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Games: Diablo II |
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I don't talk about D2 that much on this site, oddly enough. It's not that I'm compartmentalizing my website work, it's just that I get plenty of D2 stuff there, and want to indulge more in other interests here. When I first created Black Champagne, back in January 2002, I was still deeply-involved in the D2 site, and could have blogged at length about various D2 and diabloii.net issues. I chose not to back then since I didn't want BC to be Flux's D2 blog, and since I didn't want to talk about D2 things and people that would get back to those people. I didn't want dii.net forum posts pointing to various entries on BC and saying things like, "Oh, did you see what Flux said about Gaile and Elly and Blizzard!?" At the time it was often difficult to restrain myself when I had some particularly juicy bit of inter-site intrigue or dirt. Over the three years of BC though, as I've grown less and less involved in D2, it's grown quite easy to not talk about it, since I don't think about D2 or care much about D2 anymore. In fact, if Elly had ever been able to find anyone to pick up even the reduced duties I now carry out on the D2 site, I would likely have quit working on it entirely by mid-2003. I still don't talk about the D2 site much, but I do talk about the game from time to time, and my D2 column, and a few other such things. And those blog entries are what you'll find archived on this page. More recent updates are on top.
About the only thing of note lately is the continuing D2 resurgence around here. Malaya and I played a bit more on Tuesday, and then got in another couple of hours Thursday night. We've moved my Necro and her Sorc halfway through Act 3 and are still going well. No one has come anywhere near dying, despite Malaya playing with virtually no thought to resistance and about 50 stat points in reserve at lvl 23. My Necro is lvl 25 and is still going very cheap, with just one point in everything, and +2 to all from his wand and helm. I'm mostly saving up to put points into Lower Resistance and Bone Spirit at lvl 30, and counting on that and my minions and my sorcy partner for long term killing power. I do love nuking away any big mobs with corpse explosion, but the mana cost for that is hurting me with the very minimal +mana gear I now possess. Spell-casting with a no-twinks char is touch and go at my low level. I use up a lot of blue pots, but they drop in plenty, and after all, this is v1.10, I can just buy them in the stores if/when I need to. It just feels so cheesy and Diablo-esque to do so... I have no idea how far we'll take these chars, but we're having fun so far in our relatively short bursts of play time, so as long as we're having fun, it's a go.
This might be the single worst-written email I've ever received at the D2 site. And given the amount of young male AOL users in the reading audience, that's saying something. I've also posted it here in the same visually-painful "lucida handwriting" (bold) font I got it in, so if you don't have that font or you have some sort of "use my fonts only" setting in your browser, you're missing half the fun. Well, maybe not "half" but quite a bit of it. I was surprised he didn't use neon pink text on some sort of small, repeating, black and white background, just to add to the difficulty in reading it. If he had it would have gone straight into my "top 10 emails ever" folder.
Spelling, punctuation, sentence structure, etc. It's quite a masterpiece. Plus he's from New Zealand, so it's not like he's using English as his 4th language or something. (And the mails I get from people in Germany or Austria or Sweden or wherever, who are using English as their 3rd or 4th language, are always far more lucid and readable than the ones I get from young boys in English-speaking countries.
As for the Diablo II, we were curious to see how it would work on her new computer, and since neither of us had played D2 or any other computer game in months, we were due some playing time. And it was pretty fun, I have to admit. I did a Necromancer and she did a Sorceress, both brand new v1.10 single player chars with very minimal twinking. Just an Angelic Raiment each (which we hardly wore anyway, due to some luck with rare armor and a general lack of AC need due to our character builds) and the Infernal Set wand for my Necromancer, with a Wormskull for later. Malaya's sorcy got an Angelic sword and amulet as well, just to speed things along for the first dozen levels or so. We played on /players 8 up until the Monastery, when we turned it down to /players 4 just to speed things along, since our partial clear had us around lvl 15 by then. We were both 17 for Andy, who we did on /players 2, and we turned it back up to /players 8 once we were into Act 2 and did our quick cube and Radament run. The day's play took perhaps 3 hours, we played without hurrying, and ended up lvl 20 and 19, and enjoyed it. Neither of us ever came anywhere near dying other than her Sorceress from a couple of painful Cold Enchanted boss deaths, and that was only because Malaya doesn't like to pick her stats/skills in advance; preferring to go as long as possible without assigning any points, while always keeping quite a few in reserve for later indecision. It drives me somewhat crazy, when she's running along with 70 stat points and 20 skill points stored up, but I've learned to ignore that and just have fun playing at a much slower speed than I grew used to in the old hyper-competitive days of Hardcore on USEast. That's one of the main reasons I did a Necromancer now to team with her Sorcy. I knew they'd be a good team; neither of us have the time to play very often and we're not likely to take these characters past Nightmare, and it's more fun for both of us if I'm not doing some superfast (in Normal and NM) killing char like a Zealot or Barb or Bowazon where I'm constantly running forwards at full speed and never want to pause for anything. Plus neither of our characters is very equipment dependent, so we're not likely to be annoyed by endless failed gambles for a good weapon or armor or some goddamned leech rings. And it was fun, through Act 1 and early Act 2; with my +1 wand and a decent magical shrunken head I had lvl 4 Raise Skeleton, lvl 3 Skele Mage, lvl 4 skele mastery, and a clay and then blood golem. Enough to have a decent little army, and with the summoned minions so much faster and more deadly in v1.10 I just sat back and saved skill points for later and let my first batch of minions slaughter everything, while I kept the Amp going. I'd regularly play for 15 minutes without even getting hit hard enough to have to recast my Bone Armor, and I was putting most of my points into energy, so I could keep up the Amp Damage and prepare for the eventual fun of spamming Bone Spirits and Corpse Explosions. Anyway, I have no idea when we'll play next, but it was fun to get back into the game, however slightly, and it also made me glad that I no longer play it as I used to. Even three hours of gaming seems to go by in a blink, while simultaneously failing to do anything to satisfy my inner gaming desires. Desires that I've been ignoring and stuffing down pretty successfully for some weeks/months.
