State of the nation address (Wizard rocks!)

I feel that now's about as good a time as any to give an update on my progress in Diablo 3. Not that anybody would (or should) care. I'm mostly doing this as a personal journal to refer to later.

2 weeks after patch 1.0.4 I can safely state that I enjoy Diablo 3 much more than before the patch. Before, I was in a kind of lull and was just going through the motions. In fact I used to spend most of my 20 minutes a day on the AH, wheeling and dealing. I played actively only on weekends. But now, I would like to play at least 3 hours during the week and 6-8 hours on the weekend. Unfortunately I've got other things to do so my time is limited. But still, I really feel like playing the game as much as possible.

My characters
I made a bunch of mistakes in D3, that I will admit. The first was starting to play with a Demon Hunter. The other was abandoning it for a Monk and then spending more than 100 hours on this character. The one thing that I did right was leveling my Wizard to 60, although she was the last one there. In retrospect, I should've started with the Wizard from the beginning. These days the Wizard has become my main and she's by far my most favorite class. In fact, if Blizzard doesn't do anything to fuck up her skills (read "nerf"), I can safely say that I won't play another class until my Wizard hits Paragon level 100.

The Monk is Paragon lv 2 and while he's very resilient, it comes at the cost of DPS and 22K is not nearly enough to have fun in Act 3 (Inferno) where he's at right now. He can kill boss packs - eventually - but it takes a very long time. And that's not fun to me. All my other classes (Barbarian, Demon Hunter and Witch Doctor) are 60 but I have abandoned them a long time ago and they don't tempt me in the least.

The Wizard
Andromeda, as she is called, is my pride and joy. She's Paragon 13 as of this writing. She has progressed to Act 3, just before Cydaea. I am confident that with her current equipment she can finish the rest of Inferno. But I'm in no rush. I like to smash everything without effort. I like being overpowered. It felt awesome to finish Acts 3+4 on Hell with 12K DPS on all of my characters. I want to feel the same thing with the Wizard in Inferno. She's not there yet, but she's inching closer.

Speaking of stats, she does 57K+ DPS (with the Enchantress follower), with 20.5% crit chance. Unfortunately her crit damage is only 50% because I was going for a Critical Mass build before I decided to go in a different direction. Her attack speed is pretty awesome at 2.22 attacks per second. Her defenses are nothing out of the ordinary because I kind of play a glass-cannon build. She has 26K life, 5000+ armor and between 200-300 resistances. Best of all, she has over 1000 life per second regeneration because that's something I like very much. It helps enormously, especially when kiting.

Here's my build. Incidentally this build is available at level 54.

The gameplay
What I love about the Wizard is that, using the above build, she obliterates-exterminates-devastates everthing in Act 1. She one-shots trash mobs and 3-5 shots boss packs. She's a vicious killing machine. Act 2 is almost the same but for some reason I feel that I make more gold farming Act 2, as well as find more boss packs. She hardly ever dies in these two acts. Act 3 is very doable but sometimes she dies if I'm not careful and I meet the wrong affixes on boss packs. But whenever I want to feel like a god, I go to acts 1 or 2 and zap everything with my finger of doom.

Finances
I will admit that I suck at making money in D3. This hasn't been a big priority for me until now so I didn't spend countless hours researching and playing the market. Well, ok, I have a couple of strategies that work but they simply provide a bit of additional income. The most I saved was a bit over 7 million. Thing is, I feel that now's not the best time to waste money on upgrades. I made the mistake of buying a good weapon for 3 million (a bargain at the time) right before patch 1.0.4. That weapon was quickly upgraded post-patch with something that was much better and only cost 1 million. And I barely managed to sell the original for less than 100K. Oops. Yeah, I made many of these stupid decisions which ended up costing me a lot of gold. Anyway, I plan to wait another month or two before I start to spend more seriously. Prices will only go down (as more good loot is found over time). The only spike I anticipate is when the PvP patch is released but I doubt that will happen before November. My problem is thay my equipment is pretty decent right now and it is becoming harder and harder to find cheap upgrades that don't cost millions. Suffice to say that I can't afford any good legendary item. But that's ok. It takes time to build kick-ass equipment.

Just don't ask me to lend you money if you see me in game. A dude I played with a couple of times wanted to borrow some but I was like, dude, I barely have enough for myself and now you want me to trust you when I don't even know you? Sorry dudes but I don't lend gold and that's final.

On the Real Money side, I'm inching close to $30 which is pathetic. On the other hand, as I said, I don't play the AH so whatever I sell is stuff I find on my own. Unfortunately most of what I find is crap (but you can relate, right?). First, I want to cover the cost of the next expansion ($40 likely). Second, I'd love to cover the cost of the game x 2 (I bought 2 copies), or $120.

