Diablo 3 box an oxymoron?

I've been thinking that for a game like Diablo 3, buying the retail box is probably an oxymoron for a lot of people. Since the game can only be played online, it stands to reason that everyone who buys the game will have an internet connection. So then, why buy the box?

Well, there are actually several reasons why people might buy the Diablo 3 box.

One very obvious reason is because they like the art on the box and perhaps want to add it to their collection of other game boxes. Then there's the Collector's Edition which has brings some special goodies and even more and better art.

There are those who are more comfortable with a physical copy of a game than with a digital download.

There's also a number of people who like to socialize with other Diablo fans and will spend a few cold hours outside a game store, waiting in line for the midnight release.

And finally there are those who have a poor internet connection and would have to spend hours and perhaps days to download the game. For them, the only realistic option is to buy the box and install the game and then downloading only potential updates.

These are all very valid reasons but none of them are enough to make me buy the box.

I don't care about the art or about the Collector's Edition. I happen to think that the stuff included in the CE is crap that I will forget about in a couple of days and never touch it again in my life. I would much rather buy the Book of Cain which contains dozens of pages of art and only costs $20 or so.

I have stopped buying boxed games years ago, when digital downloads became mainstream. I have enough useless junk in my home without adding these boxes, cool as they may look.

The socializing part is nice but I'm a shy person and have never felt comfortable starting a conversation with a stranger. Besides, I'm not going to waste time and freeze my butt off in a queue at midnight.

As for the internet connection, I am fortunate to have a very fast one so downloading is no problem at all and in fact a great pleasure and convenience.

So what'll it be for you? The box or the digital download?

Diablo 3 to be released on April 10th

Because I'm bored I decided to engage in some baseless speculation. Tomorrow is Acti-Blizzard's investor call. Assuming that they will announce a release date for Diablo 3 tomorrow, I predict that the date will be April 10th. Why?

We already know that the announcement must come 2 months before the release date. February 9th + 2 months = April 9th which is a Monday. Since games are usually released on a Tuesday, I predict April 10th.

I'm most likely wrong but hey, there's nothing better to talk about so why not?

Uphill was hard, downhill will be easy

I know that many of you Diablo-lovin' people are bored, impatient, exasperated with the long wait. I feel ya. I used to be the same. I've had butterflies in my stomach since they announced Diablo 3 in 2008.

It has been a long, uphill struggle since then. Every month has passed excruciatingly slow, every new piece of information awaited with bated breath and devoured with unsatiated hunger. If you think about it, the struggle is almost over. Our climb has almost reached the peak. Much of the 3+ years since announcement, or the almost 10 years that some of us have been waiting for a sequel to Diablo 2, are almost over. Once this year ends and 2012 begins we can consider ourselves out of the woods and on our way downhill.

Downhill is much easier, believe me. 2-3 more months won't kill anyone but I know that for some of you the long-drawn anticipation will be even more painful. This situation reminds me of an old comic strip. There's a long line of guys waiting to get inside the men's room. The newcomers, the guys at the start of the line, are relaxed and aloof. The can still hold it in. But as your eyes move down the line, the closer you get to the door, the more desperate they become. The guy who's just about to get his turn is almost pissing his pants at this point.

While the situation with Diablo 3 is not exactly like in the parable I just told, I can hear a lot of virtual foot-tapping from the community. The first 3 years since the announcement weren't so bad because we all knew the game was going to be released some time in the far, misty future. But the closer we get to the release, the harder it is for us to rein in our basest feelings. The whole range of emotions is coming out on the table: love, have, anger, depression, disappointment, denial and so on. The Diablo community is restless and this is compounded by the dismay that Blizzard apparently won't announce a release date for Diablo 3 in 2011. But hey, there are still 2 weeks left in this year so who knows. I wouldn't count on it though.

I have been through these emotions for a short time but now I'm over them. Diablo 3 is not the only thing in my geeky life. I have other hobbies that require attention, and even other blogs I run. There are even games that I can play with passion untill D3 shows its ugly mug. I will only list 2 of them: World of Tanks and DiRT 3. My advice to everyone is to keep busy, take care of your other passions, hobbies and real life issues and don't worry too much about Diablo 3. It'll be out when it's out. And when it is finally released, your real life will be over and your virtual life will begin.

10 ways in which Diablo 3 is similar to WoW

When Blizzard started spilling the beans on Diablo 3, over the many months that followed I began to feel apprehensive. You see, during this time I was also playing a lot of World of Warcraft and some of the similarities that Diablo 3 shares with WoW left me scratching my head. Like many others who noticed the same thing, I was wondering whether our beloved Diablo was turning into some sort of WoW-lite, or action-WoW.

Leaving the two obvious facts that both games are made by Blizzard and both are RPGs at their core, I'm going to list a number of ways in which Diablo 3 is more similar to WoW than to Diablo 2 or 1.