December 5, 2003 First up, here's the other email I wanted to quote and comment on, and would have in Tuesday's blog if not for that one going so long on the first three emails I commented on.
His suggestion isn't a bad one, and trust me, there are tens of millions of Americans who hate Dubya, most of them a lot more than me. In fact I wouldn't say I exactly "hate" him. I think he's a colossally-incompetent president who is surrounded by controlling and very misguided advisors and the country and the world would be much better off if the last three years of US actions could be erased and the next year was the last one he had to run the country, but that doesn't mean I'd floor if it he were buried to the neck near the red line and I were driving a Zamboni. In more general terms, my lack of d2 playing time has almost nothing to do with boredom, and almost everything to do with priorities. I would enjoy playing computer games some of the time. I have to spend some time reading news and blogging and playing with Malaya and playing with the kitties and cooking and eating and shopping and showering and sleeping etc. (Those items are not at all in order of preference or time consumed.) I desperately want to spend as much time as possible working on my fiction writing, and often cut back or sacrifice time on the above list of items for that. And while I'd enjoy playing an hour or three a day with new Hardcore ladder characters, I have other things that I'm better off spending that time doing. Hell, if I had the time I'd enjoy updating lots of the old v1.09 info pages on the D2 site, and creating new pages for new v1.10 things, writing and adding strategies, and so on. It's almost better that I don't though, since just recently there have been exploits to rip off accounts and characters, ways to dupe massively, and that's after the previous townkill exploits, various bugged one hit deaths from monsters, and so on. I've never been bothered so much by losing a lvl 85 HC char with great equipment when it was my fault, but when I see the economy being ruined by dupes and cheaters, or I die to bugs or cheats, I get very angry. And if I'd been playing all along and had several very high level HC chars and had been enjoying trading for the first time ever with a relatively clean ladder economy, the fact that yet another massive duping trick ruined the economy would have really depressed me. As it is I didn't even find out about it until a day later, since I never checked my D2 site emails on Tuesday, and when I did I couldn't have cared less. Anyway, take his suggestion if you're of a mind. I'd be playing in more serious style as I tried to collect every new elite unique and try out every new niche-build that took advantage of weird equipment and odd synergy boosts for party play, if I were playing. But since I don't feel that I have the time for that sort of recreation, I'm not. I do miss computer games though, having played absolutely nothing other than quick games of blackjack, miniature golf, and Seven Seas for the last 2 or 3 months. Perhaps over the holiday break Malaya and I will spend some time with D2 or something else. But I doubt it, since I'm likely going to want to pour every spare moment into writing my fantasy novel, since I want to get enough done to start considering query letters to agents, and I need a very polished first chapter and a concrete outline for the rest for that. And I'll need to be well into chapter 5 or 6 to be decided on the outline. Or at least that's what I keep telling myself.
November 3, 2003 Saturday was lazy, after the burst of high speed writing I engaged in Friday and Saturday to get the D2 Halloween story finished (sort of) on time. I went out with Malaya for most of the day, watched a DVD that night (Seven) finished a novel (reading, not writing), etc. Sunday wasn't much different as we went for a hike and took a bunch of photos of cow shit, shopped, Malaya made a huge pot of Minestrone soup and I burned cornbread, we watched some TV and a DVD (Shrek, one of Malaya's favorites), and so on. An enjoyable weekend, but I didn't get a damn thing done in terms of work. In fact I'm actually going backwards since tons of World Event emails keep coming in at the D2 site, despite the fact that no one has anything to say about it that I didn't have on the site page Thursday night. Reading is hard. Possessing the objectivity to realize that your Diablo Clone story is identical to a dozen others I've already received is harder. So by now I'm actively dreading pulling the d2 site mails, since every hour brings another dozen DC accounts that subtract seconds from my life, while adding nothing to my knowledge. Add in the fact that I let all of my Realm chars decay months ago, and have no intention of ever making any more of them, and you can imagine my excitement about further World Event emails and news posts. That reminds me, I should say that I'm not really playing D2 anymore, and haven't played in about 6 months, other than to build up a couple of chars in v1.10 to test things out. I had a couple of emails here and at the D2 site from people who wanted to play with me in v1.10, and I meant to reply to you guys, but never got around to it. Sorry, but I no longer have the time or interest to keep this stuff up and honestly, if Elly weren't having health problems and there were anyone at all to replace even 10% of the work I do on the D2 site, I'd have severed all connections to it months ago. I don't make any money from it, I don't really enjoy working n it, and I really feel like I could spend the time more productively on my own life/site/writing. I'm after a job in real life, and if I get that my time for a d2 fansite will probably drop to nothing. Which would be sad, but life goes on... *sigh*
Today I played some D2X. Ordinarily this wouldn't be especially big news, but since I hadn't touched the game for about two weeks, it was nice to get back to it, if only briefly. I fired up my biggest v1.10 beta character, an 85 Paladin, and headed off for a quick Baal run. This had become a pretty routine event a few weeks ago, but it was hell today. I died about 8 times on WorldStone 2, due to the horrendously bad spawn of Gloams, Poison Skeleton Mages, and Unravellers. The Gloams in hell are just obscenely nasty in v1.10a, dealing something like 500 damage per lightning bolt direct hit, and that's to my Paladin who has 58% lightning resist in hell and 1200 hps. Basically any 3 that hit me at once kill me instantly, which means every time you get a boss pack you have to dodge and weave and shimmy and try to get them spread out so you can pick them off one at a time. My Pal has lvl 25 Smite, which is good for like 4.5 seconds of stun time, and I use that liberally, often keeping 3 or 4 monsters stunned at once, and try to let my merc get closer to the others since he's got higher res than me, a unique death mask on, and 1800 hps. The gloams don't shoot lightning at melee range, but they do steal your mana with every hit, and you can't leech from them at all. Add those to the poison mages who keep you constantly poisoned with very nasty life loss, and who can't be leeched from, plus the occasional Greater Mummy to resurrect the skeletons you kill, and it was just a train wreck. I didn't die on WS 3 or the Throne, though it was a close thing. I got Blood Lords, Ob Mages, and Gloams on the last level, and that was an equally awful spawn, though fortunately there were very few of the gloams. But I'm not going to go on and on about D2, but I've been thinking about doing an article for the D2 site about my experiences taking new chars through the levels in v1.10 with equipment from scratch, so this game was a sort of reminder or remotivator about that. Didn't quite work out that way though, since now I'm like, "bleh" about the whole thing. I hadn't played in 2 weeks since I was getting into playing too much and after a conversation with Malaya about our long term goals and ideas, I swore not to play anymore in September. And I didn't and I've not missed it since I spent my time reading a few novels and working on my own novel instead, along with time with her, some TV, surfing, and of course this blog. I think it's unlikely that I'll ever do another big project on the D2 site, and this isn't a big project, but it would at least be one last opportunity to share my gaming knowledge with the masses. Since I'm not going to play much once v1.10 comes out, and therefore what I know now will be obsolete in about a week.