Goals
I don't have big ambitions but my long term goal is to reach Paragon level 100 with my Wizard. The way I play, I doubt this will happen in less than 2 years. But fuck it, I've waited 10 years for this game. 2 years of actually playing it won't be so bad.

My short term goal is to reach a sufficient amount of DPS to steamroll Act 3 and possibly Act 4. I don't care much for Act 4 because I hate everything about it (and drops are supposed to be the same) so I would be satisfied to stick to Act 3. I want to kill mobs as easily as I do in Act 1 today. That's my fantasy. For that, I estimate I need at least 65K DPS. I'm only about 9K short so I shouldn't have big problems getting there in the next several weeks. Once I can cruise through Act 3, I will finish Inferno once and for all and continue farming for 1337 items.

Conclusion
To those who quit, sorry but I still enjoy Diablo 3. I believe it will become even more enjoyable as they continue to fix some of its issues. I just hope they don't nerf my favorite class, the Wizard, in any significant way. Yup, there's still life in this here game.

I quit D3, kind of, and hardcore pr0n

As some of you might have noticed (but I don't blame you if you haven't), I haven't posted anything for a long time. That's because I kinda-sorta quit Diablo 3. Well, not quit it completely but my enthusiasm has cooled off to a large extent.

The thing is, I don't feel like posting anything anymore about Diablo. I was planning an article about a nice Witch Doctor build I was using but I don't have the energy for that. The D3 community is falling into a torpor and so am I. It's surprising because in all my years playing WoW, and despite the occasional nerd rage, this never happened.

There are many problems that plague Diablo 3. Among them I will mention the bad itemization, the extremely hard Inferno difficulty, the futility of playing in groups in Inferno, the rampant botting and hyperinflation, the bad AH interface, the lack of a viable endgame, the insanely high repair costs in Inferno, the poor story and on and on.

But there are also plenty of things that I like. To me, Diablo 3 fits really well in the Diablo series. The moment I lay hands on it it felt like Diablo. I know that this opinion isn't shared universally but it's true for me. The graphics and art are gorgeous and so are the sounds. The gameplay is frantic and largely satisfying. Most of the skills are very satisfying to use and runes make them even better. I still love the pinata loot system but, in truth, Diablo 2 was more satisfying in this aspect.

As a result, I am still playing the game but a lot less than at the beginning. In fact, over the past few weeks I haven't farmed Inferno at all. Instead, I've concentrated on leveling my Witch Doctor to 60, though she's still in Hell Act 4.

Then, I spent a couple of hours every weekend with my friend from across the big pond, leveling my Wizard. She's 52 now and the going is slow because at these high levels we can't gain more than a couple of levels per play session. Problem is, I'm itching to get her to 60 because I love the Wizard best of all classes. Of course, there's a distinct possibility that she'll suck in Inferno but we'll see.

My Demon Hunter with 50K DPS can't do shit in Inferno Act 1. He destroyed everything in Hell but Inferno is really bad. He's a 2-hit kill and mobs move too fast for him to be able to escape. I just can't do it, so I abandoned him for now.

Surprisingly, I decided to start a hardcore character. It sounds crazy because I always thought it would be a waste of time but here I am. The class? Wizard, of course. She's 22 in Act 2 and she's doing fine so far. My strategy is to repeat content until I outlevel it, just to be on the safe side.

I find it interesting that in hardcore it seems the Auction House moves better. I sold most of the good items I found and I even managed to sell a rare level 13 ring for 20K. Prices are higher, but you can still find good deals. It should be really interesting if they add a hardcore RMAH.

So that's what I've been up to these past few weeks. I've also sold a few items on the RMAH here and there, for the minimum amount because most of it was junk.

Plans for the future? I just want to level that damn Wizard to 60 so I can try to kick some butt the way I like it. Unfortunately I don't think I'll be posting too often, I just don't feel energized like I was when the game launched.

What about y'all? If I don't get any comments I'll just assume none of my readers is playing any more lol.

Oh cruel fate why do you mock me?

I don't believe in fate or destiny (merely in coincidence) but sometimes life can be very ironic, to say the least. Diablo 3 has been toying with my feelings for a while now. Over the past couple of days I decided to start farming that damn Staff of Herding so I can get into the secret pony level. What, did you think it would be easy? Perish the thought.

I leveled 3 characters to 60, another to 50+ and another to 30+. I killed Izual (who drops the plans for the Staff) many many times. The plans didn't drop. Then, over the last 2 days I decided to farm him specifically for the plans with my Monk. So I ran him over and over again, on Normal difficulty. Did the plans drop? Nah.

