• "The Players Wanted It". I love it when Blizzard says this. Apparently, the reason for the new Pet Battles system is because players wanted it. Blizzard also said the same thing about the cash money auction house: players wanted it. Online only requirement and no mods for Diablo 3? Player want this because that's how it was in Diablo 2. Paid faction changes? Players wanted it. Create both factions on a PVP server? Players. Real ID? Players. Removal of Real ID? Players again. Character naming restrictions? Players. More restrictions? Removal of restrictions? Pandas? You get the idea. It's all completely true though.. it's like those commercials where they say, "Doctors agree that this is the best medical product." All they need are two doctors, who can have a doctorate in basket weaving, to promote the product. Players really did want these changes.. even if it was just 2 Blizzard employees who asked for it. Whenever they say "players want this", it's really "the business wants this." Why are the things that players REALLY want never done? Vanilla servers come to mind, and it's been a major discussion since TBC when there was no technical barrier.


• Bethesda has been denied their appeal in attempting to stop Interplay's development of the Fallout MMO. I'm actually hoping Interplay wins this battle, but not in the way or for the reasons you might be thinking. They have both been pretty sneaky on both sides, but in my opinion, Bethesda has been far more cruel during this war. I think that the Fallout MMO development progress has actually been very slow by Interplay on purpose, and they're really just holding the IP hostage. Bethesda's lawyers wrote that "Bethesda would be unable to recover in the event that Interplay enters bankruptcy." If this is true, then they should just purchase the entire Fallout IP directly from Interplay. (Interplay, of course, will be asking for a tremendous amount of "screw you" payback.) After all, Bethesda is not permitted to create any new Fallout game after their next standalone installment; the IP will automatically revert back to Interplay as per their original contract. I suspect that Bethesda is even more desperate now that RAGE (the possible Fallout replacement developed by id Software) wasn't received too well. What they should do is just make Fallout 5 a game with heavy next gen expansion characteristics, so that the universe can keep being expanded with new graphics engines and content in each expansion pack (or DLC). They just need to outlast Interplay. And, they should also buy the Wasteland IP from Inxile (for a much reduced price) and use that as their next gaming franchise line.


• Part 3 of that PC Gamer article came out. There was no more information on Titan, and no clarification of the first article which implied a possible Titan direction. Disappointing.

Yay! Blogspot Page comments are now visible again. (There are "Posts" like this one, and then there are special "Pages" like what you see along the top-right corner of the Blogspot menu page.)

From the looks of things it went down around the first week of October, and came back up within the past couple days. (Only reason I noticed was because someone posted a question on the FAQ page.) :)

You know, going over past comments (from well before Blizzcon 2011 mind you) was a very reassuring experience. It's too bad that Boubouille guy never actually researched any of that apparently. He was SO upset and angry about the leak, but unfortunately all of his arguments were predicated on assumptions and guesses. And, he only focused on ONE facet but conveniently left out the other imgur links, YouTube comments, paste sites, Blogspot comments, and all of the people who saw it before Blizzcon. He strikes me as someone who "does his research", so it was very disappointing that he was manipulating his people that way (he didn't tell them the full truth). I suppose followers will blindly follow their leader no matter what they say though.

Something still really bothers me though. Why was he so obsessed with this blog in the first place? He jumped in right away and acted very angry about the whole thing.. but there was no need for it. Real leaks and fake leaks happen all of the time, but why did he pick this leak specifically? There was something really weird about everything he was saying and it just doesn't add up. Why does the owner of one of the largest WOW blogs so interested in what comes out of this site? He's made it clear that he has been following the site for a long time too. What's all that about? I and many others know it was real, so why is he so insistent on trying to disprove it? I still feel like there's something else going on.

All of the Rockstar Studio websites (e.g. Leeds, San Diego, Toronto, etc) are now being redirected back to the main Rockstargames.com website.

Apparently, that test they did on August 25th was indeed a preparation for this big day (e.g. the GTA V announcement.)