Lately, it seems like there's been a lot of contradiction from Blizzard..

When talking about their release date on February 23, Jay Wilson assured all of their customers that "You’ll know as soon as I know for sure the exact date."

We think you're going to love Diablo III when it's released, and speaking of release plans, you can seriously expect a launch-date announcement from us in the near future. See, I didn’t say “soon,” so I’m not taunting you. ;) You’ll know as soon as I know for sure the exact date.

Only a few weeks later (March 13), he changed it to "well.. I actually know the release date for sure, but I'm not going to tell you now" instead.. oh, by the way.. "I’m not taunting you. ;)"

You'll know as soon as I'm allowed to say. And no, I'm not allowed to say when that is.

It's been made pretty clear over the past couple months that the new Release Date has been known since at least January.

I really don't have any problems with these contradictions though.. I'm just so used to Bashiok that I expect it. It's the anti-transparency, business treachery and concealment of intent that bothers me.

For example, for a very long time Blizzard has been adamant that there will never be a Real Money Auction House available for Hardcore players. They have explained a lot of really good reasons for this decision, such as the unfairness of losing items you paid for with cash being the biggest.

Can Hardcore-mode characters use the currency-based auction house?

No. Hardcore characters will only have the option to buy and sell items together with other Hardcore characters via a separate "Hardcore-only" gold-based auction house; they will not be able to use the currency-based auction house. Hardcore mode is designed as an optional experience for players who enjoy the sense of constant peril that comes with the possibility of permanent death for a character. All of a Hardcore character’s items are forever lost upon that character’s death, so to avoid the risk of a player spending real money on items that could then be permanently lost when the character dies, we decided to prohibit the use of the currency-based auction house in Hardcore mode.

It's also funny to note that by NOT having the HC mode RMAH, it was a little contradictory in itself. They said that the reason for the RMAH was to prevent shady 3rd party sites, so why wouldn't they have made it available in HC mode in the first place? Well, for very good reasons that protect the consumer of course.

This all changed though after the removal of the Listing Fee. Suddenly, their convictions regarding the "difficult decision" made about their non-RMAH HC mode seems to be waning.

Now, a Hardcore RMAH is entirely possible.

If there is a demand for it we'll consider it.

Like I said, though, this kind of contradiction doesn't bother me. What does bother me is that he's saying that the players will make the decision whether it gets implemented or not. This worries me, because they've said this before.

Whenever Blizzard says, "players wanted it", "we didn't want it" or "there's a demand for it", it's actually Blizzard that really wants it. This just makes it a really great way to deflect blame away from themselves and control the positive perception of the company. They're being completely truthful too.. all you need is one or two players out of millions to ask for a feature, and they can honestly and confidently claim that "players wanted it."

It reminds me of commercials where they state that "Doctors Recommend X Toothpaste", when all they needed were two "newly financed" Doctors to simply say, "Yep. Sure." And they didn't even have to be medical Doctors in the first place.

Do you know what else players demanded that Blizzard had nothing to do with?

The Real Money Auction House. Blizzard didn't want that, it's because the players demanded it! im totlly srsly guys.

Oh, and REAL ID. That's right.. players wanted that great feature originally. Players also (for real this time) demanded it's removal, which Blizzard discretely replaced with REAL ID 2.0 when things cooled off.

World of Warcraft Paid Faction Changes too. And being able to create both factions on a single PVP Server. Yep.

The Mists of Pandaria Pokemon Pet Battle System. Diablo 3 Online Only requirement. Mandatory Battle Tags. Also, Diablo 3 Trade Chat.. players really did ask for this, but they gave them an aborted abomination instead so that they could say, "Well, we did give it to them lol."

Even Character Naming Restrictions, then more restrictions, then suddenly the removal of naming restrictions (that benefited Blizzard) were all demanded by the customer apparently.

Sure, some players thought these were great ideas and really did ask for them.. but do you really think that these were what most players wanted? The average player liked the idea of character naming restrictions, a broken chat system, and real name identification? Did everyone forget the uproar when the Cash Auction House was first announced? The RMAH didn't sound like a customer request at all.

"We only did it because players asked for it."

These kind of statements worry me because it means that Blizzard is seriously considering this and it has very little to do with player demand. When Blizzard says "If there's a demand for it", it means that their prepping customers like what they did with the "Item Squish" announcement. And, with the major changes to the items and RMAH due to the removal of the Listing Fee (gambling concerns), I think Blizzard has been seriously considering this in Hardcore mode to further increase revenue. It will be even more profitable in HC mode due to the risk involved in collecting items as well as losing all of your items in death (and thus requiring the purchase of all brand new items.)

Whether it's worth it to Blizzard or not, though, will depend on metrics. What percentage of players prefer Hardcore over Normal mode for example? If it's just a small percentage, it's probably not worth it. But, if there are a large percentage of Hardcore players, then yes; financial gains trump customer woes (which can eventually be soothed anyways.)

tl;dr; fully anticipate Blizzard (and other large gaming companies) to fully exploit the "only if players want it" statement for features that they actually want.

Just a quick update:

The Wasteland 2 Kickstarter Page is now live!