I bought a copy of Diablo 3 for my best friend over in Europe. We get together about once a week for 1-2 hours and play together, chatting over Skype. It's an awesome way to enjoy the game even though we're thousands of miles apart. He plays a Barbarian and I play my Wizard. Because we don't get to play a lot, advancement is slow. Yesterday we both reached level 32, after finishing Normal difficulty.

So guess what drops for my friend on his very first Izual kill? You guessed it. The plans for The F*#$% Staff of Herding. He was like "Oh, I got a legendary drop". I was like "Sigh", already knowing what dropped.

On the whole, this episode makes me me lol uncontrollably. I plan to continue farming for the staff, even though I'm not sure about the benefits of farming Whimsyshire. Does it give better drops? More of them? Or is it just a novelty thing?

How about you? Have you found the plans yet? What about the other components? How long did it take you to find them?

UPDATE: I got the plans tonight, just after posting this article and after killing Izual about 5 more times. OK fate, I forgive you.

Blizzard fails at game design

Did the controversial title make you click through? Good. That was my intention. Before you start hating on me, give me a chance to make my case. I don't really think that Blizzard fails at game design and the title is more tongue-in-cheek than deadly serious. But some of their design decisions do make me scratch my head. It is said that true love has both highs and lows and there's a love-hate relationship between me and Blizzard. There are many occasions in which I cussed them to hell but many more in which I praised them. This little article is meant to question some parts of their game design so bear with me if you will.

With Diablo 3, Blizzard has always maintained that their goal was to encourage a vast number of builds and equipment choices, such that no particular build would shine above all others and no piece of equipment would be mandatory in order to advance through content. It turns out that their plan didn't pan out too well. Here are a few reasons why.

1H vs 2H
Normally it shouldn't really matter which kind of weapon you use. It would come down to personal preference and specific builds which favor one type of weapon or another. Unfortunately, in Inferno it's almost impossible to play as a melee class without a shield. This excludes 2H weapons and makes 1H + shield almost mandatory. To my horror, I heard that even Wizards, Demon Hunters and Witch Doctors are using shields instead of their class-specific off-hands.

I'm sure there are literally tens of players who go against the norm and use 2H weapons but those are the exception. A shield provides too many benefits to give up in favor of slightly more DPS on a 2H weapon: block, armor, life, resistances and other desirable stats.

I would argue that the same thing is valid for 1H vs dual 1H. Though you will get more damage from dual-wielding 1H weapons, the tradeoff might be too big.

Take my Barbarian, for example. Until Act 2 Nightmare he bullied his way through using a variety of weapon setups, including 1H + shield, dual 1H and 2H. But he hit a wall right about that point and I was forced to change both his spec and his equipment to 1H + shield. After that, his problems ended.

Blizzard wanted to stay away from mandatory equipment setups but they failed in this noble endeavor. Unfortunately I don't have a ready solution for this. If I recall correctly (and hopefully I'm not seeing this through rose-colored glasses), Diablo 2 handled this better by offering a much wider build variety, where any combination of gear could be viable. Of course, some were more efficient than others but on the whole you could still finish Hell with a non-mainstream setup.

Strangely, I like D3's DPS system. Translating weapon DPS into skill DPS is very simple and intuitive. But this introduces gremlins into the system. And frankly I don't have any idea how Blizzard will manage to chase those gremlins out.

Crafting
Crafting is supposed to be something exciting, that players find a lot of fun to engage in, as well as a convenient gold sink. Unfortunately, crafting in Diablo 3 leaves me cold. I leveled my Jewelcrafter to some extent and now I regret it. I was hoping to flip some gems and this worked well for a couple of days until commodity auctions were disabled. After that it became useless. Flipping gems is unprofitable now and crafting gems for myself is... meh, since I can usually buy them cheaper from the AH.

Luckily I didn't level the Blacksmith at all, but if I had, I wouldn't find any use for him. From what I can determine, the Blacksmith is only useful to a small niche of players who have figured out how to take advantage of certain crafted items on the Auction House. That's cool but the vast majority of players doesn't engage in AH warfare.

Then there's the small group of players who don't use the AH for certain reasons, preferring to craft their own gear. Unfortunately, until the late 50s you'll be better off buying very good gear directly off the AH so they are still wasting their time and gold.

Blacksmithing does come in its own at max level, but again, only if you invest a lot of gold in it first, buying rare recipes and expensive mats. Even then, there's no guarantee that you will get good stats on an item.

Personally I just don't want to bother with crafting. It is too unappealing to me but I'm hoping this will improve in future patches. Hah, ironically it almost seems like Diablo 2's gambling system was more appealing to players than Diablo 3's crafting system, despite the fact that results were a lot less predictable.