This mail came in yesterday to my D2 site address. I present it here, unedited, for reasons that will shortly become clear. I usually make fun of dumb mails when I post them here, but in this case, what more can I say?
I blocked out his email here since I don't want you jackals tearing into him as though he were made of ham. But I bet everyone can easily guess his ISP...
One mail recently asked a good question, with the author wondering whether I'd be writing an article on my v1.10 D2X Beta play experiences and opinions. I hadn't really thought about it, but I should probably do one on the D2 site. I have a long page of new info and funny screenies and such about v1.10 that I've been meaning to get done and online for like 2 weeks, but I've just had so little time/inclination to do D2 site stuff, it hasn't happened yet. However since I've had at least a dozen hours of play time on the patch, mostly in games with Malaya (during the brief intervals when the 2nd computer is actually functional) I have played enough to write something about it. And that would be a decent D2 site feature. One problem is that I've built up a Bowazon to 47 and a Paladin to 35, but both are totally from scratch with no twinks (well, I gave the Pal some stuff the Amazon found, but I mean no twinks from any pre-existing chars) and my play experience is very different from what it would be for a new v1.10 char on the realms, whom I could twink up with virtually anything they desired. Another problem is that the Pal is just in Act 5/Normal, while the Bowazon is in Act 2/Nightmare. Far too early in the game to comment with any authority on the new v1.10 changes, especially since most of those come in only in Hell difficulty. And even when I am in hell and seeing the changes, I'll be seeing those with chars who have far far lower quality equip than mine on the realms, which makes a huge difference in how the game plays. I could write a pretty good short guide to starting off from scratch in v1.10 now, but I'd be more interested in writing about major differences in Hell, high level equipment, how the new recipes work for hell chars, and so on. However since I don't really have any interest in playing high level chars in v1.10 just to test it (they all seem so old or irrelevant or easy now), and I'm not playing enough to get to Hell any time soon, I guess I should write about what I can write about, if I want it done soon enough for anyone to care.
I didn't intend to not blog Friday, but as you probably know, the D2 v1.10 patch came out in a beta, and I got busy with that. Well, first of all I ate dinner at the Star of the Sea, a relatively pricey and very nice restaurant down at the harbor, and by the time I ate there with dad and two friends, drove back to his house, finished unpacking and rearranging books on my big bookshelf (which has been moved over to dad's house and into my old bedroom there) and got back here, it was nearly midnight. And when I got on the computer I pulled email and saw about 180 messages to me at the D2 site, about 174 of which were about the patch coming out in beta. The first mail about it was from a Blizzard PR guy, and it came in around 7pm. The first mail from anyone else came in around 8pm, so true to his word, he did give me/the D2 site a jump on everyone else in terms of posting about the patch. His mail basically said they were doing it in beta and that I could post my article and say the patch was coming up in beta very soon. Unfortunately I was out from 4pm until midnight, and Elly and Rush and Gaile were all offline that whole time also, so the D2 site went from potentially having the news an hour before anyone else on earth -- to me finally posting about it five hours late. Bleh. This also further sucked the already feeble life out of my v1.10 Bliz North play test article, which was posted and well-received, but far from big news since 90% of the people who read it probably had the patch hours before my article went online. See, that's why I never leave my cave and my precious; when I go out and try to have a real life for one night, it always comes back to haunt me.
Since several people mailed to express their amusement at and enjoyment of the clueless Diablo II site mail yesterday, here's another one. I get at least half a dozen a week from people who think I am an official Blizzard Entertainment employee, and while most of the mails are short and relatively to the point (usually asking for their account to be restored) some of them are more entertaining. This guy seems to realize that I'm not Blizzard, but that's about the only thing he's figured out. Here follows the entire email.
I don't even know where to begin snarking on this one, so I think I'll just let it stand for itself. The grammar and punctuation are of course breathtaking, and the content isn't far behind. As best I can tell he's asking if he can find v1.09 (the current game version) uniques and save them, unidentified, until v1.10 comes out, hoping that will make them somehow magically upgrade to v1.10 items. I suppose that's a legit question, if you can wade through the writing long enough to figure out what he's saying. I thought it was common knowledge that item stats were set at the time of item generation, but much like common sense, the only thing about common knowledge that's common is how uncommon it is. Also, blizzard answered this question specifically in the fan site chat 2 days ago, which I'd like to hope this guy took 5 minutes to read. I've long wondered why some people will take the time to email about a question that they could probably answer for themselves in about 5 minutes of directed surfing. Don't they feel any shame in asking about something stupid that they could have easily found out for themselves? Did they actually believe their teachers in junior high when they gave out that whole, "There are no stupid questions." bullshit? Or do I just have an unnatural aversion to appearing ignorant by asking a question that I could probably have figured out myself...
