• Electronic Arts has just registered a couple new trademarks called "BLACKED OUT". It's a video game, but I have no idea what it's going to be about.
  
  Moments later, two more Trademark registration came through. Another game called "SECRET ISLAND".


• It looks like Cameron Dayton has created a new online blog. Something to monitor closely in the beginning especially if he mentions anything Titan related. Right now, it just has all of the "hello world" blog template artifacts. I'm not expecting anything big to be revealed on the site, though.


• Apparently, we have an unofficial sister site in China now (http://daeity.blog.163.com/). The blog is translated as "Digital Harmony", so I don't know if it was a mistranslation from either side or if the name was just offensive and renamed. :) Basically, the blog owner is taking posts from here, translating them, and putting them up for Chinese readers. (163.com is owned by NetEase by the way.)


• On a Diablo 3 note, I've gotten a pretty good (new) quote from Jay Wilson regarding the comparison of Diablo 3 to gambling. :)
  

  IGN: Charles Onyett on IGN's PC team lovingly calls Diablo III the greatest slot machine ever made. Would you say that's an accurate statement?
  
  Jay Wilson: I certainly hope so.

  The "Greatest Slot Machine Ever Made" article is here, where he's talking about the feelings experienced from massive loot drops and being able to sell them. He's basically describing the same psychological effect and endorphin rush experienced during gambling.


• For that Path of Exile account giveaway, I think the contest will be an information seeking quest. Not a puzzle, or anything like that, but rather you go out there and find out something new that I can post here. You can use those "Gaming Leaks" post to help guide you, investigate forums, Twitter, personal blogs, Facebook, etc.. basically something with interesting gaming related information that no one else knows about (looking for Blizzard related things mostly). Or, finding a new source of information that can't be searched on Google and is therefore overlooked by many. If you find something, you don't need to write an article or anything about it.. I'll do that myself (if it's something I don't already know), but you'll still get credit (plus the account) for finding the information. It won't be a 1 or 2 day thing either.. I figure you would need some time to hunt around. I'll talk more about it next week, but you might as well start looking around now and see what you can dig up.


• If you're looking for anything Titan related (or you're a Titan blog owner), you should add Pior Oberson to your list of Titan artists. He's the Senior 2D (Concept) 3D (Game) CHARACTER ARTIST for Titan, and you can see all of his other Character-specific art in his portfolio. The one thing that Titan will be big on is a variety of characters, and it seems there's more focus on "people" than "monsters".
  
  His LinkedIn profile has him as a "2D and 3D character artist - traditional and digital art, lowpoly and highpoly" but it used to have "Concept and execution of highpoly sculpts and character models, realtime 3D characters, 2D character concept art" in relation to his specific job duties on the Next Gen MMO.
  
  His resume has also undergone a few iterations:
  

  Dec 2007 to present day - Blizzard Entertainment - Irvine CA.
  2D 3D Character artist.

  Nov. 2007 to present day - Blizzard Entertainment - Irvine CA.
  Senior 2D 3D Character artist on a nextgen MMO title a.k.a. TITAN + additional art on WoW : WoTLK.

  2007 to present day - Blizzard Entertainment - Irvine CA.
  Senior Character artist on a NextGen MMO title.

  So, you might want to pay close attention to his "highpoly sculpts" from 2007 and up.
  
  There's also a "30 Minute Sketchclub" blog consisting of Josh Singh, Paul Richards, Vadim Bakhlychev, Marc Brunet, Gino Whitehall, Pior Oberson, etc. All employees who were working on Titan. :) There are sketches there that they made during the lunchtime when not working on Titan (as well as many more developed 3D art pieces built at work or at home.)
  
  There's also Zach Baker, who was also on the Next Gen MMO team (he left Feb 2010). He has an article Looking Back at Blizzard. It doesn't provide anything useful or interesting though, but I figured it would throw it up here anyways. It's been sitting on the shelf for months, and I just never got around to posting it.

The key winner from the first contest (this past Monday) has graciously given us his recently received friend invite, so we have another contest!

I'll post it tomorrow at 9:00AM PST.

I know you guys really want these, so I won't hoard them for a few days. :)

(For an entire YEAR I waited and never received a beta key, and now within a week I have two accounts and 4 beta keys to give away. Is that like Murphy's Law or something?)

I'll still also have the Account give-a-way, I just need to think about the contest. Also, remember the mental note I made and be prepared for an easy/annoying puzzle.