Crafting mats
Another thing that failed, in my opinion, is the market for crafting mats. The only ones that are worth something on the AH are level 60 ones. In other words, Normal, Nightmare and Hell mats are completely useless. I don't even understand why people choose to salvage their items and then sell the mats on the AH. You are losing money people! On the flip-side, those who know how to exploit this will profit by buying cheap mats, crafting certain niche items and selling them on the AH. Once again, these people are a very small minority.

Even at 60, things aren't rosy. The prices for the 3 types of mats are dysfunctional. Leaving aside the fact that Inferno mats are several orders of magnitude more expensive than their lesser counterparts, Exquisite Essences (magic) are 8-10 times more expensive than Iridescent Tears (rare)! How the hell is that even possible? I find it ridiculous.

Blizzard designed crafting in such a way that the demand for lesser materials is much higher (up to 10 times in fact) than that for rarer materials. How messed up is that? Something needs to be done here: either decrease the drop rate of rare items (something that I would hate), or tweak the number of mats of each type required to craft a recipe.

Conclusion
These are just some of the nits I wish to pick right now. While Blizzard is an awesome company with a lot of top-notch talent, they are still human, and humans make mistakes. They have frustrated me on many occasions with what I perceived as stupid design decisions but their games have also entertained me like nothing else. With Diablo 3 they went through several iterations and radical changes in game systems but unfortunately all is not well in the magic kingdom. But this is nothing that a few major patches and an expansion or two can't fix.

Diablo 3 is too easy

While making my way through the acts and difficulties of Diablo 3, all the way to Inferno, I kept getting these nagging thoughts that maybe the game is too easy. Easy compared to what, you might ask? To Diablo 2, of course, I would reply.

Let me elaborate. In Diablo 2, moving from Normal to Nightmare automatically lowered your resistances by 50. Going from Nightmare to Hell lowered them even further, by 100. Diablo 2's systems were different than Diablo 3's. Resistances were measured in percentages and the maximum you could have was 75%. In certain cases (with unique gear) you could even go over that. At 75 resistance you were a very happy camper. Monsters that dealt elemental damage barely scratched you.

But 75% resistance in Normal suddenly became only 25% resistance in Hell. While that was still better than nothing, it dramatically lowered your survivability. Equipment upgrades mitigated this to an extent but in most cases you never managed to find enough good gear to fill that gap.

And then you moved into Hell where resistances dropped by another 50%. Sometimes you found yourself with negative resistances. This actually meant that you took more damage than the monster dealt. For example, if a monster did 100 lightning damage and you didn't have any lightning resist gear on Hell, you actually took 200 damage from that attack. Ouch?

In Diablo 3, in contrast, I only started worrying about resistances after I finished Hell, when I stepped into Inferno. Up until then, I found Nightmare and Hell challenging enough, but not as much as I remembered from the days of Diablo 2.

There's a big difference between D3 and D2 though. D3 has an Auction House. The game can be made trivial to a large extent by purchasing upgrades from the AH. Gear leading up to Inferno can be had for very low amounts of gold and you'd be crazy (or a masochist) not to make use of this advantage.

If you look at the statistics released by Blizzard, very few people have unlocked Inferno. This means one of several things: either people have become bored after Normal and quit the game, or the game is difficult enough for most players, or most players are taking their sweet time leveling through it.

Personally I don't know what to think. On one hand I do believe that the AH can make the game easy but I wouldn't want to live in a world without it. On the other hand, each difficulty has steep slopes that can be a very solid barrier unless you have the right gear. Inferno is the hardest of all because good gear suddenly becomes very expensive, as in "millions of gold expensive".

In time I believe that even this final barrier of entry will drop lower thanks to more and more people unlocking and farming Inferno. It's inevitable. Will more people start complaining that Diablo 3 is too easy then? What about you? Do you think D3 is too easy?

I killed Bashiok!

Heh, I just killed Bashiok, Diablo 3's community manager. Well, not the literal person but a monster in game bearing his name. Here are a couple of screenshots. My Monk encountered him on Nightmare difficulty in Act 2.

If you didn't know, there's a chance you will encounter rare spawns with the names of Diablo 3 developers and community members.

In this case he was a Fallen Shaman and had the tag "Death is not the end". I'm not sure if he can spawn as other types of monster but from my vague understanding, I don't think so. Either way, the fight itself was easy.

Have you killed any Blizzard employees lately?

Big effin deal

So there's a new controversy going on about a Feat of Strength (an achievement on steroids) that Blizzard is apparently handing out to all those who were selected for the closed beta. In theory I am one of those and I assume I will see that achievement when I log into the game. Thing is, I don't care.

It looks like many people are up in arms over the fact that Blizzard has the nerve to hand out these unique achievements only to people who were invited in the beta. Being a Feat of Strength makes this even more valuable and practically a one-time only occurrence. Well, whoopty-doo. I'm on Blizzard's side on this one. They are free to hand out these achievements to whoever they damn please. Yeah, there were comparatively few people invited to the closed beta but that's why it's closed. Whining that you didn't get the achievement because you weren't invited in the beta is like whining that you didn't win the lottery.

