Blizzard Trademark Activity

Blizzard just filed brand new trademarks for "Legacy of the Void" and "Heart of the Swarm". It appears to just be some re-organization, as they already had 3 trademarks filed for each game previously (ie, there were 3 HOTS trademarks and 3 LOTV trademarks for the game itself, merchandise, and online services.)

They have condensed all of the trademarks into 1 single TM per game now, so the old 6 trademarks will probably be cancelled shortly.

Blizzard also just received notification that their "Mists of Pandaria" trademark will be published in the Official Gazette on 2012-03-27 for others to see and oppose if necessary. This doesn't change anything though and it's a standard process, so don't try to use it to predict a release date or anything. :)

New Deus Ex Game in Development

On the trademark maintenance front, Square Enix has also just filed for a new "DEUS EX" trademark. It looks to be a partial replacement for the original DEUS EX trademark. In any case, they're being renewed for another 10 years which means there is most definitely a new Deus Ex in development right now!

Overpowered Classes in Diablo 3

If you've been following any of the polls out there, you'll probably know already that Barbarians and Wizards will be the top classes most played in Diablo 3.

Many gamers view these two classes as the ones that will be most overpowered.. the Wizard with incredible damage and kiting/escape skills, and the Barbarian being able to take a massive amount of damage. The perception is that both of these classes will be the best ones for soloing bosses.

Before you jump on the bandwagon, there are a couple things you should keep in mind; the beta won't tell you anything about how strong they will be later in the game (classes that start out seemingly the strongest end up being the worst), skills and damage numbers will be nerfed and buffed a lot, and Blizzard really doesn't like class favoritism and imbalance.

If Blizzard notices too many people playing Barbarians or Wizards, they'll find a way to balance everything out and "encourage" players to start playing the other 3 classes instead. And by balance, I mean nerfing the Barb/Wiz and buffing the other 3. In particular, the Witch Doctor (which the least number of people want to play.)

Something to remember when you're selecting a class.

Even though, to me, a Wizard or Barbarian makes the most sense for farming, I think players might be in for a little bit of shock when they hit Hell and Inferno.. maybe even Nightmare. I have a feeling that the Wizard will start out very powerful, but end up having a lot of problems in Nightmare/Hell. The Barb problems might be more noticeable (compared to other classes) in Hell.

The recent changes to the Monk (30% reduction in damage) are giving me the impression that they want the Monk to be slightly more powerful than the Barbarian, and the DH will replace the Wizard in power. And, I have a very strong suspicion that the Witch Doctor will probably be the best class for soloing bosses.. maybe even the most overpowered during initial launch.

This is all just in the beginning though, but the first few months will be very critical. You want to level as quickly as possible so that you can farm the best stuff faster than anyone else.

Most players will be creating Wizards and Barbarians, but you might want to consider a Witch Doctor (even if you don't like the class) if you're just interested in farming. They might start off more slowly than the Wizard, but I suspect that things will improve tremendously as the difficulty increases. :)

Miscellaneous Stuff

• There should be an update on the new Alpha Centuari game by/before Q3 this year. I'm hoping to learn something more about it within the next 4-8 weeks to confirm or get an idea of when it will be coming out though.

• Curious what kind of Google Searches the Blizzard headquarters team does? Here are some examples: "Metal Arms 2" Blizzard, South Korea delay, south korea diablo gambling, diablo illegal gambling, diablo gambling laws, mmo gambling law, blizzard leak, blizzard layoffs, blizzard mass layoffs, daeity, daeity blog, digital castration, Blizzard Payscale, Blizzard Pay, new wow hacks. And then there are specific stuff, like looking for the "new X" World of Warcraft hack or exploit.

• I've been thinking a lot about what I am going to write about when Diablo 3 finally comes out. I've discovered a lot of cool things in the beta that I'm hoping haven't been reported and will still be there in retail. The first couple months of release are going to be an excellent time to make some money and being a poor student, it's something I'm looking forwards to. Plus, it's going to be a lot of fun since I've made more WoW gold using paper and pencil techniques than anyone ever did using Auctioneer. So, I think that there will probably be some strategies that I won't be sharing right away. Some RMAH strategies I will probably discuss, there are some really critical things that haven't been posted publicly anywhere yet and I really want to keep them to myself for now. The problem is that once I post them, Blizzard will immediately fix it or make major changes. I can't think of any other nice way of doing it, outside of privatizing the blog.

According to "MMORPG Italy", the Italian branch of Blizzard Entertainment have just revealed the Release Date and Price of the game. (Thanks for the heads up Anonymous.)

The game will be releasing on Tuesday, April 17 and the prices are €54.90 for the Standard Edition and €89.90 for the CE.

