The Blizzard Korea 2012 New Year's Videos are now up.



But, here's what the subtitles "really" say:

GREETINGS KOREAN GAMERS, MY NAME'S JAY WILSON AND I'M THE GAME DIRECTOR FOR DIABLO 3. I WAS TOLD TO SIT IN THAT DARK ROOM BECAUSE IT WAS CONSIDERED "ARTISTIC", I AM SORRY IF YOU NEEDED TO INCREASE YOUR GAMMA. I JUST SAID "2012" SO I WILL PUT THAT IN THE SUBTITLES NOW TO THROW OFF SUSPICION. I HAVE A VERY SECRET MESSAGE FOR YOU. THE GLOBAL RELEASE REALLY WAS BECAUSE OF YOUR RATINGS BOARD. WE HAVE FINALLY RESOLVED THE PROBLEM BUT GAMERS HERE ARE ASKING TOO MANY QUESTIONS. SO, I WILL TAKE SOME OLD BETA PATCH NOTES AND TURN IT INTO A REALLY LONG POST TO MAKE IT SEEM LIKE IT WAS A LOT OF WORK AND IT TOOK 6 MONTHS TO DO. IT WILL BE A GREAT DISTRACTION. BASHIOK ALSO HAS AMBIGUOUS TROLL TWEETS PLANNED IN THE COMING WEEKS TO FURTHER ANGER AND CONFUSE OUR CUSTOMERS TO STALL FOR TIME. PLEASE DO NOT SHARE THIS INFORMATION WITH ANYONE OUTSIDE KOREA. BTW DAEITY IS SUPER COOL AND ATTRACTIVE.

If you're interested in this sort of stuff (the videos, not the jokes), they also have a WOW Mists of Pandaria greeting here and a SC2 one here. The general Blizzard Korea video account can be found here if want to see the other older stuff.

(FYI, if you had actually thought that the subtitle translation above was real, then I am embarrassed for you. Looking in your direction, PrisonCharlie.)

UPDATE (01/21/12): The Bashiok Code

Remember yesterday I said that Bashiok was going to "FURTHER ANGER AND CONFUSE OUR CUSTOMERS"? Well, check out his latest post today.

I expect this response to further confuse and enrage, unfortunately.

He must have been reading this blog yesterday. :)

And since I was on the subject of secret hidden messages, I think he dropped his own secret message within this same post! Bashiok wrote:

Being perfectly honest about the cauldron and cube, they were removed for very 'designery' reasons which makes it difficult to explain to people playing the game.

Designery is emphasized and it's also not a real word. Upon further investigation, it was revealed that 'designery' is an anagram for 'greedy sin'. Gasp!

Seriously though.. Bashiok's posts were just embarassing. Here's the full entry:

White items will not be worth the inventory space. No one will pick them up. If people start picking them up we'll reduce the meaningless amounts of gold they already sell for even further. We can address these things if they happen.

Being perfectly honest about the cauldron and cube, they were removed for very 'designery' reasons which makes it difficult to explain to people playing the game. Players want more freedom, more choice, almost limitlessly, but a game is defined by its limitations. It's our job to define those limitations, and enforce them to create the type and feel of the game we're attempting to produce. There are a lot of good reasons, such as breaking up combat, giving very solid and safe stopping points for groups (especially strangers), as well as ensuring players are staying acquainted with the town, its inhabitants, features, and what it offers. A player may say, well that should be my choice, I should just be able to kill demons without a break for as long as I want. It's our job to make those limitations for the betterment of the enjoyment of the game, even if it's an intangible and almost psychological improvement that on the surface appears to be a nonsensical remove of freedom. I expect this response to further confuse and enrage, unfortunately.

He says that no one will pick up white items. Okay.. so, why put them in the game in the first place then, and why do they have vendor sell prices?

Then he basically says, "Well, if someone does actually pick them up for fun, we'll fuck the shit out of them so that they're not fun anymore and so that I can laugh at you."

He goes on to be "perfectly honest" about the removal of the cauldron and cube; "Yeah.. uh, they were removed for reasons that you don't need to know about.. you know, 'designery' stuff." What a cop out. I had thought they made games for their players? Instead, it was "Players want choice and freedom, but it's our job is to remove that choice and freedom."

Well, OF COURSE your response is going to further confuse and enrage. If I kept contradicting myself and I told my customers that they're too stupid to understand our "internal reasons", that I was going to screw them over one day, and I continued to insult their intelligence, of course they're going to be a little cross.

Square Enix just registered a new trademark called "FINAL FANTASY DIMENSIONS".

It has the standard description for a new video game. It will probably be a brand new series though.. so, it might have something to do with bringing back old characters and uniting them, or maybe a tie-in to their new time travel approach in recent games.