Frankly I don't even know why there is a controversy. The very definition of "Feat of Strength" points towards a unique set of conditions that must be met, at a single point in time, in order to qualify for it. I don't remember anyone in WoW crying about the many Feats of Strength that were handed out over the years. I had a couple of those myself. If you weren't in the right place at the right time, no Feat of Strength for you, it's as simple as that! You win some and you lose some, that's how it is.

Not that it makes any difference. Personally I don't give a damn about achievements that don't confer a bonus of some sort. Like a pet or a cosmetic thing or whatnot. In WoW it made sense (for me) to complete certain achievements, especially the ones for collecting increasing numbers of pets, simply because they rewarded you with yet another pet. Then there were also tabards. But in Diablo 3, apart from sigils and banners, I don't think there's any "material" advantage to these achievements. I wouldn't mind an unique armor dye though...

Speaking of banners, that's another feature that seems tacked on to the game without bringing a lot of utility. I tried creating a banner in the beta but I quickly gave up and ignored that aspect completely. Sure, you can place banners on the ground, in the game, and everyone in your group will go OOOOOOOH AAAAAH. Or not.

I guess the devs were at a loss on how to give characters some form of customization. Their physical features can't be changed (useless in this game anyway because you can't see their faces) and character names aren't even visible for others to see when you're in a group. So they came up with the concept of banners. I'm perfectly fine with the existence of banners but I doubt I'll spend much time playing with them. I even gave the "unique sigils competition", that ran until recently, a pass. Another thing that I found annoying about them banners is that you can't create a different one for each character. One banner applies to all. Now I might be wrong here (and I hope I am) because I simply couldn't pay much attention to this feature. Please correct me if I'm wrong on this.

Circling back to achievements in general, they can sometimes be a pain in the ass. A few times during the beta some genius in my group decided that he wanted to complete some achievement or other and he was pushing the rest of us to play in a certain way so he could get his lousy achievement. First of all, I was like, dude, it's a fricking beta, fuck achievements! Second, attempting more complex achievements in a group filled with strangers is poor form. One of these guys, for example, was trying to get the achievement for killing the Skeleton King without killing any of the skeletons. Tough luck buddy! The rest of us needed the health orbs so we killed those skeletons as they came.

So, kids, get over it. You didn't win the lottery this time. Better luck next time! Now I'm off to cry in a corner because I didn't get a Feat of Strength for pre-ordering the game a month before release.

Do you like spoilers?

I mentioned in my previous post that on Monday 14th you'll be able to install the digital version of Diablo 3, almost a whole day before the servers are brought online. Although you won't be able to log into the game, there's talk of possible spoilers once the community gets its hands on that client.

To be honest, I'm not sure that's technically possible. After all, Blizzard says the client is encrypted and will only be unlocked once the servers are online. Besides, many of us have pre-ordered the game a month ago and so far I haven't seen any evidence of such spoilers. On the other hand, Incgamers posted some scenes from the later acts but I skimmed over that article and didn't bother to check it out. I wouldn't be surprised if it's something we have already seen in one form or another.

The article from Incgamers I linked above mentions that new stuff might surface on Monday but I am skeptical, due to the aforementioned encryption. It would be a shame if Blizzard managed to encrypt everything successfully until now, and then on the very last day millions of people somehow get unintended access to that secret content.

As far as spoilers are concerned, I'm somewhere in the middle. In WoW, I read every little thing there was to know about the next expansion (and the next, and the next). Information is power and in WoW that certainly was the case. Most of it, of course, was related to ways in which to make vast amounts of gold when an expansion hit.

In Diablo 3, the situation is a bit different. So far I know that Act 1 takes place around Tristram, Act 2 takes place in a desert area, Act 3 is in the Barbarian highlands and Act 4 is in the High Heavens (correct me if I'm wrong on this). But the exact details are shrouded in mystery and I would like to keep it that way for a few more days. As far as money-making is concerned, it's hard to make any predictions because this is a brand new game with a brand new revenue model, so I'm meh about this aspect.

What I am interested in is the lore and the story. Normally I'm not very big on lore. In WoW I didn't give a hoot about all the intricacies and the myriad side-stories. I was only interested in the main story, and superficially, at that. In Diablo 3, paradoxically, despite being a game focused mainly on combat with a bit of story on the side, I'm a lot more interested in the story than I was in WoW. As a result, I'm reluctant to have anything spoiled before I get the chance to discover it myself.

I mentioned before that on my first play-through in Normal I'm going to level on my own, just so I can experience everything first hand. For this reason, I don't want to read or watch any more spoilers than what I have already seen. Hell, in a week I should finish Normal anyway, and everything will be revealed.