Interestingly, this wasn't the usual retailer estimation, but rather it allegedly came from Blizzard directly and it was sent to several large retailers prematurely. It also came along with their price structure which was something that never accompanied any of the other retailer Release Date "leaks", but it's something that has always accompanied a game's Release Date announcement. (That's the part I found most interesting.)

The release of this new information seems awfully close to the predicted (by Incgamers and some other whispers) March 5th release date announcement, but the release would be only 1 month away which would be quite unusual for Blizzard given their past minimum 2 months. It's something I've discussed in the past (a compressed timeline), so I'll have more to say on the subject if this Release Date ends up being true.

* UPDATE: If nothing is announced by March 12th, I don't think MMORPG Italia's "inside source" on this release date is correct.

The new rune & skill system is supposed to be announced this weekend.

There's some very strong evidence now that the runes won't be sellable items anymore too. I had touched on this subject before, back in January ("Selling Skills") and then again in early February. I had thought I made a large post all about "monetizing skills" through the rune system, but it must be sitting as a draft somewhere and I just never published it.

So, I figured I would briefly get this out in the open before the big day on Saturday or Sunday. :)

Other than the RMAH and gambling related issues, and a possible B.Net Balance/PayPal integration delay, I believe that there's been an internal "fight" going on regarding the rune system. I think that the D3 development team was told to monetize as many things in the game as possible, especially the rune system because of how valuable skill upgrades were. Because of this restriction, it choked their creativity and they couldn't design the rune system the way they wanted. There was a breaking point of course.. if they couldn't pull it off, then they would have to go back to their basic rune concepts (e.g. a simple skill level up system.)

With the stash size changes, and the recent 10 active item limitation to both Auction Houses, there's a very good probability now that the runes are no longer items, but rather skills that level up as you approach 60.

Previously, there was a dead zone after level 30 which didn't really encourage players to advance. In this new "rune" system, the skill upgrades unlock all the way to level 60 now, so that players will have milestones and rewards to look forwards to. (The old system was not very rewarding and pushed RMAH rune sales instead as the "leveling" mechanism.)

It's something to look forwards to this weekend and it's another big change that I will be very pleased with.

I also have another post planned that discusses why they have a 10 item active limit now. It also relates really well to the old "rare drop" rune system. If you've read earlier comments, though, I might have spoiled it for you already. :)

For a better part of the day, users have been unable to access their Battle.net User accounts. The reason for this was because of standard maintenance over the past 5 hours.

And it wasn't just maintenance. They have finally integrated the new Battle.net Balance system and brought it online today. EU will be next tonight.

Unfortunately, the new changes are still broken. The US Account Page links to the European Battle.Net Balance FAQ instead of the US one and the Battle.net Balance instruction page still has the incorrect URL.

So far, there has been no official announcement about this new major feature addition.

The first time the "new" Battle.net Balance feature was announced was December 9, 2011. When Blizzard revealed the new feature they said that it would be "Coming Soon" and rolling out within the weeks ahead (end of December). It has finally been implemented, but 10 weeks later.

* UPDATE: It's been about 1 hour now, and still no official announcement. I guess they're waiting for it to be rolled out in all regions first.

* UPDATE: 4:30PM now.. most of the managers will be heading home now so there's little hope of an announcement today. That just leaves the next few days.

* UPDATE: Finally! An announcement over two hours after the changes went live.

It's probably going to be a quiet week here, at least until November 8th (when there will be a lot of big news items.) So, I'll be getting all of the smaller posts out of the way today:

• Unfortunately, both the Activision Blizzard and Take Two financial calls will be taking place on the same day at the same time. For the upcoming Activision Blizzard call, you can expect the same "Better than expected Third Quarter 2011 Financial Results" announcement. Even if there were poor results, they'll always be "better than expected". Mike Morhaime will talk about how successful Blizzcon was and he'll summarize all of the prior announcements (e.g. D3 CE, WOW Annual Pass, and the new expansion pack. Basically anything that makes the investors money.) I'm also eagerly anticipating the D3 Release Date (although, SC2 was announced just 3 days before the investor call in 2010). If there is no release date announced by next week, that probably means more technical difficulties and longer delays. He will probably also release the number of attendees during Blizzcon, which should be higher than what was announced on the first day.