They have a domain registered as well: http://whois.domaintools.com/finalfantasydimensions.com

You should see news of this title hit fan websites sometime later today or tomorrow.

There were a ton of new trademark registrations last night, but they were all pretty boring. I swear, there must be 30 new mobile and web-based games trademarked every day.

Since I'm not really offering much in the way of news, here's a Path of Exile Beta Key: FRFKQ-ECR46-4K9QD-LJQ8Z

I have another that I'll be giving away next week. If you were lucky enough to be reading this post and got the key, please send us back your Friend Key so that I can keep giving them out to the other readers here. :)

* UPDATE (01/21/2012):

A little late, but it looks like other sites have finally picked up on it.

Whatever issues are revealed tomorrow (e.g. "core system mechanics"), they obviously can't say polish, bugs, player balance or runes. They'll need to come up with something really good.

Jay Wilson's post just went up moments ago.

So, Jay has been preparing this for a few weeks now and everyone was anticipating a significant post detailing the drastic mechanic changes and huge additions being made.

Boy, are they in for a surprise.

It ended up being exactly what I thought; they're still "polishing the game, the rune system, and minor UI changes". The same stuff they've been doing for months and months. It really can't get any more obvious than this; the recent explanation is not a good reason for the delay.

They're cutting out a ton of stuff (Cauldron, Identification, Mystic Artisan, Nephalem Cube, etc.) but they're adding one extra button. And, they're still constantly "tuning and making balance changes."

I am completely shocked that they tried to pass this off as their excuse.. I was expecting something really big, at the very least, that could have possibly explained the long delay. I imagine that others are beginning to clue in now after reading that "big update".

There must be something else going on. One suspicion is the RMAH, Battle.net Balance, and system integration with PayPal which has been postponed by several weeks now.

* UPDATE:

I'm not sure I really agree with this @Diablo tweet:

Jay Wilson (@angryrobotics) just released a wealth of insight into dev iteration & core game systems changes inc: http://ow.ly/8yAHo #D3

A wealth of information and core game system changes? Here's a summary of everything they actually did:

• We have been finishing and polishing the content for about a year now.
• Oh, and there's lots of work left to be done. Over the past few years, we've been tuning and making balance changes too.
• Most recently, we removed Scrolls of Identification. That took us about 5 minutes.
• We also removed the Mystic Artisan. Oh wow, this was a tough one.. took all day.
• We removed the Cauldron of Jordan and Nephalem Cube. 5 minutes.
• We removed salvage option from common white items. 5 minutes.
• We moved the fifth quick slot button. That took a while.. it was like 30 minutes of work.
• We moved the Stone of Recall button. 5 minutes of work.
• We moved the Salvage button to the Blacksmith Artisan instead. 10 minutes of work.
• We moved character stats to the Inventory UI. 15 minutes.
• We renamed Attack, Precision, Defense, and Vitality to Strength, Dexterity, Intellect and Vitality. In a way, we sort of brought back Willpower, which was actually removed from the game in late 2010. This didn't take any time at all, because we've already been experimenting with attribute changes over the past few years.
• We were able to complete all of these massive changes in 3 days, but trust me, we're still doing A LOT OF STUFF right now. It's like really busy. That's the Blizzard Promise™.

Basically, art, music, and programming are the forms of content in game development that take up the most amount of time. The changes that Jay Wilson described are all simple back-end database adjustments (text and numbers).. there has been no new content designed or added.. only deleted. Even the attribute changes are minor and they have been reworking it for years now.. even longer than they have been experimenting with runes. Everything described is nothing "new", it's really just polish.

* UPDATE:

I just want to make a clarification here. Jay Wilson's post shouldn't scare you at all.. this is just a stall for time to ease player frustration and to give the impression that some "real work" has been done (because it has nothing to do with the SK delays.) :)

To me, this does not mean a delay at all. Mark my words: all of these changes are DONE and they were probably completed weeks or months ago. Everything Jay detailed will very likely be in the next beta patch or patches. This IS and WAS NOT a lot of work and it should not worry you at all. This is all minor stuff that has been completed and they do NOT have a lot of work ahead of them.

Jay's post does not mean a delay. So, don't panic.

My only concerns now are with the B.Net Balance system and PayPal.

* UPDATE:

Post from Bashiok:

Keep in mind everything detailed in the article today is already in the game, and most of it is complete. Once you get Patch 10 and see that, I think it may sink in that these aren't theoretical changes we're still working on, they're changes we've completed.

Ah, here we go.. you guys need to start reading between the lines! :)

Read Bashiok's entire post; he just echoes what I've been saying. Most of this was probably completed a long time ago.. the Jay Wilson post is just to show that "something is being done". But it's all just minor stuff, meaning that there's something else delaying the game.