So what about you? What's your take on spoilers? Are you hungry for every little tidbit of information or do you have the will to hold off until you can discover everything yourself?

The final countdown

A week from now, at this hour, most of us Diablo nerds should be deeply immersed in the game we've been waiting on for 10 years. For me, these last few days will go by like the wind. Fittingly, what goes through my head in an endless loop is Europe's The Final Countdown, a song that was a big part of my childhood.

I can't believe we're here, at the stage where we can finally lay our sweaty palms on Diablo 3. Sometimes I think it must be a dream. I still remember how awed I was back in 2008 when they announced the next chapter in the Diablo saga. That feeling closely mirrors what I feel today. I had hoped for many years that the series would be continued. Many times I had serious doubts. After all, if Blizzard were keeping silent about Diablo and there wasn't the tiniest hint that they were working on it, it could be assumed that they had abandoned the series. And then, unexpectedly, against all hope, it happened. They announced Diablo 3!

So here we are, dear friends. Apart for a little self-wonder, the purpose of this post was to remind you all that, if you have purchased the digital version of the game, you will be able to install the game client on Monday, May 14th. Blizzard has stated that players will also be able to apply the day-0 patch to the game on that same day. When the clock strikes midnight PST, the servers will be opened and you will be able to log in without wasting any more time. But that is assuming the servers won't be brought down to their knees by hundreds of thousands or even millions of players trying to log in at the same time.

It's ok though. Blizzard has also mentioned that they would be keeping a close eye on the servers and will queue up players if things get out of hand. I laughed when I read about a potential queue time of "up to 40 seconds". I still remember the days when 40 minute login queues in WoW were de rigueur.

That's all I wanted to say friends. See you all in Hell!

My Diablo 3 leveling strategy

With the release of Diablo 3 almost a week away (can you feel it in your blood?), a very important thought comes to mind: how are you going to tackle the game? I'm interested more in the leveling aspect here. One thing's certain: with the RMAH no longer available at launch, we all have one less thing to worry about during the first week or so.

For my part I think I have my leveling strategy nailed down pretty solid. Here's what I intend.

• Create a Demon Hunter named Prometheus
• Create the other 4 classes, as well as 5 other mules for extra storage
• Join random groups starting at level 1
• Beat the Skeleton King
• From there on, until the end of Normal difficulty play on my own
• Once I finish Normal, group up and tackle the rest of the content in Nightmare, Hell and hopefully Inferno

What's the rationale behind this strategy? Well, thanks to being part of the beta, I now know in intimate detail all the content up to the Skeleton King. I want to get past that content as fast as possible and the best way to do that is in a group.

After the Skeleton King I will be stepping into unknown territory. That's where the fun begins. None of us knows what to expect for the rest of the game. Sure, we have a small inkling of some of the areas but we don't know for certain what awaits. I think that's awesome. I can't wait to discover all that on my own. And the keywords here are "on my own". I want to take my time, explore every little nook and cranny of every area, and listen carefully to the spoken dialogue. In short, I want to savor the story and the lore. Normal difficulty won't be too hard. As a veteran Diablo player I expect to finish it without incurring a single death, provided I'm not too reckless. For this reason, I don't need a group. The pleasure of discovery will be mine alone.

Once I am done with Normal, the hard grind to level 60 begins. From there on I will play in random groups as much as possible. Leveling and progression are faster and loot is better. At this point I will have already experienced the full story once so there will be no need to waste time gawking at new things.

That's it, my leveling strategy is simple and efficient. Had the RMAH been in the game, I would have been tempted to blaze through the game as fast as possible, to take advantage of those first days of auction house madness. As it is, I'm grateful that I won't feel pressured into doing that.

So what do y'all think? Is this a good plan or what? What about you?

Will Diablo 3's launch be successful?

As we are getting closer to Diablo 3's release, I'm becoming more anxious at the idea that, what if the launch isn't successful? I'm not talking about the game itself. I am confident that Diablo 3 will be one of the most successful games ever. But I am wondering if Blizzard's servers will be able to handle a huge influx of players from day 1.

Many games, when they launch, are riddled with bugs and other issues, sometimes making them unplayable until a patch is released. That Diablo 3 will get a day 1 patch is almost a given, and that's perfectly normal, considering that the digital pre-order I downloaded is not complete and that even printed discs have discrepancies between them and the playable content on release day.

Release-day patches apart, my biggest concern is that the servers will hiccup when a few million people try to log in simultaneously. Blizzard announced today that the launch will be global and it will happen at the same hour, probably midnight PST. In a way, that will help to attenuate some of the login issues because not everyone will be available to log in in the middle of the night.