• During the investor call, make note of Mike Morhaime's special wording of Virtual Ticket Live Stream viewer counts. :) He'll talk about the DIRECTV customers, but conveniently leave out live stream viewers paid directly to Blizzard. The DIRECTV viewer counts will probably be a little bit higher too than what he first announced during Blizzcon 2011. Masking direct live stream customers is a great way to show improved revenue actually. If I was an investor and there was an extra $20 million in monthly revenue, for example, I would have had no idea where it actually came from and I would assume that it was from subscriptions. This brings up an interesting theory; during 2011 when there were no new game releases, they couldn't hide lost revenue due to declining subscribers (so the information was casually mentioned during the call, but never officially announced.) However, during periods of major revenue spikes (e.g. new games sales or Blizzcon), their revenue figures can be massaged and subscriber numbers don't need to be brought up. So, will Mike Morhaime discuss subscriber decline or will it be left out next week? :)


• Assuming everything stays on course with the D3 release schedule, you should also expect a PayPal/Battle.net integration website and instructions in the coming months. It will probably be announced atleast a month before the release date, and will allow players to setup their "Cashing Out" account, integrate with B.Net, learn about how to use it, and start depositing money into their B.Net credit account in advance of the D3 release. You might see some signs of this if the webpage is taken down for maintenance in December, for example.


• The DC Universe Online website was down all day yesterday, pissing off a lot of players who wanted to try out the new F2P change. I guess they ran into some major problems.. I was hoping to get an account going myself, but learned too late that they provided a link on their Facebook site due to their technical difficulties. I'm in no real rush though.


• The new GTA V trailer had some nice visuals. With all of the enhancements made to GTA IV PC, though, it looks kind of bland. :) I'm hoping that buildings will be more explorable in GTA V.. in all of the others, you could only enter certain structures.


• NBC's Grimm finally aired. It turned out to be exactly as I had pictured in my mind. The original preview had already given away the entire story. The pilot episode was very bad, I hope it fails. And there were so many inconsistencies, like a small 2 block park that suddenly turned into a huge forest. Or the impossible TARDIS-like mobile home owned by the aunt; it's 4 times as big on the inside than it is on the outside, it has a steel floor but super creaky wooden boards when he walked across them, women won't weigh anything inside the mobile home (his girlfriend walked right in without making a sound on the impossibly creaky boards), and there's no vibration or shaking inside the mobile home when it moves (candle sticks, books, ornaments, etc all standing up straight.) I hope they have a new sound guy for the next episodes too.. it was terrible, and even the screams were the same clips used in a thousand other shows/films from 20 years ago.


• I'm hoping to make up a video about Grimm actually.. just need to find the time to learn the software.


• I also regularly watch Boardwalk Empire. Not on the top of my list, but it's something to kill the time. I totally didn't expect that knocked up mistress being discovered by Agent Nelson's wife. The guy was such a psychopath, I was half expecting him to wait until the child was born, kill the girl, and then surprise the wife with an "adopted" child that was in fact his own. She was so desperate to have her own child after all.


• Do you guys have any "interesting blog" suggestions? I'm having a hard time finding some really good blogs to read. Everything out there is the same old stuff, and it's awful boring. Where are all of the good blogs or sites? I pretty much only check up on Tobolds and Wolfshead occasionally (and Titanfocus now, of course). Tobolds feels like it's rushed though.. like he needs to make at least one post a day, so the quality suffers. Wolfshead I like, but he only makes an update once a month, and this last one was a 3 month hiatus. If I only made posts here once a month, there would be some amazingly huge articles. :) Is there a secret forum somewhere where people discuss really interesting non mainstream topics? Maybe someone should create one, with an elite invite list for people from differing fields of expertise or industry connections.


• And finally, some Titan related "blasphemy". This might be a good topic to expand on later, but here are some of my initial thoughts. Everyone is highly anticipating Titan, and Blizzard has talked about how great the game is to play. They always describe it as raising the bar and "next gen", implying that the game will be better than WOW. We all believe it, and I'm guilty of the same. But what no one is talking about is "what if Titan fails?" In all of the hype, I just forgot that WOW might just be Blizzard's most successful game ever and Titan will never reach the same heights. The one thing that Blizzard is really good at is making sure they release only great games.. it's a lesson they learned probably around 2000 and when Diablo 2 came out. If they had the same game design philosophy that they do now, they probably would have never started work on WC Adventures or allowed the Hellfire expansion pack. Starcraft Ghost would probably have still started development and cancelled though when they realized that it didn't meet Blizzard's quality. The same might happen with Titan. It's still in very early development, and if it doesn't meet Blizzard's level of quality standards, it could be scrapped, substantially delayed, or the game completely redesigned from scratch but still using the same game code ("Titan") so as not to scare their investors. Hell, for all we know, there could be 3 different Titan games currently being worked on. :) If it does get delayed, cancelled, or does not perform as well as WOW, the "TITANic: Too Big To Fail?" memes will be endless. What if it ends up being a kids game, or targets stay-at-home moms like Zynga, thereby alienating the bulk of Diablo, Starcraft, and Warcraft players? Maybe Titan was a bad choice in a code word for the game. Perhaps there's a curse? :)

• I actually managed to sit through the entire 01x05 Terra Nova episode. Very family and touchy feely, and I don't think it's going to get any more interesting than it has already been. I going to place my bets on the mole to be that adult female actor pretending to be a teenager who lives with Taylor and is Josh's new love interest. I have no idea what her name or character's name is, nor do I care to learn..