* UPDATE

two zed el nine six four gee eee eh que dee why eff seven jay bee pee gee arr eff

("eh" sounds like the letter "A" by the way. It might be pronounced differently outside NA, which is why I'm clarifying.) :)

This is more of a reminder (or a placeholder) for something that should be revisited after Diablo 3 goes retail to confirm the legitimacy of an old Titan related leak.

You might remember that back in mid April there was an alleged Diablo 3 leak on 4chan. But, it's looking more and more legitimate now that the beta and the Azmodan video at Blizzcon were released. Remember, this 4chan leak was long before the F&F beta started, and before anyone knew any details like these about Diablo 3. At the time, it was met with a LOT of criticism and disbelief.

[On a little piece of historical trivia, the D3 F&F beta didn't start until the first week of Sept 2011. That was when Sixen said that there was no F&F beta. :) The next day, I posted a comment from our well known source that the closed beta would be starting on Sept 20.. which it did. :) Forcegaming was predicting Sept 12 at the time. It's one of those small tid bits that a majority of users sometime miss. My comment was actually the result of another email I had received from TOD after his/her mid August leak.]

Here's a link to the entire archived chat log. And, here is a collection of his claims (which were considered "bullshit" back in April). :)

(* UPDATE: The archival site has been down for a few days, and the cache will most likely disappear, so I created a mirror here. Pastehtml will probably give a warning before going to the page, mostly because of all the 4chan links in it.)

Confirmed:

1. Plans for a D3 console port. (Blizzard intended to port it to consoles when the expansion development began.)
2. Levels were generated in mediocre way.
3. Didn't feel as open as D2. Levels in D2 were much bigger. In D3, "open world areas are small with little side areas, and its randomly generated dungeon levels are mediocre, with rectangular areas glued together."

This part about the open areas with little side areas and dungeons glued together with rectangular pieces is what really stood out to me. I mean, he really nailed it right there. That's exactly what the beta is like, and one of the concerns players have over the post-Act 1 areas. Blizzard has promised that this isn't the case though. I still have my doubts though.

4. No runewords.
5. Low system requirements.
6. Same model as Starcraft 2, no LAN. Online only requirement.
7. Final stage is not the High Heavens. (An old rumor.)
8. Boss battles are scripted and easy. (One common complaint from beta players, and the same is expected from all of the other bosses.)
9. Elites "not as crazy as in D2; they have less enchantments".
10. Level design.

Level design? In what order? I.E: Does the desert come in the second act, or later?

First act: Tristram and surroundings (monastery, Leoric castle,etc)
Second act: Desert
Third act: The bastion keep. Really [bad] act.
Fourth act: Begins where the meteor hits, then you descend into hell

This was another pretty good confirmation. Except he says "where the meteor hits", which I always assumed was the Tristram Monastery. But Act 4 does start in the "Holy Sanctum", "Blessed Chancel", and "Radiant Chapel" before moving to the Spire and then into Hell. It could be that another segment of the meteor (or another meteor) hit the Monastery? Still.. very specific and very accurate.

Unconfirmed:

11. Codex and spell rune combinations.

Is there any kind of in-game codex for [stuff] like monsters and spell rune combinations?

No. There are recipes, and some special items like lost scrolls with some lore in them, used in recipes.

This one is iffy. He either confirms no rune combinations and/or in-game codex stuff. He says there are recipes and lost scrolls for recipes with lore in them. And, it's possible that the in-game codex lore for monsters were after his testing.

12. "You fight Tyrael in act 4." (Probably not the end boss, but rather in the middle or just before Diablo, if this is true.)

13. Plot Line

When Tyrael broke the Worldstone in D2, it basically destroyed what separated the mortal world from heaven and hell. So Asmodan devised a way to resurrect Diablo because his essence wasn’t completely destroyed with the soul shard. They invoked a meteor to hit Sanctuary for its impact would generate enough energy to provide a portal from hell for a massive army. Tyrael was corrupted by Asmodan. Asmodan is boss of act 3.

Azmodan has been confirmed as the boss of Act 3, which was pretty specific. And everything else above seems pretty close to the truth based on the small amount of information we know about the game.

14. In the end, the hero will sacrifice themselves to act like the Worldstone before it was destroyed, thereby separating Hell and the mortal world again. Diablo gets chained in Hell, never killed.

Conclusion

He did a pretty good job nailing many of the fine points in the game. If items #12, #13, and #14 end up being true, then it lends him some very good credibility to his claims of being an internal tester.

And, it also gives some credibility to his other Titan related comment:

-Do you know anything about Blizzard’s other projects? Brief thoughts on all the classes? Favorite thing from D3? Is it ever going to be released?