In other semi-news, Blizzard at last held a fansite chat on the forever-upcoming v1.10 D2 patch. I didn't know about it since I hadn't gotten through all of my D2 emails yet (500+ stacked up in the week I was gone) to get to the one from Bliz PR announcing when and where, so I found out about it just as I got home Thursday evening with a bunch of groceries. (Frozen shrimp aside, I had nothing to eat after being gone 12 of the last 13 days.) I was annoyed with the whole concept at the time and didn't read it, and when I finally got around to reading it hours later, my annoyance returned with reinforcements. I considered doing a chat analysis, something I started doing years ago and have continued until the present time, but I just didn't have one in me. I don't really care about the patch changes, I'm not looking forward to playing D2 again other than out of occasional idle boredom/curiosity, but what really annoys me is the whole NDA situation. Malaya and I got to go play it at Blizzard North during my first visit up there in late May, but due to the NDAs we signed neither of us can say anything about what we saw in the patch or at Blizzard North. I was supposed to have written an article about the experience, and posted that article just for various Blizzard people to get a look at it, but I've not done it yet for various reasons, and it's looking less and less important that I do one, as more and more information about the patch is released in advance. Most of the stuff I knew that was secret and new has now been made public, and due to the NDA, I can't even discuss or speculate about things the way I'd like to. So when there's a question in the chat that I could have answered a month ago, I grit my teeth. And since I'm still NDA'ed, I can't even say something simple like, "Yes, I saw Change X at Blizzard North, and here's what the designer told me about why they are doing it. And I can't even quote things and then elaborate:
I'd say something like, "Yes, there are lots of new uniques, ones for every item type, and in fact the one new elite unique that I found while playing was an elite javelin dropped by Baal. Which was part of the big MF bonus the first time you kill an Act Boss, but as the chat also said, your MF is not factored in at all on later Act Boss kills, so you can say goodbye forever to boss runs for phat itamz." The annoying thing is that me saying that would add NOTHING to the issue. No one cares that I found one, and me confirming what Blizzard said in the chat would mean nothing. So why can't I say it? What's the point of an NDA when I can't even comment on things they've already confirmed? God knows, I'm too aggravated and disinterested in the whole thing to mail Bliz and ask about it at this point. I don't want to be the one who does all the work in the fansite community and gets muzzled the one time I really do have a ton of new info. I could have held my own fansite chat a month ago and answered 95% of the Q's in this chat, and 90% of those in much more detail. And I find that so frustrating that I'd just rather withdraw from the entire thing than sit here uselessly-muzzled. And yes, I realize that I knew there would be an NDA going in, and I'm being a big baby and acting like I'm not even happy that I got to see the game and play the game so far in advance of everyone else. My point is that since I get so much enjoyment and fulfillment from sharing the info I have about the game, it's very annoying to not be able to do that.
While we're on the topic of Diablo II (well, sort of, I think the main topic here is me bitching, but then again, when is that not the main topic?) I thought I'd throw in this amusing email that I just read, as I'm digging through the 500+ mails that piled up over the week I was visiting Malaya. I never pulled any D2 site mails since that would just be folly over dialup. Anyway, this one came in June 11th, to flux@diabloii.net. Blizzard deleted a ton of cheater accounts around the 10th, while I was out of town, so the first I knew about it was reading the news on dii.net from Malaya's house the next day. And obviously I'm not affiliated with Blizzard, I just work on a fansite, I have nothing to do with who gets banned or how they are selected, etc, etc.
It's just such a classic of impotent pre-teen outrage and confusion and AOLese... I love this mail. I love how he insults and flames, in the process of asking for a special favor. I suspect this technique works just about as well in real life as it did here. Except that in real life people can't easily copy and paste his remarks to the store bulletin board for everyone to laugh at, while online I can do that with a click of a mouse. Just one of the innumerable advantages that online text has over vocal communication. Adapt or perish, worthless meat units.
For a quick follow up to the whole "Blizzard North visit announcement" from yesterday. The big forum thread about it on the D2 site has some interesting stuff to read, mostly from players who are taking it somewhat personally that I got to play, but can't tell about what I saw yet. Though mostly people are annoyed at yet another release date miss. I'd like to ridicule people for actually putting hope behind any announced Blizzard release date at this point, but I guess if Bill Roper has yet to learn not to give a firm date, the fans can hardly be blamed for falling into the same trap. My favorite post in the whole thread is what's currently the very last one, by Alrin.