For my part I'm planning to go to bed early on the 14th, and then wake up at night to see if I can log in. I'm 2 hours ahead of Blizzard's headquarters, meaning that it will be 2 a.m. local time when the game launches. Hopefully I can get 6-7 hours of sleep and then, if I can log in without any issues, I'll be partying all night.

Some of my fears may be irrational. If we think about it, when was the last time Blizzard botched a game launch? I truly can't recall. It might have been back in the days of early WoW. But those days are long gone. For the Cataclysm expansion I was able to get in a few minutes after launch. I can't even remember when I last saw those dreaded login queues that we were forced to bear many years ago.

On the reverse, I'm confident that Blizzard has learned a lot about server loads and balancing, and network technologies with WoW. I'm hoping that experience will come into play with Diablo 3. It would be truly disastrous if the game wasn't playable for the first few days, or gods forbid, for the first week. That's why it sucks to much that the game can only be played online.

I'm trying to draw a parallel between Diablo 3 and Starcraft 2's launch. I haven't played SC2 but maybe some of you have. Were you present at the launch? How was it? Was everyone able to log in immediately? Were there any problems during the first hours/days? I'm thinking that SC3 and D3 are both similar in this regard. Both games' predecessors could be played locally, on a LAN and on Battle.net, while now they are online-only. OK, SC2 can be played offline but for the most part it is tied to Battle.net. Both games have a huge fan-base and both sold (or will sell) millions of copies. Maybe I'm wrong on this but that's why I want to hear someone else's opinion.

So what are your thoughts on this? Are you one of those who will try to get in the moment it is released? Are you optimistic about the launch? Do you think there will be issues at the beginning?

A month from now your life will end

Do all y'all realize that Diablo 3 will be out in exactly one month? I can't believe that after so many years it is finally within grasp. I can't believe that in a month I will have the chance to venture beyond the Skeleton King and Act 1. And I was one of the lucky few with access to the beta. Many more folks will experience Diablo 3 for the first time.

These are exciting times but I'm also freaking out a bit. All of a sudden, the release is looming close and I find that I still have a lot of real-life things to wrap up.

I'm not impatient anymore. I don't have butterflies in my stomach. I calmed down completely after they announced the release date. The weeks before the announcement, the butterflies were doing acrobatics in my gut, but immediately after, the calm settled. I guess it's the calm before the storm.

I am very optimistic about Diablo 3. My feeling isn't shared by everyone, and many fans of the Diablo series have vowed to boycott the game. I understand their concerns because I, too, raged briefly when I found out that D3 would be online-only and it would have a Real Money Auction House. Not long after that, I came to realize that these are things I can live with. The RMAH is an innovative feature and for that it is necessary to keep the game tied to Blizzard's servers.

I can't wait to explore the rest of the game and find out what the devs have prepared for us. The beta is but a tiny sliver of the full game and after being constrained by this puny demo, I am already in awe at the thought of what comes next.

In a month, my real life will end. Metaphorically, not literally. For the next months, perhaps even for the rest of the year or even for the next few years, I predict that real life concerns will struggle to find space in my head. The demonic invasion begins and we are powerless to resist.

About cheating, RMAH and gold find

I just read three articles from different Diablo blogs in quick succession and they raise some very interesting issues. I have decided to respond to each of them in one large post of my own.


Cheating in Diablo 3

Meldora brings up the controversial topic of cheating. Will it be possible to cheat in Diablo 3? Meldora makes some very good points in the article. You should really check it out.

My opinion is that, generally, it is very hard to cheat in server-side games like WoW and Diablo 3. The reason for this is that the important calculations take place on the server, which only tells the client what to do. In other words, the server is the one that feeds the client (the player's computer) with information.

This is how I imagine things work. When you kill a monster, the client sends a message to the server: "player hits monster", along with the player's coordinates. The monsters are generated on the server side so their coordinates are already known. When a monster moves, coordinates are sent to the client which updates the graphics based on that.

Next, the server looks at the player's coordinates, pulls up the character's and monster's stats, calculates if there's a hit, whether it is a killing blow, and so on. In the case of a killing blow, the server sends the message to the client: "monster dead", along with a list of items that drop. The client draws the death animation and displays the items. This system can't be fooled easily because the loot was determined on the server and it was also stored on it. The server merely sent a list of item names (with their stats), and not the item itself, to the client.

This is an overly simplified and likely flawed description of how the server-client architecture works in MMOs such as these. However, the point is that the client has no means of duping items simply because the client doesn't have the capability to generate items. It can only read what the server feeds it.

In Diablo 2 the situation was different. Diablo 2 was a standalone single-player game, with an online multiplayer component. The client definitely had the ability to generate items and perform calculations, and there's no disputing that. For that reason, people were able to manipulate certain flaws in the system such that they could dupe items locally and then transfer them to other players they met online.

