* Unannounced features in Diablo 3?
This topic should have some pretty fun speculation. I wonder, for example, if there's going to be a special menu for the virtual merchandise you can purchase from the Blizzard store. For example, a pet container, pet skins, or other visual appearances like in World of Warcraft.
I had always thought that an "Art Style" feature in the game would be a really brilliant idea considering the D3 art controversy. It wouldn't be that hard to do, and players would love it. Normally, they'd just do it themselves through graphics mods. but those have been restricted. So, what if Blizzard were to implement a feature to turn on or off "Classic Diablo Art Style" versus "Diablo 3 Art Style"? Much like switching back and forth between control schemes. Not only would that be awesome, but it would also demonstrate that Blizzard listens to their customers. :)
It would be fairly straightforwards too; apply a filter, adjust contrast levels, turn off glows, tone down special effects, turn off bloom, change ambient light effects, alter player light radius, palette swap out, and even possibly have alternative graphics content available.
Maybe a future patch?
* Blizzard Coercion
If you followed Diablo tweets, you might have caught this earlier inappropriateness during Gamescom.
#D3 is up for a People's Choice Award at @IGNUK If we win we'll release the beta, or will we!? Only one way to be sure. http://ow.ly/67OC4That's not even funny. They're basically saying, "vote for us or else". If you vote, we might release it early.. if you don't vote, we'll withhold the beta.
That's just terrible. Was this another great PR idea? Or were they just getting all of their pre-Blizzcon trolling out of the way so that they don't have another Paul Sams incident? With everything being announced this year, I hope they won't have time for another "Geek Is.." speech either. >:(
* Illegal Online Gambling?
Online gambling is illegal for the most part in the US. And, Blizzard has stated that their lawyers have looked into the Diablo 3 game, don't consider it gambling, and players are all assuming it's perfectly safe.. but is it really?
I wonder how long it will take before certain people with connections wise up and start asking the right questions? Say for example, making inquiries to a State Representative, an Anti-Gambling Coalition, members of the Government, or maybe even the FBI Cybercrime disivision?
The Real Money Auction House is one of the biggest technical issues still holding back the Diablo 3 release. That and their 3rd party payment system still requires a ton of testing. The game itself is pretty much done, now Blizzard just needs to test all of their servers, transactional and cash payment systems, and logistics. If the right people were notified and started asking Blizzard some serious questions at this juncture, it could seriously delay the release of Diablo 3.
Credit cards associated with Internet gambling sites are usually rejected, but Blizzard has entered into a special relationship with an unannounced 3rd party to handle this cash money trade service. It's a good idea they're outsourcing this too.. perhaps they have some clauses in their contract that give them indemnity in case something were to happen.
Blizzard could have easily done this themselves, but they're involving a 3rd party.. it could just be related to workload, but maybe there's another reason. You know.. a "just in case" scenario. Blizzard also has the ability to flip a switch on the Cash Auction House at any time. :) If I were them, I'd be worried.
And, it probably wouldn't take much on an explanation to a non-gaming government official. What's the simpliest way to explain how the Diablo 3 Real Money Auction House works?
1. You pay to play on a live gaming service.
2. This game is played by adults and minors.
3. You can put your real money into this gaming service and use it to make more money.
4. While playing on the live gaming system, there are multiple different kinds of games that you can play. Games of chance and games of skill. Much like an online casino.
5. These games are played against the "house" who makes money because the odds are in their favor and they can control the odds.
6. While playing some of the games, there are random chances of winning "tokens" that represent real cash value.
7. You make money by random chance winnings.
8. There is also another game of chance where you can gamble your token to see if you can convert it into varying levels of real money. (RMAH)
9. When you gamble your token, you must pay a fixed fee for every gamble. Whether you win or lose, you must pay for the gamble.
10. Blizzard can control how many gambles each players makes during the day, and change volumes of gambling attempts.
11. Player winnings and fixed fees are very small (e.g. $0.05-$1.00), however these involve millions of players with multi-millions of transactions per day. Imagine billions of "microgambling" games.
12. Servers for this online gaming service can be at offshore locations. Players from all over the world can access this gaming system from any other country. Or play on multiple countries with different currencies.