Such a delightful example of how to utterly take the piss out of things. As it happens I am in complete agreement with the guy. The thing I am most surprised by is that no one has started yammering on about Projects X and Y, the as-of-yet unannounced titles Blizzard North is suspected to be working on. I'd think people would be far more interested in asking if I'd seen anything of that/those upcoming games than whether Berserk barbs will be slightly faster or slower come v1.10. Yet I've not seen a single mention of that in any post or comment. I suppose people just don't know enough about the whole situation to wonder, or else the ones who would are elsewhere, and all we've got are players who still actually give a damn about D2. Poor damned souls. One and two more amusing posts from far angrier fans can be seen in the Battle.net forums, where a couple of threads started from people who were apparently furious that the v1.10 patch won't be out by the first week of June, when Bill Roper said it would be. The problem seems to be that he said it in an interview with Elly at E3, and since we conducted the interview and posted the transcript, it's like, "Dii.net posted it, therefore it's their fault that the patch is late. Or else they were lying to us in the first place." What makes these two troll-filled Bnet forum posts amusing to me is how other readers totally shoot down the idiots with cold hard facts. One guy in the first thread eventually quotes our actual page entries, both of which clearly say "maybe", "possibly", "if there aren't further delays", etc. People really are quite stupid. Online is worse than real life, but unfortunately there are dumb people everywhere. But you really realize it when you see what people are upset about, and how often them being upset is 10% the other thing, and 90% them just being too stupid to comprehend any nuance or subtlety, and therefore being all infuriated over something that shouldn't even make them blink, if they were smart enough to read a one paragraph introduction before leaping right to a quote. The selective memory of people is interesting also. To quote from one post:
This is just wrong. We've had a Chat Gem page since the fricking D2 beta (over 3 years ago) and it has always said that the chat gem doesn't do anything. I should know, I wrote it. I'm not even sure what he's talking about with the "no portals when killing Baal" thing, but I vaguely remember that as one of the stupider MF boosting rumors. And yes, it's listed on the MF Misconceptions list in part of the giant MF guide I wrote, where it's specifically labeled as bullshit. We have also said several times that full tomes have nothing to do with the number of cows you get in the Cow Level, including lampooning it in the April Fool's FotD just last year. We even have a "stupid rumors" item in our main FAQ, which specifically rebuts all 3 of the things this guy says. So how does a seemingly-competent individual matter-of-factly attribute the spread of 3 stupid lies to a website that has repeatedly made an effort to shoot down those rumors? Good question. Did I mention how stupid people are?
I don't much care about it at this point, the game or the site, but after four years working on it I don't want to just let it wither away. Gaile never does anything on it anymore either, so it's pretty much been all Elly of late. I don't dislike doing stuff on that site, but it seems sort of pointless. At least 95% of the hundreds (literally) of pages of content I've done there over the years is now gone, deleted, inaccessible, or just buried way down in the archived features. The content was valuable at the time, helping to make the D2 site so successful, but looking back it seems sort of a waste. Stuff I do on this site survives in archives and features and articles, and isn't going to become obsolete so quickly. You've perhaps noticed that I added an "Articles" link to the nav bar a week or so ago, with one article in it now. It will eventually have dozens, culled from the past blogs. The thing on religion/nationalism/sports team allegiance from a few days ago will certainly be added. When I've got time and aren't motivated to write new creative things, I'm going over my old blogs here, and the big long essay type thing I'll do once or twice a week, that almost works as a stand alone article, I'm copying to the articles section. Of course I can't just cut and paste and be done with it, I must rewrite them, add more thoughts, possibly add emailed comments, etc, which makes it take a lot longer, but in theory creates an article worth reading as more than just something I faffed out one day in an hour when I should have been asleep. Plus it's a nice way to make me feel better when a few paragraph idea turns into a 4000 word essay. A couple/few hundred people reading it the day I post it is nice, but having it improved and linked to from the main nav bar forever is nicer. I figure more new visitors will read those than click back 9 months ago into the blog archives. So nicer to do things here than on the D2 site, where they are forgotten so quickly. That's just a rationalization though, really. I am bored with D2, with the same dumb questions in email over and over again, the same hacks ruining the game while Blizzard doesn't do shit about it, and the perpetually-delayed v1.10 patch. The last gameplay patch came out 13 months ago, for god's sake. Blizzard said 500x pre-release that they'd be adding new Runewords and items and other such things on a weekly, or at least monthly basis. They rushed to get the unfinished game out by their "1st half of 2001" self-imposed deadline, and they made it. As most gaming companies do, they then worked on patches to put in all the missing content and bug fixes that should have been in the initial release, and made a lot of big and generally good changes in v1.08 and v1.09. Then everyone who had been working on it went to do other things, and basically ignored the game for about 8 months, other than the Bnet guys (not the same people as the dev team) making some bug fixes. The dev team is at last working on the game again, to make some desperately-needed balances and add some new items and such, but a whole one person is working on it now. Well two, he got another guy to help out and handle the new items and some other things. The patch was expected in June, then July, and it's now mid-September and they are really just getting started on things, due to making such huge changes. I honestly won't be all that surprised if it never gets finished. If the one programmer doing 90% of it gets sick of it, or is needed for something more pressing, that would pretty much be it for any D2X patch changes, forever. All of the content stuff for the d2 site I have in mind requires actual work to do. As in checking emails, checking game files, sorting screenshots, doing images, updating FAQs, etc. Here (on this site) I can just do what I want, in the order I want, and especially don't have to be bothered with those pesky facts. Accuracy schmaccuracy, it's my blog and I'll lie if I want to. *cough* One thing I'll probably be doing on the D2 site on a regular basis in the future is a bi-weekly blog. We've had a guy doing a bi-weekly article series called Garwulf's Corner for almost two years now, and in the most recent one, #48, he announced that #52 would be it, the last one ever. Read it if you want to see his explanation, but basically he's sick of doing them, and feels like he's run out of new things to write them about. That pretty well poisons the well for anyone coming after him, but nevertheless I'm going to dredge up a cold wet bucketful. My idea was to just do the sort of mini-blogs he's been doing, about whatever strikes my fancy. I'm basically doing 4 or 5 articles as long or longer than his usual one every week here (the 2 or 3 other days I do just news comments with a short bleh thing at the start) so how hard can it be to do one more every two weeks? I guess I'll find out. Monkey wrenches have already been applied in terms of subject matter, since suggestions from d2 site co-non-workers have been complicated. We're talking articles, pulling info from disparate locations, doing research to set up time lines of events, etc. Not exactly doctoral thesis level stuff, but certainly more than 15 minutes of typing about why LotR is roxor. Which was more the sort of thing I'd though about doing, being as that's what Garwulf usually did. Of course I want to do better