Looks like the pledges are rapidly increasing (was just announced on Twitter 30 minutes ago) and I can't wait to see what happens here. Most professionals and members of the media believe that the sudden success of Double Fine was a one-trick pony and they claim that no other game could ever receive the same amount of funding. (I don't think Kickstarter will be as successful with newer titles from unknown developers, but definitely nostalgic titles since they're targeting 30-40 somethings with disposable income, and they will be promoted by well-known names in the industry. Won't last forever though, the first group of Kickstarter games will get the most funding, before this mostly unknown service gets completely saturated years from now.)

When I first went to the page a few moments ago, it was sitting at 500 backers with $37,648 pledged of $900k.

I'll update the Wasteland 2 sticky when I get a chance. I want to check out the Kickstarter project first and make a pledge.

Blizzard Trademark Activity

Blizzard just filed brand new trademarks for "Legacy of the Void" and "Heart of the Swarm". It appears to just be some re-organization, as they already had 3 trademarks filed for each game previously (ie, there were 3 HOTS trademarks and 3 LOTV trademarks for the game itself, merchandise, and online services.)

They have condensed all of the trademarks into 1 single TM per game now, so the old 6 trademarks will probably be cancelled shortly.

Blizzard also just received notification that their "Mists of Pandaria" trademark will be published in the Official Gazette on 2012-03-27 for others to see and oppose if necessary. This doesn't change anything though and it's a standard process, so don't try to use it to predict a release date or anything. :)

New Deus Ex Game in Development

On the trademark maintenance front, Square Enix has also just filed for a new "DEUS EX" trademark. It looks to be a partial replacement for the original DEUS EX trademark. In any case, they're being renewed for another 10 years which means there is most definitely a new Deus Ex in development right now!

Overpowered Classes in Diablo 3

If you've been following any of the polls out there, you'll probably know already that Barbarians and Wizards will be the top classes most played in Diablo 3.

Many gamers view these two classes as the ones that will be most overpowered.. the Wizard with incredible damage and kiting/escape skills, and the Barbarian being able to take a massive amount of damage. The perception is that both of these classes will be the best ones for soloing bosses.

Before you jump on the bandwagon, there are a couple things you should keep in mind; the beta won't tell you anything about how strong they will be later in the game (classes that start out seemingly the strongest end up being the worst), skills and damage numbers will be nerfed and buffed a lot, and Blizzard really doesn't like class favoritism and imbalance.

If Blizzard notices too many people playing Barbarians or Wizards, they'll find a way to balance everything out and "encourage" players to start playing the other 3 classes instead. And by balance, I mean nerfing the Barb/Wiz and buffing the other 3. In particular, the Witch Doctor (which the least number of people want to play.)

Something to remember when you're selecting a class.

Even though, to me, a Wizard or Barbarian makes the most sense for farming, I think players might be in for a little bit of shock when they hit Hell and Inferno.. maybe even Nightmare. I have a feeling that the Wizard will start out very powerful, but end up having a lot of problems in Nightmare/Hell. The Barb problems might be more noticeable (compared to other classes) in Hell.

The recent changes to the Monk (30% reduction in damage) are giving me the impression that they want the Monk to be slightly more powerful than the Barbarian, and the DH will replace the Wizard in power. And, I have a very strong suspicion that the Witch Doctor will probably be the best class for soloing bosses.. maybe even the most overpowered during initial launch.

This is all just in the beginning though, but the first few months will be very critical. You want to level as quickly as possible so that you can farm the best stuff faster than anyone else.

Most players will be creating Wizards and Barbarians, but you might want to consider a Witch Doctor (even if you don't like the class) if you're just interested in farming. They might start off more slowly than the Wizard, but I suspect that things will improve tremendously as the difficulty increases. :)

Miscellaneous Stuff

• There should be an update on the new Alpha Centuari game by/before Q3 this year. I'm hoping to learn something more about it within the next 4-8 weeks to confirm or get an idea of when it will be coming out though.

• Curious what kind of Google Searches the Blizzard headquarters team does? Here are some examples: "Metal Arms 2" Blizzard, South Korea delay, south korea diablo gambling, diablo illegal gambling, diablo gambling laws, mmo gambling law, blizzard leak, blizzard layoffs, blizzard mass layoffs, daeity, daeity blog, digital castration, Blizzard Payscale, Blizzard Pay, new wow hacks. And then there are specific stuff, like looking for the "new X" World of Warcraft hack or exploit.

• I've been thinking a lot about what I am going to write about when Diablo 3 finally comes out. I've discovered a lot of cool things in the beta that I'm hoping haven't been reported and will still be there in retail. The first couple months of release are going to be an excellent time to make some money and being a poor student, it's something I'm looking forwards to. Plus, it's going to be a lot of fun since I've made more WoW gold using paper and pencil techniques than anyone ever did using Auctioneer. So, I think that there will probably be some strategies that I won't be sharing right away. Some RMAH strategies I will probably discuss, there are some really critical things that haven't been posted publicly anywhere yet and I really want to keep them to myself for now. The problem is that once I post them, Blizzard will immediately fix it or make major changes. I can't think of any other nice way of doing it, outside of privatizing the blog.