Community, Parks and Rec, and The Office all returned last night.. the episodes sort of felt like they never really left though. Even though they were pretty good, I think I was expecting something more out of them. I'm just glad the Community musical number was kept really short, however.

I had forgotten all about The Mentalist, but it made a return as well. And apparently, it came as a big surprise to many that Red John was still alive. I was a little disappointed by the episode, and it looks like the writers just wanted to rush through it so that they could get back to the "usual formula".

They should have left Jane in jail for a couple episodes or so, it could have given the writers something fun to work with. But instead, the writers just came up with a non-clever (and heavily contrived) idea to get him out of his predicament.

And they've also totally closed the investigations into J.J. LaRoche/Gupta and Fake RJ.. the writers found a brilliant way to justify it too: "They found nothing in their investigation!" Amazing!

"Person of Interest" was "meh", but I didn't actually expect much. Surprisingly, it had "received the highest test ratings of any pilot in 15 years", and the first episode drew in 13.2 million viewers. [Source]

I found it a lot like Human Target (which opened with 10 million viewers), and I won't be surprised if it's popularity and cancellation ends up being identical. It seems that everyone is really hurting for fresh ideas and decent shows.

I hate that backseat car cliche so much though.. Det. Fusco (the corrupt cop) walks right towards his car in daylight, can clearly see into his backseat, and yet doesn't notice John Reese (the hero) sitting in his backseat with a gun. This does not happen in real life. Similarly, he taps her cell phone and listens in to all of her conversations (ie, using it as a microphone), and yet it doesn't cause a terrible drain on her battery and she never needs to recharge it. She cellphones are tapped in real life, even dumb criminals know that dead batteries are a dead giveaway.

And to top the day off, I found out that Dexter 06x01 was leaked online. I was genuinely pleased with the episode and I hope it's a sign of a really good season. Seasons 1 and 2 were awesome, but I wasn't much of a fan as it progressed from Seasons 3 to 5 (they had no real direction or character development). I'm glad that they finally killed off Rita, but I wish that they had gotten rid of LaGuerta instead of Doakes (who was my favorite character). Maybe there's still time for her. :) Anyways, I hope they don't go too overboard with the new religious direction otherwise it could become a slobbering mess.

My speculation, at this time, is that Professor Gellar (Edward James Olmos) and his young protege Travis (Colin Hanks) are probably trying to kickstart armageddon or The Second Coming. Gellar might try to "maintain innocence" throughout the season, and he just gets his pupil to do all the dirty work. I'm hoping they take a different approach, and let the bad guy escape in the end (e.g. he moves to different town and finds another easily influenced pupil after the death of Travis.) Travis himself probably isn't helping the Professor purely because of his charisma either, but maybe because something bad happened in his life. For example, the death of his wife and children, and he wants to be with them again (suicide is a sin, so that's out) or punish the world (believing he can end it by starting the end of days).

You can be certain, though, that the writers are going to randomly pull passages from the Bible and make it fit into the story. Rather than re-enacting Revelations in order (they started with Revelations 13 by the way), they'll just jump around to different verses that they have the budget for and can reproduce.

It also appears that the Lieutenants promotion that was intended for Angel Batista (he shouldn't have sprung for the champagne until it was confirmed) will be going to Deb Morgan instead for her heroics in that restaurant shoot out. She'll probably become an internet sensation in the next episode, which is what prompts that specific PR move.

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.

Apparently that gambling post is a pretty big hit within Blizzard headquarters. Hopefully, it provides some insight and ideas that they might not have considered and so that their legal teams can further prepare or fix the potential issues.

(I would recommend removing the Listing Fee, or make it refundable if the item does not sell. If the auction is cancelled in advance, for example, then keep the Listing Fee since it was a strategic decision and had nothing to do with chance.)

Since yesterday, I'd have to guess that over 40 unique PCs and smartphones belonging to Blizzard employees have hit the blog, but I've started to lose count now.

All of the direct links seem to be from internal emails, and not by Google searches or other referrals. So, it's something making the rounds inside the office and of definite interest.

If you're a Blizzard employee and reading this, some commentary on the subject of RMT, gambling, and international law would be appreciated. :)