than him, not look like I'm just slurping up his sloppy seconds, even though I am. I had thought about doing regular non-game articles on the site in the past, but that was back when Elly was still having a lot of issues about anything personal going on the site. She used to be annoyed by any sort of joke or personal comment or non-game OT comment, in any article or screenshot caption or news update. The idea of a full article that wasn't exactly about the game was totally out of the question. That's one of the main reasons I started this site, to have somewhere to write whatever I wanted to write, humor and sarcasm and news items and all of that. Not that 99% of what's here would be appropriate for the D2 site, but what's here has grown over time, while my initial desire was just to be free to do a site how I wanted to do it. I had long arguments/discussions with Elly about how the D2 site was being run, what sort of stuff we were posting on it, etc. My position was always that we should play up our assets, and if we had a funny comment to put into an article, or other interesting things to write about, we should do so. She was always totally against that, and would go into posted articles or screenshots or news updates and remove things she thought were not appropriate, often just cutting them out carelessly, leaving sentences that made no sense or were fragments, etc. This rather infuriated me, I will admit. Over time she's come to be much more mellow about that sort of thing, and will make jokes herself at times, and doesn't object to others doing them. I don't have any explanation as to why she's loosened up though. The odd thing is I'm not going to say she was wrong long ago. Most of the other d2 fansites were terribly unprofessional, and by our being mostly professional we really stood out and appeared more authoritative. Other sites were all run by hyper 15 y/o's, who couldn't help but put in long slobbering updates about things they liked and long sobbing ones about things they were disappointed by. I don't think either of those are necessarily awful; I wouldn't mind reading a gaming info site that had personality to it also, (The late great Lum the Mad had that.) but the problem was that none of the kids could write decently. So it would be one news item in 9 paragraphs of preamble, midamble, and postamble, (Two of the three preceeding amble's are not really words.) often studded with amazingly poor writing. Elly and Gaile and I used to almost never look at the other sites, as it was just depressing to see our news and content stolen and regurgitated (often exact cut and paste, without even changing the font or table colors), but we would sometimes find great humor in the writing quality. The funniest site was long before the D2 beta even began. Entitled the graveyard, it was almost as busy as dii.net way back in 1998 or 1999, despite having almost nothing about the game. The guy running it had no interest in the game, other than as a game that was coming up some day that he might want to play. He wanted to run a rant site, and just sort of combined it with a d2 site to keep the hits up. [Incidentally, there's really no point in paying attention to site traffic or the "community" more than a month or two before a game goes into beta. Kids run sites then and can get traffic with any sort of regular updating schedule, almost regardless of what they update with. Moreover, the traffic at that point is 99% super hardcore fanboys, who have no taste in site quality, and are much more likely to read a crappy site written by one of their peers, since they like the attitude, than they are to read a quality site by a talented adult. The whole fansite "community" pre-game is a big junior high style clique, with constant back-biting, jealousy, rumor-mongering, news-stealing, etc. When there isn't much actual game info, the kids have to fill the time with something. Unfortunately, we did not possess this insight back pre d2-beta, and constantly worried about traffic, and wondered how in the hell the crap those idiots were posting on Graveyard or Yeggs, with their total lack of accurate game info, were getting almost as many hits as we were, when we posted everything hours or days ahead of them and with much better presentation. Of course both of those sites vanished, Graveyard long before the D2 beta even began, and once the actual game was out our superior quality and dedication to updating pushed our traffic up exponentially. This phenomena repeated itself with Warcraft III, where a junky fanboy site at War3.com was as popular as Elly's new site Warcraftiii.net (which I have nothing to do with), despite that one getting constant plugs from the obscenely-busy Dii.net. It was because the traffic that far in advance of the game was mostly hyper fan boys, and they liked to get into forum slag fests and see updates with poor spelling and grammar. Once the game was out and updated had to contain actual info and be done quickly, not just copied from game previews, that site dropped like a brick balloon.] Anyway, I was speaking of the Graveyard site before that long digression. We enjoyed it on one level just because the guy running it was such an incredibly awful writer. Angst-ridden high school misunderstood computer nerd with math/programming skills inversely proportional to his writing ability. Yes, that describes half the webmasters on the Internet. So a typical Graveyard update would start off with something about D2 from a new game preview and then instantly go off into a fairy tale land of mixed metaphors and wandering sentence structure, and talk about his field hockey try outs at school that day, or something. All on the main news page of what was in theory a D2 fansite I would kill to have saved some of the Gyard updates that Gaile and I used to copy and ICQ back and forth, laughing ourselves into tears at them. The site is long, long gone unfortunately, it didn't even last until the D2 beta. Anyway #2, that was part of an even longer digression. Good thing I didn't just criticize some other site webmaster for this sort of thing. I was saying I'll be doing a Flux's Corner, or something (God I hope someone thinks up a better name than that.) like that, once Garwulf quits in 7 weeks. Not sure what I'll write about, but given the preceding 10 paragraphs, something about the early history of d2 fansites might not go awry. I've got ideas for 3 or 4 other articles. My initial comments were about Elly forbidding anything like that in the past, and being surprised that she's for it now. Not only is she for it, she was pouring out invective about Bliz's wretched handling of their anti-cheating measures in D2 and now in War3, and encouraging me to write a no-holds barred article about it. Being as she's making her career doing gaming fansites, primarily Blizzard gaming sites, I'm surprised she's willing to risk their wrath. Probably since Bliz PR/community relations is such a disaster of missed opportunities and misguided priorities Elly doesn't care if they get pissed. It's not like they give us anything useful now anyway, especially considering the extra effort we've put out (spent our own money to attend E3 and ECTS 4 years running, not to mention endless hours on the fansites promoting their games) I personally could care less. I like and am friends (well, as much as you can be friends with people you see once a year) with a number of the Bliz North people, and I wouldn't want to insult them. I also know a few people in Bliz Irvine who work on Bnet and do a good and very unsung job. But let's be realistic. I'm hardly working on the D2 site and I can't imagine that I'll ever work on a gaming site/fansite again. I don't have any interest in War3 (didn't play the beta CD at all the last 3 months or so of the beta), I'm not following or going to play WoW. I haven't had any contact with anyone in Bliz PR for many months, and if they pull me from their beta mailing list I won't shed any tears. I got unsolicited emails from people offering up to $150 for my war3 beta CD early on, but didn't sell it, foolishly, as it turned out. It's not just Bliz, I've not had any interest in any computer games other than the little online strategy ones like Bejeweled or Attaxx or Seven Seas for a long damn time. So anyway (#3) I'll be doing a bi-weekly (maybe weekly, if I can possibly think of enough topics) article thing on the D2 site starting in oh, early November. I'll probably link from here when I do one