A Real Money AH is buying and selling digital assets for real money, and is something that I plan to not be using. The idea of getting $BlizzBucks is nice and all, but I feel that it is a feature that I’ve never desired. That said, I think its a smart move for Blizzard, its been a unofficial part of Diablo before, and I know some players will love it. More power to them. It breaks nothing about my D3 experience, it is present from launch (almost), and it was widely known in advance so players could make a purchasing choice with full knowledge. Detractors should shut the hell up, its an interesting feature.

The Black Market AH for wow is where rare items will be sold by NPCs via an auction system to characters. In the screenshot a really rare mount, some “lost” tier gear, and several other rares are shown. Detractors have a real reason to be concerned, and its also an interesting feature. The lever for how outrageous this is will be what makes it into the list, and how often

So what are the rules for selection for Black Market? Well we have no true idea yet, I think Blizzard is floating the concept to gauge the community uproar, much like real names in game IDs.

• Is T3 fair as you can’t get it elsewhere?
• What about other Tier tokens for old sets; or perhaps even current tier?
• Is a raid rare fair, as you tried to get it for years?
• Why then can’t I purchase a legendary, or perhaps just the Left Binding for Thunderfury?
• When can I buy my gear, and also a token that auto-levels from level 2 to level 55? The DKs start at 55, why not let other classes jump?

What happens when WoW introduces the Real Money Black Market AH?

Well its almost already here – its called the BoE purchasable gear. It is only a short trip from here to Warcraft having real money for goods in game in a planned interface, and while that would be concerning it is not game breaking either. It might make some players angry or make them feel that their beloved game has changed, but the game has changed. And it will continue to do so.

C’mon somebody throw in a casualisation comment.

The staff in these two companies had it worse, as they probably didn’t have as much time to either adjust or expect the outcome, and they belong to a segment of software development which is highly specialised and passionate. Getting a new role which is as exciting again will be difficult, and they might be jaded by the experience.

Oddly Copernicus has some new screenshots shared by Curt recently and it looks good – which makes the situation sadder. Basically I hope R.P.S. info is wrong, and/or 38s rises in a new form to continue their games. A cartoon-ish art style is better imho for an MMO, and the screenies look palatable. Perhaps some of the IP will be picked up. Wishing them good luck.

We also know that KoA from 38 Studios is not doing brilliantly, but still has some dedicated fans; frankly I hope they survive and prosper as Curt Shilling seems a reasonable chap and he is following a dream. Star Wars ToR is dropping subscribers, and has an even more passionate user base within the subscribers than many other games.They might find a solid base is plenty to retain as viable as well.

Its a poor time to gamble on MMO subscribers, unless you’re the bookie. What is the future? Well imho the future of subscriber games is a very wide range of games which players switch between. The Warcraft golden days where everyone played wow are over, and I doubt they will ever return.

Who can’t love many games with many options? I certainly can.

RockPaperShotGun reports – Blizzard send word that Diablo III sold 3.5 million copies in the first 24 hours on sale.

The upshot of that was 4.7 million people had the game on day one, and after a week that as grown to 6.3 million.

Launching for 4 million concurrent passionate players is difficult at the best of times andt here was a lot of people angry and ranting about how poor D3′s launch was. To my experience I installed and then was straight in and playing. I don’t play in huge blocks of time, and being an Australian I play at odd times – but I still think they did a darn good job. Even 200,000 people being upset out of 3-4 million is a significant but small proportion.

I’m not even close to completed as yet, and really enjoying it. It is better than the beta now, as the story can unfold without restriction.

Now the great zerg to play D3 has begun. A few updates and patches, some apologies for errors, and a lot of persistence has players now enjoying the game. My take – well I’ve created a toon and entered the world, but I’ll only be commenting on major stuff in the first ten levels which is different from the beta, or where something is darn odd. I’m pleased to say that it is exactly as expected so far. It’s entertaining.

The class intro media were very good too, which was new to be from beta. It does feel forced to have such a strange mix of heroes from all over the world converging, and that was always going to feel a bit forced. At least we didn’t meet at an inn, with a fight breaking out like a D&D game. Well, ahem, perhaps that bit is in the starter story too.