That Titan MMO will be integrated with Facebook, and will be more or less like Second Life. The classes are well designed, with each having different gameplay. I liked the skill system plus runes. Expect a beta announcement at BlizzCon.

What I always found odd about this, though, is that he was a tester for Diablo 3.. so why would he also have access to the Titan game? Perhaps he heard it from a coworker.. or perhaps he heard it from somewhere else. :)

I've actually heard this very specific comparison before (e.g. "integrated with Facebook and like Second Life".)

It was something that the Original Daeity once said. Right before it was removed. :) (And at the time, there were no other websites or sources that compared Titan to Second Life and Facebook.)

kOOpat wrote:

Many people will call bull on this, they said the same about the slate leak ;)

But what he said about Titan certainly drew my interest. It's the exact same thing that Daeity said before Blizzard perma shut down his blog. He said that the closest comparison to Titan was Second Life there was a large variety of environs, customizable player appearances (e.g. suits, ties, dresses, army outfits, fantasy & scifi wear, etc), heavy interaction with social networks like Facebook and other ARG-like influences, maybe even "customizable worlds" that can be shared with friends. There was a load of other leaked info, but it was killed fast and I didn't take screenshots.. cuz who could have really anticipated that would happen. What I saw of the art work though it looked awesome!

Regy wrote:

@kOOpat: With that logic, the guy who posted this could easily have been a reader of Daeity's blog prior to it being shut down, so his information was taken from there.

The fact remains that this was posted on 4chan of all fucking places, and that he's lying about the NDA loophole (no company miswrites NDAs to that extent)

To easily discredited to take seriously, and the fact that he sounds like a raving lunatic.

The Greatest Days wrote:

Did it occur to you that maybe he's one of the many people that read Daeity's blog? He's more than likely recycling info from that. Blizzard shutting it down made tons of people believe in the info's legitimacy, so this chumpstain thinks he struck gold.

I, for one, believe nothing. I mean sure, does some of his plot info sound plausible? Yeah absolutely, if only this wasn't coming from this particular chumpstain. Lifeless losers have gone to much less trouble to achieve their 15 mins of anonymous e-fame.

As you recall, TOD had a post (that was involuntarily deleted) that covered a ton of info about D3, Titan, and subs. He also had another post about subscriber figures that was also deleted. And others were removed completely. But, he summarized a lot of those details into the important parts that would be announced at Blizzcon (e.g. level cap, required online connection) in the "Huge News" post.

There are still bits and pieces out there that mention details in his last posts, and "koopat" just confirmed a link between Daeity's old posts and this D3 leak.

Also coincidentally, the Daeity D3 leak was on March 23 2011, and this 4Chan D3 leak was on April 13 2011. :)

The whole situation just seems oddly connected; D3 tester not associated with Titan gets Titan information, compares to Daeity remarks, leaks D3 information, Daeity also leaked D3 information, and all of this happening so closely together.

This might just be an incredible coincidence of course. There's no way to tell what really happened: he might have been a legitimate internal tester and they just both knew the same internal details about Titan (which helps in a confirmation regarding Titan), he pulled the information from the blog (the probability of the timing and details is pretty amazing), or maybe he just really did his homework and pulled pieces from all over the internet or through his own lore research. But to have so many parts correct and so specifically written, I don't think it could have been gathered from rumors.

Anyways..

If you exclude all of these interesting coincidences, if everything he said is indeed proven to be true, then it certainly lends a ton of credibility to the Titan game design.

Also, a lot of Blizzard's decisions about Titan were made during a time when Zynga was extremely successful, they had partnered with Facebook, and they intended on implementing Real ID (with FB) into their new games. It's quite possible that a FB integration has been planned for a very long time, and they're getting their feet wet with SC2. (Just like the RMAH in D3.)

It will be interesting to see (and another confirmation) if Blizzard introduces new FB integration features within Diablo 3. For example, seeing online players that are linked to FB profiles, messaging in-game users from FB, forming FB-based guilds (instead of in-game guilds), maybe even a FB/RMAH or inventory management system if it proves to be successful.

At Blizzcon 2011, they mentioned that they were looking for a way to implement guilds. A Facebook based guild system would certainly explain why they left out in-game guilds for retail. Now, they won't call it a "guild" system though, it will be a Facebook Friends linkage page or something (I wonder how it could be integrated in-game though?). But, it will be a good way of getting non-users to start using Facebook for Blizzard games. :)