there, though I'll try to not write most of it here and then reuse that there. This is all top secret at this point, BTW, so hush hush! Actually it's not, or I wouldn't be writing this. I can't imagine anyone knowing that I'm planning on doing an article series on the D2 site in the future changing their life in anyway at this point based on that. And yes, part of my motivation is that I can plug this site from them. Not that I'd mention this site in the actual articles, but the main page for them would be something like Garwulf's is now, with a link to here and a short bio and maybe a picture. I've got no idea how many hits he got from that, but one of my leading referrals to this site the last three months is one unlabeled link from the June 2002 Fact of the Day archives, on the D2 site. The link is from "YMMV" in a comment, and it goes to the slang page here, where that acronym is explained. I got 47 hits from that during the 10 days of stats I have for July, which isn't much compared with over 500 from US Google, but it's more than I got from any international Google, for comparison's sake. My real goal is to get other stuff done, and get to working on my forever-planned D2 novel. I'd like to post a chapter every other week on the D2 site, and would post revised versions here, with comments and such, for my permanent archives. The articles I'm doing to be content. The fiction I write because I love writing it, and there's always the chance (however small) that I might get some sort of book deal from it, which is my long term career goal. For the last decade+... ----- It was pointed out to me that my characterization (yesterday) of recent work loads on the D2 site wasn't entirely accurate. I was correct in terms of who's been doing what in terms of site content updates, but I neglected to mention the forum administration, which is a very large task. A task that I have no interest in whatsoever, I must admit, and it's a busy week if I spend more than an hour in the forums. Gaile spends hours a day on the D2 and War3 forums, and Elly does quite a bit on them as well. So yes, I'm even lazier than I made things out to be yesterday. I used to be quite the forum hound, posting and replying to things quite often in them, and even enjoyed it, at times. That's not been the case in many months though. All of the things I find most tiring about working on D2 stuff now are exemplified in the forums. Endless stupid questions repeated, inane babble and chatter, but most of all, the pointlessness and disposable nature of it all. You make 20 forum posts, delete 20 crappy ones, and the next day (hell 12 hours later) you're right back where you started. The best forum post you ever make might be seen by a few hundred or a couple of thousand people, and they'll read it once and then it's gone. Whereas a content update is seen by everyone, and archived forever, though it probably won't be much seen after a week or two. I therefore weigh site content most heavily, followed by forum posting, then email, then IRC chat. Of course I don't do forum posting and reading since it's not that important on my scale, and my time would be better spent on site content. And then I don't do that either. *cough*
Reviewed a ton of emails to the D2 site, as I caught up (somewhat) on the strategy section. Most of it is made up of strategies written and submitted by readers, and the vast majority of them that come in are pretty bad. Perhaps not bad, but not worth reading, or taking the time to HTML up. The main problem is that 95% of the ones that come in don't have any "strategy". By that I mean they give a short build order (which skills and stats to put points into, and when) and they have some equipment recommendations (which are common sense/obvious in almost every instance) but no actual how to play tips. Nothing on technique or strategy or any sort of "how to" sections. This actually matches up with my experience seeing others play in multiplayer games on Battle.net. Most people have no idea what they are doing, and just use the same skill over and over again. As part of a character/item donation program I ran on the site (and still am, though I've been ignoring it for months since it's so much work to organize) I got to look through dozens of high level characters that people had finished playing and gave to us to give away, and the vast majority were just a wreck. Functional, but wasted skill points, wasted stat points, and not at all optimized in equipment choices. There are like 10 equipment slots on a D2 character, and most chars would have 3 or 4 great items, 2 good, and the rest junk. So their total equipment quality was just mediocre, while if they'd supplemented their great items with a few good ones that aren't at all hard to obtain, they'd have really boosted their character's resistances, hit points, etc. Charms (items you can hold in your inventory to add small bonuses) were much the same; not really ones they needed for their character, or not the best ones for their situation. I saw numerous characters with +dexterity or +strength charms on Sorceresses. Not to get too complicated for readers who don't play the game, but this is really bad design. You get 5 stat points every level up, and they had put them all into vitality, while using charms to boost their other Str and Dex to make their equipment requirements. The problem with that is those 5 points into vitality are worth 10 hit points for a Sorceress, and in two inventory spaces you can get up to 40 hit points from charms. So say you have two level ups and 4 inventory spaces, and you need 10 Str and the rest in hit points. 1) 10 Str in 4 spaces of charms
and 10 Vit = 10 Str and 20 hps. Which would you pick? I'm not going to go into a full discussion of it here, (though I might on the D2 site at some point) but my point is that the vast majority of players seem to go for a "good enough" state and don't really put any effort into optimizing their characters or equipment. The game is so easy at higher levels, especially if you have a big damage weapon, that you can easily get away with this. And this laziness is expressed in most of the guides that are submitted, where they do just the minimum amount of work, no proof reading, typos galore, etc. I read 9 recently-submitted Sorceress guides, and none were any good. One will be posted of those, and it was the least lame, but mostly got chosen since it talked about a variant style of the character we don't have covered yet. Reading bad strategy guides is no fun, and we're getting like 50 submitted a week, of which perhaps 5 are good. The problem is that reading the good ones takes nearly as long as the 45 bad ones, so the sorting process is very tedious. And if I'm going to spend hours on tedious website work, I'd rather do it on this site. *cough*
I was seriously considering just breaking my D2X cd in two when I woke up this morning. Wasted hours last night playing it, when I wanted to be doing something productive. And not even "playing". Monotonously doing the same effortlessly-easy thing over and over again, hoping to get lucky and have one of the few very valuable items drop. And I don't even really need or want to use on any of the items on my characters; it's just that they're super hard to find (since it's almost entirely luck if you get them), so I want to find them. I didn't. Didn't what? Didn't find the items, and didn't break the CD. A few of months ago I was totally sick of D2, didn't play any from mid Jan to mid March, and got quickly sick of War3 beta also. During that time I was able to get so much work done, w/o any video game claiming my attention or time. I did much work on the D2 site, I did much work getting this site up and running, and even did other things, in Real Life. I want to get back to that state; playing games is amusing, occasionally even fun, but it's a time sink that has no redeeming value, unless you're being paid to do it, or doing it in relation to what your are paid for. I don't get paid to work on a website about a game, I don't get paid to write articles about games, and I don't get paid to make games. Nor do I especially want to be. It wouldn't be a problem if I could work 14 hours a day, and play an hour or two. But I tend to screw around for several hours, play for a couple of hours, start to work, instead screw around, work in RL for 6 hours, play a bit more, go to bed angry and disappointed in myself. It beats fat, drunk, and stupid, but not by a whole lot.