1. Battle.net

Players must be connected to Battle.net when playing either of the two games. This is perhaps the biggest controversy since Diablo 3 was announced and it's not hard to see why. Most of us probably never expected this to happen but Blizzard managed to pull a fast one and there's nothing we can do about it. Whether we like it or not, it seems that Blizzard's future is to be 100% connected .

2. Auto leveling attributes

Another point of contention, albeit an older one, Diablo 3 no longer allows you to allocate attribute points when you level up, like Diablo 1 and 2 did. In this aspect, this "functionality is very much like WoW. When I first started playing WoW I found it very strange that I couldn't allocate my own points. Eventually I got used to it and never thought about that until it was announced that Diablo 3 would follow the same procedure. I'm still on the fence over this issue but until I get to experience the game I can't decide whether Blizzard made the right decision or not.

3. Separate resources

All classes in Diablo 1 and 2 shared the same type of resource: mana. World of Warcraft is one of the few games (if not the only one) I've played in which certain classes have a different resource than mana. I never expected Diablo 3 to have a similar philosophy, yet it does. In the end it's not a bad thing for classes to have different resources. It felt a bit goofy, for example, that Barbarians used mana, which traditionally is more of a clothie resource.

Separate resources help differentiate classes from one another and also give them flavor. But it's not just about calling "mana", say, "focus". It's also about how these resources are generated. The Barbarian's fury starts empty and recharges as he uses certain skills. The Demon Hunter has the dual-resource system. The Wizard's arcane power is quick-charging. And so on.

4. Skill wording

One of the things that annoy me the most about Diablo 3's skills is the general wording of the skill descriptions. Having spent so much time playing WoW, it feels like D3's skills are some new WoW skills or talents. Just look at these:

"Reduces all non-physical damage by 20%. Whenever you take damage from a ranged or elemental attack you gain 3 Fury."

"In addition, when you critical hit with Ancient Spear automatically resets the cooldown and on a critical hit an enemy with Weapon Throw returns 20 Fury."

"Whenever you use Vault, Smoke Screen or backflip with Evasive Fire you gain 60% movement speed for 2 seconds."

This, to me, sounds like WoW wording through and through.

5. Skill icons

Diablo 3's skill icons are such a big departure from Diablo 2's that they can easily be confused with something coming out of World of Warcraft. I wouldn't be surprised if the two games share an interface designer or two. Even if not, the style is very similar: bright colors, suggestive icons.

6. Auction house

Did Diablo 2 have an auction house? Of course not. But now both Diablo 3 and World of Warcraft have a gold auction house. I see this as a very good thing because now we have an official and secure way in which to exchange items found in the game. I'm not complaining, just pointing out the similarity.

7. Disenchanting

Now Diablo 3 also has disenchanting of magical items, same as WoW. In both games, disenchanting an item gives you mats that can be used to craft other things.

8. Enchanting

While WoW implements enchanting in a different manner, Diablo 3 also allows players to place enchantments on their items with the help of one of the three craftsmen, the Mystic. Does this recipe I picked randomly look damn similar to WoW or what?

"Formula: Enhance 1H Melee Weapon - Minor Hostility"

And there we go again talking about wording: this recipe could just as well be found in WoW.

9. Purple items

Diablo 3 now has purple items, same as WoW but different than Diablo 2. In the words of Jay Wilson, "...we’ve changed their color I think we did purple which is a bit of a nod to World of Warcraft..."

10. Achievements

Finally,  both Diablo 3 and WoW (as well as StarCraft 2) have an in-game achievement system. That was bound to happen and I don't really care. In fact I doubt I will strive too hard to gain achievements, unless there's some form of reward associated.


These are just a few of the similarities between Diablo 3 and World of Warcraft, that push the former farther away from its predecessor, Diablo 2. It might seem disheartening at first glance but for every similarity there's at least one difference between them and this is something that I will discuss in a future article. If you have other similarities to share, don't hesitate to shoot me a comment.

Diablo 3 in the discount bin?

Are you tempted to hold off from buying Diablo 3 when it's released in the hopes of picking it later at a discount? You might have a very long wait ahead of you. While most of us like good deals of the sort that can be often found on Steam, it remains a fact that Blizzard's games don't usually end up in the discount bin - that is, unless you're prepared to wait 10 or more years.

Blizzard is such a big player in the gaming world that they can afford not to go through the usual distribution channels. For one thing, you can't find their games on Steam where the best discounts can be had. For another, they are their own distributors for the digital editions of their games. That means they can set their own price and hold it there indefinitely.

Boxed games are a slightly different beast. Looking at prices for Diablo 2 on Amazon, it seems that you can still get the Battlechest box (containing D2 and the Lord of Destruction expansion) for between $20 and $30. This isn't bad at all but if you try to buy the same thing from Blizzard's site, it'll cost you $20 apiece, or $40 for both D2 and its expansion, and that's only the digital edition, no box there.