• Once Blizzcon is over (and they announce ticket sales and virtual attendee numbers at their next shareholders meeting), I'll write something up along the lines of that old "Blizzcon Revenue and Costs" post. Should be rather interesting considering the price hikes.


• Blizzard is entering into a new agreement with AsiaSoft (in Thailand) to distribute their games in Thailand, Malaysia, and Singapore. This is sort of a weird Gamasutra post too. They make it sound like Blizzard games weren't already available in those countries: "AsiaSoft will make these titles available in Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore, although the company did not indicate when the first games will be available." However, World of Warcraft is already played by many people in those countries (as well as other Blizzard titles.) Most of the players just connect to the Philippines servers for reduced lag, so this agreement might be mostly beneficial in that it would be bringing servers closer to the players. I don't think these new territories are going to have a major boost to subscriber numbers though, but I think it will encourage some new gamers to start playing.


• Those Blizzard Blade Servers just went up for auction. Apparently, there are a lot of folks who seem to think there's something of value they can extract from the servers.. I guess they're not aware that these don't have any hard drives in them, and it just has a plaque instead. These are the same ones that Blizzard had a silent auction for last year at Blizzcon 2010. But, they're even much older than that. I guess they've been pretty much sitting on a shelf for years now, and they have added the new plaques within the past few months.


• And finally, here are some classic reads from Blizzard that you might find entertaining. I guess some things change.. belief systems, morality, apparently laws...
  
  Selling In-Game Content for Real Money | 1/12/2005
  

  Not only do we believe that it is illegal, but it also has the potential to damage the game economy and overall experience for the many thousands of others who play World of Warcraft for fun.
  
  If you are found to be selling in-game property (such as coins, items, or characters), for real money, you will lose your characters and accounts, and Blizzard Entertainment reserves its right to pursue legal action against you as well.

  So, back then it was:
  
  "If you buy an item, that's ILLEGAL. You're breaking the law and it damages the economy and overall experience! If you do this, we'll call the cyber police on you.. consequences will never be the same!"
  
  Nothing has really changed, but now the attitude is:
  
  "Well, TCG Loot card mounts have been sold for a long time now, and we've been able to tell it hasn't had any adverse impacts to the game or economy - despite them selling sometimes for astronomical amounts of gold.
  
  It's no big deal. We're just providing alternative ways for players who don't want to spend real money on these items."
  
  I'm disappointed that they would change so radically and even try to justify it.
  
  And there was also these old posts:
  
  The difference in patch types
  
  "For World of Warcraft, we will also be adding new content on a regular basis, thus ensuring that there will always be new adventures, new locations, new creatures, and new items to discover."
  
  Content patches were officially supposed to be delivered on a monthly basis (like what Sony announced for DCUO). Within a 6 month period, Blizzard had already delivered 4 major updates and 9 minor (content) updates.
  
  What is contained in a regular content patch?
  
  "Each content update will also bring new quests, items, professions recipes, and continued class improvements."
  
  Just broken promises.. no big deal.

• Mynsc's tweet about the Titan Timeline cause a little bit of a stir within Blizzard HQ. About 3 people came here directly from the Twitter page, and then there was a rush of some 25-30 users shortly after (and the following day) who appeared to have been emailed the direct link. Might just have been non-Titan employees who were interested in what was going on though.


• Fallen Earth is going F2P this Wednesday apparently. Should be interesting, I've never played it before but I was never going to pay a subscription for it.


• The most interesting development yesterday, which shouldn't come as a surprise, was Blizzard's unique approach to implementing an acceptable RMT method within World of Warcraft. Pay $10 for a BOE pet, sell pet in-game for gold. It's also only a single pet that you can buy, unlike past pets that would be available on all of your characters.
  

  Q: Could I put the Guardian Cub up on the auction house to try to make some gold if I wanted to?
  
  While our goal is to offer players alternative ways to add a Pet Store pet to their collection, we’re ok with it if some players choose to use the Guardian Cub as a safe and secure way to try to acquire a little extra in-game gold without turning to third-party gold-selling services. However, please keep in mind that there's never any guarantee that someone will purchase what you put up for sale in the auction house, or how much they'll pay for it. Also, it’s important to note that we take a firm stance against buying gold from outside sources because in most cases, the gold these companies offer has been stolen from compromised accounts. (You can read more about our stance here.) While some players might be able to acquire some extra gold by putting the Guardian Cub in the auction house, that’s preferable to players contributing to the gold-selling “black market” and account theft.
  
  Q: What about future Pet Store pets?
  