So my huge waste of time Saturday was playing games. Played several hours of Diablo II Expansion. That's the only game I really ever play, and has been for the past 10 months or so since it was released. But I hadn't played more than maybe an hour at a time since like early January, and had often gone 3 or 4 days without logging on at all, not including the 8 weeks or so of zero play from mid-Jan to mid-March. There was a ton of cheating breaking out then, on the supposedly secure servers, and that turned me off to the game a lot, plus I was just bored after so long of playing the same thing. It's really wasted time, I must admit. I enjoy it, and I did gain some experience on my characters, found some really nice items, etc. But so what? As detractors say, flaunting their intimidatingly-massive knowledge of programming code, "It's just a bunch of 1's and 0's!" Which is of course true of anything on your computer at any time, including the novel you're writing, your taxes, your check book balancing program, Disney porn, etc. The comment seems to be designed to dismiss anything on a computer as unimportant, since it's not real. As if sitting and watching a sporting event on TV is somehow more real? Like your watching the Lakers finish off Portland matters in anyway? 99% of life's activities could be dismissed similarly, if one so desired. My thought on it being wasted time was that while doing the gaming, it was just all-consuming. Or at least it was this time. I can't remember one thought I had about anything in the real world, or even this virtual world I prefer to inhabit, while I was playing. So the 5 or 6 hours are just gone, with no addition to my body, or head, or life. I could have blacked out for that time and come to later and aside from a few different items on my characters, there'd be no apparent difference. Other computer activities are a waste of time, in comparison to what I might be doing (writing fiction, doing paying website work or book editing), but at least they have some sort of lasting properties. While I'm surfing or working, I'm thinking, coming up with ideas for other features, stories to write, etc. Even if I'm just surfing, I'm at least adding something to my mind, and generally finding content for this blog. I've had this feeling about other types of games for some years. I see RTS, action games, FPS, etc games as a total time sink. No better than watching a boring TV show. More fun than that of course, but adding nothing to your life, and adding nothing to your gaming experience other than hours. You can play 10 hours of Team Fortress, and unless you've got a win/loss record keeping track of your results, afterwards nothing has changed in any way. I feel this way about all types of games that lack persistent characters or worlds, since your efforts are totally without permanence. You might as well have just watched TV, or looked out the window. Most wouldn't agree with my PoV, or even if they did they wouldn't be bothered, since they aren't playing a game to accomplish anything other than have some fun and perhaps improve their skillz. And if that's what you're after going in, you won't be upset when that's what you get out of it. I like to think of everything in terms of eventual goals and results, and hopefully have it add something to me or mine as I'm doing it. This results in slightly improved life choices, but mostly in making me feel guilty about doing 95% of the things I do. As such I can't really recommend the perspective to others.
So, silly Diablo II. I got on and played like an hour, to get my Bowazon from level 92.8 to 93.1, and one guy last game was asking to trade for something I'd just found. I said okay and we went to another game to trade for some chippies. And 2 other guys came, and started asking for other stuff. All of which I had on various mules, and none of which I was likely to use, so I ended up shuffling through my accounts and storage chars for like an hour, taking in tons of chipped gems. Probably ended up with 20+ gems on 8 or 9 different characters. I'm clearly a top notch trader; I gave out a bunch of stuff just for the hell of it, and kept taking fewer chippies than I asked for when I had no room for them on my characters, without dropping other stuff, more valuable than what I was trading, in most cases. The real irony is that chipped gems are only of use in one Cube recipe that can possibly make a really good sword. And I have 2 of the best unique swords already, and a huge damage one also, bigger than I'd likely get with the chippie recipe. So I'm trading for stuff that requires a lot of luck to be of any use at all, and even if I get really lucky on it and it is useful, I don't really need what it produces. As I said, I'm quite the shrewd negotiator. |
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All site content copyright "Flux" (Eric Bruce), 2002-2007. |
reating
an articles page on BlackChampagne to archive my periodic discussions of Diablo
II feels like an incredible redundancy. After all, as of early 2005 I've been
one of the webmasters of Diabloii.net, the leading Diablo II fansite, for nearly
seven years. Over that time I have created thousands of pages of content about
every aspect of the game, and while my production has scaled down quite a bit
since around 2002, I'm still active on the D2 site, and I even continue to play
the game a little bit.