we'd always go back to our main game. Those were the days...

Now many of you would think something along the lines of "What a bunch of dumbasses, gaming for a whole week in the mountains instead of enjoying the nature, hiking, etc". Well, we didn't care about that. We were all hardcore gamers and we had the week to ourselves, no wives or girlfriends to distract us. Besides, the mountains were only 2 hours drive from the city so we could go hiking any weekend, if we wanted.

Over the years I've been interested in many games in several different genres. I've played Nox, Sacred, Dungeon Siege, Titan's Quest, all very similar to the type of gameplay introduced by Diablo: the action RPG. I've also played more traditional RPGs such as Fallout 1 and 2, Morrowind, Knights of the Old Republic 1 and 2, Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale. I also liked certain 3rd person shooters as well as a few strategy games including Starcraft and Warcraft 1,2 and 3.

More recently I was hooked by Borderlands, an amazing shooter/RPG which reminded me strongly of Diablo. I mean, this game was practically a futuristic Diablo in 1st person view.

I won't even discuss World of Warcraft which I've been playing (with some breaks) since the beginning of 2006.

So you see, I've got quite a bit of gaming - and especially Diablo - cred. Chances are that I will be playing Diablo 3 for at least the next 5 years, or until the servers go offline, or until Diablo 4 comes out. I was made for this type of game.

Here I am now, starting another gaming blog, this time about Diablo 3 and whatever Blizzard will bring in the future in this universe. What will you find on this blog? I plan to offer thoughts and insights relative to my adventures in the world of Diablo, but also strategies for making gold and money on the two auction houses. At this point nobody can offer any such strategies, all we can do is speculate, but once the game is live, all hell will break loose and every Diablo blog, including this one, will teem with information.

I would like to offer a quick word about the two auction houses. When I initially heard about the real money auction house I was furious but with time I became a firm believer. I plan to get involved not only in the gold auction house, but also in the real money one. I have a feeling that the two can be played against each other and there's some serious money to be made by doing this. The best part is that you can earn money while having lots of fun.

In closing, I'd like to welcome any new readers and also thank my existing readers for joining me here, on Diablohead. If you like this blog, please subscribe via RSS or live feed, link me from your blog or site and spread the word. Thanks for visiting and see you in Hell, Inferno and beyond!