  It's too early to say how we'll handle future Pet Store pets. We made this change in response to feedback from players looking for alternate ways to get the Pet Store pets, and we're always looking into other opportunities for improvement. We're interested in hearing what players think of the Guardian Cub when it launches, and we hope you'll have fun with this new flying friend.

  Funny how they, once again, stated that this RMT implementation was not because they wanted to do it, but because "players asked for it." :)
  
  It sure did cause a lot of uproar though. Players are reacting like Blizzard has defiled or tainted the game. It's inevitable though.. their existing Paid Services aren't as profitable now, and they're under direction from Vivendi to continuously find new ways to drive revenue.
  
  Unfortunately, because this is only ONE item, Blizzard will be benefiting from this RMT method far more than users will. With some many players attempting to profit from the pet (thinking that no one else will be doing it), the in-game price of the pet is going to plummet.
  
  Bashiok also wrote:
  

  TCG Loot card mounts like the Spectral Tiger have been BoE for a long time now (since patch 3.2), and that was and continues to be well-received, and as far as we've been able to tell hasn't had any adverse impact to the game or economy - despite them selling for sometimes astronomical amounts of gold.
  
  It’s potentially worth noting that no new gold is being introduced into the game's economy with those mounts or the new Guardian Cub pet.
  
  Our goal with the Guardian Cub is to provide alternative ways for players who don't want to spend real money to add these pets to their collection. Even though this has been available a while now with the TCG mounts, this is obviously a new kind of way to deliver Pet Store pets, and we're definitely interested to hear your feedback and ultimately see how this will play out.



• It's funny how players reacted saying "Blizzard is now making it LEGAL!" I hate it when people say "Blizzard making RMT legal".. seriously, it's just a policy. You can't get arrested for breaking a dress code policy at work.


• Other than that, it's been pretty quiet. I've gotten my hands on RAGE and will be playing that over the next couple weeks. No point in talking about the game though, there are a lot of good reviews out there that pretty much echo the same experiences I've had with the game. So far, it's a little boring unfortunately.

• Rockstar has officially announced the release dates of LA Noire PC. No one cares. Everyone just wants to know when Red Dead Redemption PC is coming out.


• Apparently, LA Noire also turned out exactly as Daeity had predicted. High sales in the beginning, will never be able to match RDR sales, novel type game, linear, and with very little re-playability. That's the biggest complaint that most users have now.. once you beat it, there's no point in playing it again. With the death of the main character, what's really the point in DLC now?


• Here's a really good video embedded below about the future of AAA MMO's, operating costs of MMOs, and gamer psychology regarding subscription fees. I pretty much agree with everything he said.

Just some random stuff over the past couple weeks that don't deserve their own posts.

• I just noticed an article called "Diablo 3 Beta Server Hacked - Playable Games Are A Reality". What is this madness?? The beta server has hacked? Anyways, I checked it out and it was just old news about the D3 emulator project. It was through a news aggregator and if I had known it was a N4G article I would have avoided it (they're terrible). I'm not interested at all in the emulator until they actually get some actual gameplay though (e.g. quests, mobs, NPCs, etc.)


• All of the Diablo 3 videos are still looking the same. It's unfortunate that the Media NDA took so long to lift.. by the time it happened, everyone had already watched a hundred full playthroughs. But, it's even more disappointing that the media sites, knowing this, still created the same recycled demonstrations. I have to give mad credits to TotalBiscuit though, he already knew this was going to happen, so he took a completely different approach and focused on lore instead.
• Rumor is that D3 beta invites were slowed due to technical problems with the beta servers. Apparently, they were breaking under the stress of some 400-900 concurrent users. They're in the small beta invite release phase right now, but once they work out the technical problems, many more invites will be sent out to ramp up stress testing. It'll just be very quiet for a bit, which is why it seems that no one is getting beta keys. That's the rumor anyways, but you can check out current beta users logged in here. These reports are submitted by other players, but they're very accurate.


• The class rush videos were pretty awesome, those were my favorites. With a little bit of luck, and a shared stash, almost any player should be able to beat the beta in about 20-25 minutes. The best I've seen so far was 24 minutes, and that was with no stashed gear. Different reports say that the beta is 1/2 or 1/3 of the full Act 1.


• Since the Monk has a team healing ability, I'm wondering if Blizzard will be implementing any other kind of team healing dynamics but through items instead. For example, an item Lifesteal ability, that effects yourself and other team members for example (or maybe just "everyone else"). Would be pretty fun to have a heavy long-range damage dealing Wizard healing the party during difficult Inferno encounters. And, with all of the heavy PVP implementation in the future (and expansion packs), I wonder if they'll eventually create a large scale PVE experience.. Diablo 3 Raids maybe?