So my thought is that it will be practically impossible to dupe items in Diablo 3. Some beta testers have reported being able to dupe items by mistake but it seems that it was an issue with the Auction House, meaning that the duping most likely occurred on the server side, something that can be instantly corrected by Blizzard.

However, there might be other forms of cheating that players can engage in. Meldora mentions one of the most notorious: teleport hacks. These hacks also happen in WoW and other MMOs and the reason they are possible is because they are done by manipulating the player coordinates which are generated by the client. In essence, this allows the character to "teleport" or instantly move to any location on the map

I'm sure Blizzard is taking steps to combat this but short of strongly encrypting the client, I don't see how they could do it. Someone is bound to find a way to exploit this. Now, while in WoW teleport hacks were useful for the quick farming of resource nodes, I'm not sure what use they'll be in Diablo 3, since the point of the game is to kill monsters and not to run as fast as possible through the content.

Finally, there's the issue of botting. Botting in online games has always been controversial. It allows a player to program a character to automatically go through a series of complex, pre-programmed motions, killing monsters, farming nodes, fishing and so on, over and over again. I believe botting is unethical because it allows someone to make large sums of virtual currency while they are away from their computer.

Botting can be very detrimental to Diablo 3, when we consider the Real Money Auction House. This would, potentially, allow unscrupulous individuals to essentially create money out of thin air. I really, really hope that Blizzard will make botting impossible, though I fail to see how. They haven't succeeded so far in WoW and there's nothing to suggest they have a secret weapon against it.

So there you have it: some of the ways in which people could cheat in Diablo 3. Make no mistake, Blizzard will take cheating very seriously, much more than they did in WoW, because when there's real money at stake, there must be no way to tamper with that, otherwise we'd all be able to dupe the money in our bank accounts.


Will You Spend Any Money on the RMAH?

The second article is written by Oligopoly where he discusses whether players will spend real money on the RMAH or not.

Essentially players fall in two groups: those who plan to profit off of the RMAH and those who are eager to spend tons of cash to equip their characters.

From what I've heard, there are still players of Diablo 2 who spend hundreds of dollars for virtual items. That's crazy man! But that's just my opinion, one that is not widely shared. It's their money and who am I to tell them how to spend it?

I find myself on the other side of the fence, the side that wants to profit from this. My goal is to have lots of fun and also make some pocket change on the side. I don't think I'll be sweating it too hard but if the opportunity arises, I won't hesitate to make a buck on the RMAH.

Will I buy items from the RMAH? Most certainly not. I'm a thrifty person in real life and this is one area where I won't be spending my hard-earned money (of which there isn't a lot to start with). On the other hand, if I can see a good deal and I know for sure that I'll be able to turn around and sell it back for a profit, I will do it. But I won't load money into my account for that purpose. Anything I will accrue will be through sales of my own stuff.

Will there be more sellers than buyers? That's a very interesting question and it will become clearer in the months which follow the release.


How to Get +2,324% Gold Find

The final article, and one of the most fascinating, is again by Meldora. In it, he (she?) corrects the previously estimated figure of 541% maximum Gold Find that a character can potentially equip, to an even more astounding figure of 2,324%!

Wow, I was truly speechless when I read that. Now, of course, some assumptions are made, and chief among them is that the numbers that were data-mined from the beta are accurate and will scale accordingly to higher difficulties.

Somehow, even though this number looks very juicy, I doubt that Blizzard will allow that. There must be something wrong with those numbers. Either they are not final or Blizzard is toying with us.

Just imagine what you could do with +2300% GF! You wouldn't even have to farm Inferno or Hell. That's because you would be gimped to such an extent by wearing only GF gear that you wouldn't be able to survive those higher difficulties.

Instead, how about going back all the way to Act 1 in Normal? Gold drops in the beta, currently, can reach 90G. with +2300% GF that would balloon to over 2100 gold per drop! That's insane! Now, imagine if you increased the difficulty to Nightmare. You'd end up getting thousands of gold per drop.

Is this scenario realistic? Depends. Perhaps gold costs at max level and Inferno are astronomical. Maybe gold really is needed in huge quantities at these difficulties. Maybe a death will cost 1 million gold in repairs. But I tend to doubt that. Dealing in huge amounts of currency is never a good thing. It's better to keep gold relatively scarce instead of having to deal in billions of gold.

My take on this is that something must be wrong with those numbers. It's not the data-miners' or the theorycrafters' fault. It's simply something that, at this point, hasn't been made entirely clear and isn't even in finished stage. Perhaps that amount is indeed possible, in theory. What if, in practice, it will be virtually impossible to acquire the perfect combination of items that will make it possible? We shall find out. And it will be an exciting journey of discovery.