Transferred from paxdora.blogspot.com [LINK]
Original Post Date: 7/26/11

Ever since the Cataclysm mistake, the growing boredom of WoW, and the big chunk of subscribers Blizzard has lost to RIFT they're really going to have to pump out something unexpected and awesome.

They had originally planned on releasing X4 and X5 in 2012, as per the Product Release Slate, but because of Cataclysm they're going to have to change their plans quite dramatically to fix things.

They also have a lot of competitors coming up soon too. RIFT took away approximately 600k players, SWTOR will take away probably around the same amount, TERA Online will probably take away of 300k chunk, and the skies the limit for Guild Wars 2 but it could be anywhere between 2 and 4 million players.

They'll be able to distract gamers and investors for a little while by focusing on Diablo 3 sales and "subscribers", but WoW is still one of the biggest money makers for Activision and they need to do something drastic to attract players back. That is, unless, they're planning on retiring growth on the game within the next 2-3 years.

After learning from the Cataclysm mistake, X4 better not include a remake of Outlands. Remaking old content has simply not worked and I trust they've learned from their mistakes. They need to create awesome new zones, wrap up all lose ends, and push the main "story" into brand new territory. There needs to be a new focus for players, and some changes to gameplay to improve things. If they're really serious about keeping the game alive, X4 will have more than 1 new hero class, more than 1 new race, new quest types, a 3rd faction, mounted combat, at least 2 awesome professions, and a true expansion of everything.

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Original Post Date: 7/25/11

This is Rick. He's the creepy guy who has had the permanent "I'm going to kill you in your sleep" look all season.


This is just one of many things that bothers me about Falling Skies.

He keeps going on and on about how he likes the aliens better, how they're his real parents, how cool they are, how much he wants to return to them, and how he doesn't give a rat's ass about humans.

In Episode 7, he finally reveals that he thinks he's an alien. I really appreciated the dramatic "shocking reveal" music when he said this too, like it hasn't been plainly obvious this entire time and that the story hasn't been leading up to this point all along.

I hate it when writers do this.. now there will be an annoying story where his sudden but inevitable betrayal puts the survivors in jeopardy.

Now that his dad is out of the way, all of this can finally happen.. talk about your contrived situations. The other cliche that pisses me off is how everyone is keeping really important secrets to themselves.

When my world is being destroyed by aliens and I discover their weaknesses, I definitely won't share that information with anyone.

And why is it taking them so long to dissect an alien when they've had plenty of bodies since the beginning? Those skitters better not be converted humans or genetically engineered soldiers.. that will really piss me off.

What ever happened to good story telling?

Professor Tom says at the end of the episode, "Next time I'll trust my instincts." Rick keeps telling everyone how he hates them and wants to kill them.. your instincts and judge of character are poor to say the least.

Well at least now, I hope the writers can get rid of the creepy kid.

Transferred from paxdora.blogspot.com [LINK]
Original Post Date: 7/25/11

For some reason, IGN reported how the Diablo 3 Beta icon "secretly" appeared on Battle.net and then went on to say that "supposed insiders" have suggested that the Diablo 3 beta was scheduled for release this summer.

Even "internet detectives" have unearthed new Diablo III info on Battle.net. [LINK]

IGN, this has been a known fact for some time now. Even Michael Morhaime officially announced that the Diablo 3 beta was targeted for July-Sept 2011. Everyone has known that the beta was going to start during the last few months of 2011, but insiders have announced that D3 was going to be announced at Blizzcon for a Christmas release. Beta testing for Blizzard is really just a sneak peek of the game.. even during beta testing periods, they've hardly made any changes to the game before retail launch.