• Have there been many complaints about the lack of skills in Diablo 3? Most players would have been spoiled by all of the abilities in WoW, and might find themselves using the exact same 2 or 3 abilities from level 20 to 60. I can see a lot of players complaining about this come retail.


• I probably won't get into the D3 beta, so I'm hoping that I'll get a random invite for the Path of Exile Beta. Trying to get into the PoE beta, though, is the worst kind of tease.. even worse than Diablo 3. Atleast in D3, you have no idea if you're getting a beta key or not. But, PoE has been having multiple competitions, random give-aways on various forums, and the PoE website has a "Beta Invite Timer" showing randomly selected users. You die a little on the inside every time 4 players in a row win a beta key, and they just registered on the forum 2 days ago with 0 posts (when you've had a PoE account since 2010 hoping for an invite). :)
  
  I tried out one of TalesOfLumin's Twitter contests too. He posted a beta key that needed to be unscrambled. For this contest, I was fully prepared. :) I started the exact instant he tweeted the key (which no one knew when), had an scramble app ready, and started to work on the 120 permutations possible. There's a limit on the number of beta keys you can register and you can get locked out for "Too many key attempts". Took me about 15 minutes to get about 3/4 of the way through the 120 possibilities, and using 3 different proxy servers to avoid the key lock out. Then, I discovered someone had already won it in under 5 minutes of the release. Seriously, that's some crazy luck.
  
  TalesOfLumin held another YouTube contest for 6 beta keys, which I didn't find out until too late. This time, though, it was for game development ideas in the categories of Most Helpful, Most Creative, and Most Funny.
  
  The winning ideas were:
  
  Helpful / mattuo: Queuing up skill points, like in other RPGs.
  Helpful / BogusMeatFactory: Traps or puzzles that require 2 or more players, like in other RPGs.
  Creative / dmlayton1984: Implement the "Lethal Decoy" skill from Diablo 3, but call it "dopplebomb".
  Creative / Cexial: Find a hidden scout, he gives you a quest to fight pirates, the boss is the Ships Captain. You know, like in other RPGs.
  Funny / Spinaltouch: A boss named "COLD SNAP", who is an ice elemental. When you kill him, the loot includes "Rare Sharktooth Maul, 1 Portal Scroll, and a free subscription to the Tales of Lumin Adventure Series."
  Funny / Smackdo: Pokemon reference.
  
  So yeah, a little disappointed. Out of the 400 posts, there were some really bad ones and there were some really good and creative ideas. I was really surprised that the above ones were chosen.. I mean, there were some really good ones out there that should have won.


• Wait.. True Blood is over? I just discovered that this past weekend. I had no idea that this last episode was in fact the last episode of the season. It felt just like a mid-season episode. The show basically went nowhere, and it really worries me that the writers produced such drivel. Running out of ideas.. boring storylines.. last minute changes and rushes. Talk about disappointing.
  
  The only "cliffhanger" for the season was the surprise visit by Reverend Steve Newlin. So.. let me spoil that for you: he's going to be the comic relief for next season. He's also a newly turned vampire, who knows nothing about being a vampire, and doesn't realize that he can't enter Jason's house. It'll become a running joke next season.
  
  And, the escape of Russell Edgington shouldn't be a big surprise.. it was talked about for months leading up to the season finale (ie, how he'll be making a return next season.) He can't kill the main characters whom he hates, of course, so the writers will need to find a new direction and purpose for him..
• New episode of Community starts tonight, can't wait! It's unfortunate that they're opening the new episode with a long musical number though.. I hate it when TV shows use this type of filler to extend show length (like in Family Guy). It's really just a way to give writers a break when they can't think of anything clever. What Community really needs to avoid is musicals, flashback episodes, breaking through the 4th wall, and animated episodes. They make a truly great show start to look desperate, and I hope this isn't a sign of writer fatigue.
• I checked out "The Secret Circle". First and last time mind you. Looks like that show is going to be renewed.. high production value and bad acting, but it targets a key demographic of young females, housewives, and androgynous males who will be gobbling this stuff up. An attractive young girl moves into a new town populated with only attractive people and starts going to a new school with attractive and mysterious men who also have superpowers. Yes, it's the exact same plot as every other vampire and magic novel/series/film. It's weird seeing Thomas Dekker as a high school student.. that guy has been forever playing a high school student (Terminator SCC, Heroes, 7th Heaven). He has a weird "Andrea Zuckerman 90210" type situation going on (Gabrielle Carteris was 29, but portraying a 16 year old high school student).. and it's quite creepy seeing fully grown men still in high school.