The bottom line is that you won't be seeing a discounted Diablo 3 any time soon. I don't even expect it to drop from $60 to $50 in a year. The earliest you can hope for is when an expansion will be released but that's probably 2 years away. So just buy the game at release and recoup the full price by playing it.

WoW + free Diablo 3 package analysis

Over at my WoW blog I have posted a new article analyzing the financial aspects surrounding Blizzard's deal which offers a free copy of Diablo 3 if you subscribe to WoW for a year, along with a mount and access to a future WoW expansion.

I posted it there because my WoW blog has a lot more traffic than this blog and also because this applies more to WoW than Diablo.

So if you'd like to read about that, please head on there and let me know what you think.

It's gonna be epic!

How was this year's Blizzcon for you? For me it was meh, as far as WoW's new expansion is concerned. On the Diablo 3 front, I can't say I was impressed. We didn't get to see any major new stuff and though many of us were still hoping, no release date was announced.

The Black Soulstone cinematic was very well made but rather short. I WANTZ MOAR! At this point I'm starting to wonder if we're actually going to fight Diablo at the end. I assume that's why the game still has "Diablo" in the title.

So we still have a long time to wait and there isn't the slightest hint as to when the game will be released. Or is there? If you haven't seen this rumor yet, check it out. I'm very cautious around rumors as a rule but if the alleged email really was sent in advance of Blizzcon, then that insider had access to some powerful information. In that case, the supposed 17th January 2012 release date could be legit. On the other hand it does seem a bit too soon considering that Blizzard couldn't make it by the end of this year. I admit that we'd all love to see the game out in January but it might just not happen. Still, this rumor offers us a glimmer of hope.

The second thing that really gave me a boost of confidence is this series of 20 new screenshots that came out of Blizzcon. They are high-res and look gorgeous. I don't know about you but when I look at them I get the feeling that Diablo 3 is gonna be epic! And that'll keep me going until I finally lay my sweaty paws on it.

Who will profit from Diablo 3's delayed release?

By now most of us have heard with dismay that Blizzard is delaying Diablo 3 into "early 2012". Well, as much as it saddens me, I'm also glad that they are working hard to polish the game and exterminate as many bugs as possible.

While Diablo fans might be inconvenienced and frustrated by this delay, there are some factions that - I'm willing to bet - are rubbing their hands in glee (and perhaps sighing in relief) at the news. I'm thinking of a couple of games that will be released in December of this year, namely Bioware's Star Wars MMO and Torchlight 2.

Star Wars The Old Republic is not a direct competitor to Diablo 3 but it is a strong rival to WoW. As WoW has been kinda declining lately, SWTOR was perfectly positioned to sweep away some of the players who had become bored with Blizzard's game. There was only one small problem: Diablo 3 was rumored to be released in the same period.

While Diablo 3 is a valid competitor to Blizzard's own game, WoW, as far as Blizzard is concerned, it doesn't really matter if 1 million players (say) transfer from one of their games to another. Well, there is the matter of monthly subscriptions but the point sticks: the player base and revenue remain in the family.

SWTOR has a release date of December 20th. I am willing to bet that many WoW players will jump into it (not withstanding patch 4.3 which will be same ol' same ol') and also many Diablo 3 fans, tired of waiting for D3, will buy it.

It looks like a win for Bioware. Even if reality won't be so dramatic, I'm certain this turn of events is more advantageous for Bioware than if Diablo 3 had been released in December.

With Torchlight 2 things are more straightforward. The game is a direct clone of Diablo and while the developers claim that they are not in competition with Diablo 3, we all know otherwise.

I tried the original Torchlight. I was hyped about it, was going to buy it but luckily I tried the demo and didn't like it one bit. Many others liked it, considering it a veritable Diablo clone. I beg to differ. In my opinion it was a mediocre clone but that's just me. An entire community sprouted around this game and for a few good reasons, I will admit.

Torchlight 2 is supposed to improve upon its predecessor. In what ways, I'm not sure because I didn't follow its development. It does seem to have some advantages compared to Diablo 3. The price is so low ($20) that it could easily be bought on impulse. It has an offline single-player mode, as well as no DRM. It offers LAN multiplayer. It supports modding. Notice that all these features are absent from Diablo 3. Oh well, different markets, right?

Well, not so much. There are, of course, the die-hard Torchlight fans who will buy it. There are those who are pissed that Diablo 3 doesn't offer these features and will probably buy it. And now, with D3's delayed released, there will be a significant number of Diablo fans who will say "f*ck it" and buy Torchlight 2 just to pass the time until their long-awaited game is finally released. I have a feeling that a lot of these people wouldn't have bought Torchlight 2 if Diablo 3 was released in December.