A few thoughts from around the web worth reading too, Tobold has an observation about D3′s pricing, and Keen and Graev have 5 Things We Like and Dislike about Diablo 3.

Happy killing.

We have also had the “End of Days” tv spot / promo for the game too, which is also very good, but not a cartoon akin to the one above. The animation in End of days is more realistic than the prequel, but it only shows a smattering of the video we know is included. It’s a good hash of the full video.

I really looking forward to D3.

Playing of the big three games very briefly and casually is actually more satisfying in the short term than trying to play one game solidly. Initially I would doubt that to be true. In a nutshell I think being moderate has pushed my expectations, and I now find the small elements of fun amongst a range of games. For now its working. I am looking forward to the official release of Diablo so that I can see the full content and play online with some friends that it is hard to hook up with in other games. I would still like to get SWToR loaded and play that in the future when my PC has been upgraded, as the content was impressive enough that I think it will be a fantastic distraction.

There is also a set of play-by-post tabletop RPG games that distract me, and between them, the healthy posts from the players, and the rest of life short stint gaming is still working. So for now a quick 15 to 30 minute session will do, with much gnashing, power-ups, and gear to be swindled from the nefarious foes.

Happy gaming folks.

Eff’ing what?

“The unauthorized access included user account names, handles, and encrypted passwords for those accounts. Even though the passwords were encrypted, it is apparent that the intruder has been able to crack some portion of the passwords in this database.

All accounts that we believe were present in the database have had the passwords reset, and customers registered to these accounts have been notified via e-mail of this incident.”

I want details, more detail than they supplied. It is a huge concern when the gaming market is going for micro-transactions, and those accounts can store credit cards, especially for inactive games. This event apparently only directly relates to Star Trek Online and Champions Online, but any breach is serious.

Cryptic are doing the right thing by owning up to it, and making channels available to the community affected. They’re doing the minimum right thing. But sheesh Cryptic – how many times has this happened to game companies in the past, and why is it so ungodly difficult to establish a secure database system?

My personal information is not something that gets exposed without some degree of detail being given, and is certainly the type of screw-up that makes me reconsider that company in the future. There is a reason that I dislike and distrust Sony, Microsoft, and the few other companies that have screwed the pooch in the past. FFS.

I don’t know if I can even be bothered resetting a password for a game I do not ever play anymore, and it is certainly time that I will never get back.

The set without the helm is good, I don’t understand the helm design.

It is a good game, and feels basically ready. I’m looking forward to it. In the Beta test I played a Barbarian almost through to the end, and a Wizard through to completion. I’ll go back and try the other classes now, but probably not play them right through, as I want to also play them when the game is actually live.

Play-style wise I’d recommend that every player try each class; they really play differently. Music was nice, sound effects, nice, and the few special encounters and scenes I saw (Sword of Leoric) were really nice. Well done Blizzard.

The length of the final product better be far longer than implied by the beta. The Beta takes the story to the killing of the Skeleton King, which can be done very quickly. It took around 3-4 hours of gameplay to finish that part of the story which is Chapter 1, and if the final game is only 4 chapters as I have read, then it is lacking. Diablo 3 deserves far more content than that.

The combat against the Skeleton King was great. It took strategy, skill, and patience to kill him on Normal mode, and was a delightful change from the rest of the fights in the game. It killed me once before I actually watched his abilities and started to use a strategy, instead of just nuking until my energy bar was empty. Till that fight all I did was stay at range, use basic powers to kill the mobs as they walked toward me, and switch to the secondary power-kill ability if mobs were tough, or if it got hairy. What I would have liked is more fights in the first chapter which took concentration to defeat.

Now that might be served by Hard and Death modes, but levering everything up is not the challenge I think is needed. Rather the game needs more mimi-bosses with interesting mechanics. I’ve been conditioned by World of Warcraft to expect a boss mechanic, and I cannot see these fights being re-playable if there is only one had fight per major chapter.

The game is also very linear, and perhaps some more distractions and side quests are needed. Yup, the game has always been very straight forward, but as the game wishes to hold interest it needs more breadth.

I think the starting town will get tired if we spend another three chapters walking back and talking to Cain. It was exciting when the skill/item creation area opened, and more stuff which opens after a stage is completed would be cool.