• Ringer, on the other hand, opened up with ratings that were pretty much equivalent to The CW's other last season (drying up) veteran shows. Not a lot of interest in the show, the acting is bad, and cancellation is quite probable. However, the production costs on the show seem very low (they sure saved a ton of money on the green screen boating adventure), so it might be really cheap to produce. Maintaining 1 million viewers might be "adequate" to keep it afloat.

Notes taken from the Activision Blizzard Analyst Day [Source]:

* Introductory music for Kotick was hilarious. "PLEASE WELCOME.. *intense energizing action music*.. BOB-BY KOOOO-TICK!!!!"

* Kotick used the term "game changer" which was a pun that wasn't supposed to be a pun. I am disappoint.

* Apparently, Battle.net only has "15 Million (+) Monthly Active Users". Doesn't anyone else find that very low? This includes all Diablo players, StarCraft 1 + 2 players, WoW Starter Accounts, and World of Warcraft (including WoW China) active players. The ones that have B.Net accounts anyways (which is required for SC2, WoW and Starter Accounts).. but 15 million? That's it? Based on their vanity figures, I had thought it would be closer to 25-30 million at least. Since Starcraft 2 has 4-5 million active B.Net accounts right now, that only leaves 10-11 million players for the rest of their franchises. Guess that confirms Daeity's previous estimates regarding REAL PLAYERS versus "Subscriptions". :)

In September of 2002, B.Net had 11 million active users. And in September of 2004, they had 12 million active users. [Source]

So, B.Net Monthly Active Users has only increased about 3 million in the past 7 years. Wow.

* Activision boldly claimed that COD has more players (30 million unique players) than any Facebook game, and higher engagement than all top Facebook games. Once again, these are vanity figures and don't reflect actual active players and could have just been registered users.

But they're wrong. As of Feb. 1, 2011 CityVille had ~98.5 million MAU and Farmville had ~53 million MAU. Those are ACTIVE USERS, not just registered users.

What statistics did they even compare to?

* Activision claimed that their preorders for COD: MW3 are significantly higher than previous games and all other competitors. This is old news though. Based on their statements, MW3 preorders should be at least 7 million.

* The Skylanders transmedia MMO is targeting the "37 million online and gaming households with children aged 6-12". They received this statistics from the "2011 Gamer Census Data" but I couldn't locate this anywhere online. Maybe an internally researched census?

Skylanders is basically Pokemon candy cigarettes intended to get children hooked before being introduced to "adult cigarettes".. that is, Call of Duty. Gotta get them when they're young.

* There are about 100 developers working on the new Halo MMO right now. They're also building their own gaming service portal for the game (a "Battle.net" for Halo).

* Mike Morhaime was up next. Mentioned that they have 4,500 employees across 10 global offices. 800 of those employees are developers. The rest, as you know, are Customer Service.

* Mike detailed some other Blizzard vanity figures:

Warcraft franchise had 20.5 million sales, Starcraft had 16 million sales, Diablo had 20.5 million sales.

Blizzcon 2010 had over 25,000 attendees and over 500,000 viewers paid for the virtual ticket. Their Facebook page has over 1 million users following it.

* They're working on "Blizzard DOTA" and still working on the Marketplace for B.Net.

* Made some very interesting remarks about "nonlinear subscriber growth" and "erosion of player base." Nonlinear growth meaning negative growth but stated in a positive light. He mentioned that subscriber numbers are impacted by seasonality and new content, but that they're working on increasing retention initiatives and new regions to expand their service. It just sort of came out of the blue too, he didn't talk about subscription changes. These comments worried a lot of the attendees.. it's like he's preparing them for low subscriber counts at their next quarterly meeting.

* Continuing with the low subscriber number, he mentioned that NetEase is working on penetrating their Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities in China. But there's risk involved, and their computer systems and IGR (Internet Game Rooms) are built for less performance heavy games like WoW. :)

* They've seen a 60% increase in new account creation due to the new World of Warcraft Starter Edition. Can't wait to see if they modify their "Subscriber" definition.

* The Diablo 3 Beta will be going into beta later this month. It will be starting during the last week or so, with beta invites going out at least 1-2 weeks in advance. So, Mid-Sept beta invites..

* Rob Pardo said that "Loot = BIG PART OF DIABLO". WOW has an "Achiever Economy" where players need to work for their items or have the best skill, whereas Diablo has a "Merchant Item Economy". The gameplay focus on items concerns me; I hope it doesn't sacrifice other important aspects of the game.

* Blizzard is expecting users to be able to sell items for $5, $10, and $50 on the Cash Auction House. The Gold Auction House will be for normal sales and most common items. The Cash Auction House will be for the best items and hardest to get.

* They seem to be aware that there's a clear segregation between the Gold AH and Cash AH in that the Gold AH will be used for low level items and the Cash AH will be used for high level items. For those who are complaining about the Cash AH, supporters will say "The real money auction house is optional." Well.. yes, optional for cheap items. All of the best items will be sold for cash and they'll also cycle through the system. Rob Pardo said that the "really powerful items will be bought and sold all the time."