This is just my non-expert analysis of the situation. One thing is certain: we all wish for Diablo 3 to be released sooner but we all like the level of polish and refinement Blizzard's games are imbued with, even from version 1.0. All we can do at this point is to suck it up and keep twiddling our thumbs.

Ranged or melee?

In Diablo 3 there are 5 classes:

2 melee: Barbarian and Monk
2 ranged: Demon Hunter and Wizard
1 pseudo-ranged: Witch Doctor

Why "pseudo"? Because to me the Witch Doctor doesn't seem like a pure ranged class. It doesn't fire projectiles directly at the enemy. Instead, it summons semi-intelligent minions, or fires semi-intelligent missiles (such as toads, spiders, zombies, bats, etc) in the general direction of the enemy, and these missiles sometimes home in on the enemy or explode in its vicinity. Well, you can always use Poison Dart but one skill still doesn't make it a proper ranged class.

I am very partial to ranged classes, which means that I won't pick the Witch Doctor from the very beginning. Unfortunately the Demon Hunter comes out as weak from what I can see in the beta. Not terribly weak but unexciting enough that I won't be playing it either, from the start.

This leaves the Wizard and boy am I hyped to play it. The Wizard has so many cool spells that I'm afraid I won't have enough space in my active slots to use them all. Some of the coolest I've seen are Electrocute, Arcane Orb and Disintegrate, not to mention Frost Nova.

The choice is more clear cut in regards to melee classes. I choose the Barbarian, of course, because it uses big honking weapons, while the Monk seems to only use his/her weapons for their stats (remains to be seen how things evolve later). I can't wait to use the Barbarian's Bash, Cleave and Leap Attack, at least in the early game.

Eventually I will try all classes, hopefully taking them to the max level. My first two, though, will definitely be the Barbarian and Wizard.

What's your favorite class/gender combo in D3?

Like every other Diablo fan I've been watching videos coming out of the Diablo 3 friends-and-family beta for the past few days. What can I say, I'm impressed. The graphics look great and so does the interface. Everything about it screams "Diablo". I even like the way they did the skill system but this is a discussion for another time.

Looking at all these videos I've been asking myself what class and gender combination I will play when I get my sweaty paws on this game. I came to the realization that most of my characters will be females. Here's why.

Barbarian
I am very tempted to start with the Barbarian as my first character. It is the original D2 class so it should feel familiar. The Barbarian is a very strong fighter and, thus, easily mastered. (S)he's strong physically and can take loads of punishment. On the other hand, in Diablo 2 the Barbarian was never my first choice. Second or third, but never first.

Male or female? Both are equally good choices so I will be hard pressed to make a decision. The male looks imposing, a deadly mass of muscles and a terrifying presence. The female, on the other hand, tempts me greatly. She's the typical Amazon woman (not the Amazon class of D2), the female warrior who takes males as slaves, is just as strong and fights just as well as any man. Besides, who would have imagined a female Barbarian in Diablo 2? I'm on the fence here. I might just play 2 Barbarians so I can have both sexes.

Demon Hunter
This will probably be the first character I will try. I always liked ranged classes in RPGs so the DH is the obvious choice. In Diablo 2, the Amazon was my favorite class.

Male or female? Female definitely. The female is dark-haired, spunky and sexy. The male is too wiry for my tastes and I'd much rather look at a sexy female anyway. So this one is settled.

Wizard
I was tempted to use the word "Sorceress" here because, let's face it, that's what the Wizard class is. This will probably be my 2nd or 3rd class, because I love ranged spellcasting so much.

Male or female? Female definitely. The male is too wimpy, while the female is just right. Not as spunky as the Demon Hunter female but just as sexy. Besides, I love Asian-looking women. So this one is also settled.

Witch Doctor
This class will be second to last, because it resembles Diablo 2's Necromancer so much. Since it relies a lot on summons, I would prefer other classes before this one. Still, I'm sure I'll enjoy it once I get the hang of it, just like I ended up enjoying the Necromancer, although I never mastered it.

Male or female? Both are ok but I will definitely play the female. What could be sexier than a Caribbean Voodoo priestess?

Monk
I'm afraid the Monk will be the last class on my list and that's mostly because I'm not a really big fan of hand-to-hand melee classes. Though the Monk can use certain types of weapons, (s)he is primarily a class based on martial moves. Who knows, I might end up enjoying it more than other classes.

Male or female? This time I will pick the male, no doubt about it. The female looks... meh. The male is a tough-looking son-of-a-bitch with rippling muscles and a Rasputin beard. Besides, I don't like the female's voice much and who ever heard of a female monk??? Nun maybe, but not monk. I kid, I know there are female monks but it doesn't sound right with me.

So that's it then. This is the approximate order in which I will be playing my Diablo 3 classes, together with gender choices for each of them. What are your preferences?

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!