* Rob Pardo is hoping people will use the Battle.net Account Balance (RMAH) to support their World of Warcraft subscription, buy B.Net games, and virtual items.

* The 3rd party payment provider partner has still not been announced yet because they don't technically have one yet. What concerns me is that they haven't finalized any deals yet, but that they're "getting close to a deal right now." The beta is starting soon, but they still haven't finalized the Cash Auction and Player Banking systems. Without a partner, what kind of shape is the technology and infrastructure? This can seriously push back the retail release date of the game and should have been finalized a long time ago. It sounds very last minute.

* Rob Pardo reiterated that the Cash Auction House is in place because players wanted it. "Why? PLAYERS WANT IT!" He also said, "Players really want this, and if we don't do it, someone else will."

* Thomas Tippl mentioned that the following investments will be out within the next 2-3 years: Diablo 3, D3 Expansion Pack, StarCraft X2 and X3, World of Warcraft X4 and X5. Titan MMO will incorporate mobile and social elements and will not be out in 2-3 years (i.e. 2014).

* Thomas Tippl said that the Map Marketplace will launch at the same time as the first SC2 Expansion Pack.

* Other than the World of Warcraft expansion packs, Blizzard also has new "Value Added Services" in the pipeline to enhance player experience.

* The Bungie MMO will be multiplatform. Since it trailed Skylanders information, it seemed to be that Thomas was indicating the Bungie MMO would be multiplatform like Skylanders. So, all consoles, plus PC, plus a "Web World" (or a web based method to access your account and possibly play elements of the game.)

* During the QA Period, the "nonlinear growth" question came up again. Mike Morhaime stated that the 12M to 11.1M drop was across the board but that "We don't break down regionally." They have done so in the past though.

* Regarding "continuing content", there will be a major update coming later this year. Meaning the X4 announcement at Blizzcon.

And, that's all folks. Some interesting stuff though.. especially that B.Net figure.

* Hot on the trail of the recent Minor Rockstar Update and the "Max Payne 3 is getting close?" posts, Rockstar has just announced that Max Payne 3 is getting closer to completion and that we're going to be getting a lot of news within the next few months.

* Also, hot on the trail of that Diablo Clone post (in which Diablo was once compared to a clone of Gauntlet, but now users just call new games clones of old Blizzard games), just 2 weeks later a wonderfully confirming forum post was made by an average MMO-Champion user.

I'm not shocked in the least that many gamers believe that Gauntlet was just a clone of Blizzard's "much older" Diablo 1 and Diablo 2 games. Everyone on Blizzard's PR department deserves a raise. :)

* Activision Blizzards Analyst Day is coming up this Thursday, so expect some new announcements this week. During past Analyst Days, there have been new game announcements (COD6) or confirmations as well as zany Activision quotes about the current state of console, gaming, and their vision of their future.

* You've probably already heard about the massive Copyright theft by "Chad Love", if that's his real name, of ART4LOVE.COM. When I first heard about it over a week back, I immediately thought about that "Everyone Is A Pirate" post. There were potentially thousands of people who purchased pirated art from this very professional looking website, and they were even provided a Certificate of Authenticity with the art. This is just one small operation out of thousands of other fraudulent (but professional looking) websites out there selling pirated goods to unsuspecting consumers.

* I have a bad feeling about the game length of Diablo 3. It looks like leveling in the game is too quick (e.g. Lvl 30 by Act 2), and each of the Acts will be much shorter than Diablo 2. It's almost as if the difficulty levels were created to extend the length of the game rather than for re playability purposes like in D2. I really hope we won't be seeing too many "this game is too short" reviews. I may have to look into this a bit more to see if Blizzard has made any recent comments about the game length.

* Did some researching and found out that each Act is about 2 hours long. So, that's 8 hours for a full playthrough of the game and then you can go back and do it again and again on different difficulty levels. According to Blizzard, you will be able to complete the difficulty levels faster as you progress too, so Nightmare and Hell will take less than 8 hours. That sounds rather disappointing and I hope it's not accurate. Each play through should be at least 25-30 hours in length (not 8), and then shorter periods for each followup difficulty excluding Inferno. It really worries me that the game is going to be too short now and will rely on Auction House metagames and simply replaying the exact same game again but with NPC palette swaps..

On a related note, the reason why they only need players to test such a small section of Diablo 3 in the beta is because D3 is much easier to manage, test, and QA than WOW. D3 has a very small fraction of thousands of WOW quests and gameplay mechanics. A small QA team can easily spellcheck and test everything in the game over a short period of time. The only testing that's really needed from us is for load, server, and technical reasons.