It sure sounds like gambling to me. There are layers upon layers of varying forms of gambling and indirect gambling. Some of these layers aren't even obvious yet to most players; the listing fee is gambling where the house always wins and controls the odds. There's a reason why online auction services don't have listing fees when they lose auction attempts.
Diablo 2 "Gheed Gambling" is also completely available in Diablo 3, but now it's in the form of Artisan crafters. It's not gambling now, it's "crafting with a random chance". Basically, you take a token that represent real money, gamble it, and you can convert it into an item of much greater value.
The new RMAH system also will be allowing vast amounts of money laundering in multiple countries. In other gambling systems where there is a transfer of money involved, it often requires people playing the game for long periods of time to transfer money to another account for laundering purposes (or the money launderers own the business and use the transactions to hide money). In Diablo 3, though, users can now just buy large quantities of virtual tokens, transfer to another account, and cash out all in the same day. It's easy, fast, not monitored (unless reported), and it can also be fully automated. There's also less risk involved because they don't own the business and they are just using a legitimate service. It's scary to think of the possibilities here.
I had mentioned that it could really be explained in one sentence. Well, here it is; Blizzard's Developer Guild has been very "inactive" over the past 4 months.
What I mean by "inactive" is that there's hardly anyone logging in or playing any more. Many of them have frozen their accounts and it's just very quiet these days. Nothing like what it used pre-Cataclysm. It's something that I thought would be interesting to share and it says a lot right there. Even people who can play the game for free haven't been playing since Cataclysm. And, they're also the people who "represent" the game in a way.
Mind you, the Dev Guild isn't made up entirely of developers or even Blizzard employees. It used to be in the beginning, but over time they have invited many friends and family members who are now in the guild.
I just thought it was kind of interesting that even they seem to have gotten bored by the game, and it's not just us lowly gamers. :)
I'll have more to talk on another subject relating to the Dev Guild in future post.
Oh also, there was another thing I was mulling around. :) It's become quite an annoyance to keep switching users when posting new stuff, so I'm just going to be using the Daeity name for blogposts moving forwards. I'm not sure if Blogger has any way of changing the name, but I'll look into it. It's much easier just using a single account.
Paraphrased of course. :)
Activision (Source):
Game publishers really shouldn't throw insults around at their competitors. Whoever does this is mean and unprofessional. Looking at you EA.
Earlier..
Activision (Source):
I've only seen Battlefied 3 on a PC. It's just a PC title, a very small audience, and not on console where most business is.
Activision (Source):
There’s not a studio at this company that will tell you: 'Activision is forcing us to get the game out.' Our people have personalities, are autonomous, responsible, creative, serious, and they want to make great games. EA is the exact opposite.
Activision (Source):
Indie developers suck ass. Bungie is "probably the last remaining high quality independent developer. It's very hard to... that has sort of has institutional skills and capabilities. And they're a real company."
Sad to see Destructoid defending Activision (first link) and calling EA's responses "petty antics." Both of these companies have been firing shots at each other for years, and no one should be taking any sides in the matter. This is just what competitors have been doing for thousands of years, and they both put themselves on high pedestals (which is also tiring and cliche). War never changes.
I'm starting to notice many highs and lows of information, so there might be periods where I'll take long breaks from writing. Sometimes though, there are a lot of little things going on that I just can't put into one post.. so, I was thinking of making some of the more "weaker" posts into a smorgasbord of unrelated quick posts. I might have to make it a tradition too depending on my available time.
* I just feel really bored today and I don't really feel like researching anything at the moment. Maybe later this week.. I was thinking about reviewing Diablo 3 alternatives like Path of Exile, Grim Dawn, or Torchlight 2. Grim Dawn looks very awesome.
* TV shows are starting to dry up. The final season of Breaking Bad is apparently closer than I thought, so I'm sad to see that the series will be gone in 1-2 years. Walt's hubris keeps making more appearances.. I think everyone's anticipating a pride before the fall type situation in the final season. :)
* True Blood 4x08 happened exactly as I thought it would. :) The show routine is getting a little annoying, writers are getting lazy, and there are more plot holes developing (like a werewolf with heightened senses not knowing he's being followed by someone 30 feet behind them). Looks like it might have been the ghost after all that wrote that message on the wall.. I have no idea how, though, considering that they need a medium to be able to interact with the real world (like picking up a marker) as explained by the show. I hope it was her other son though.. it's the only way to explain the scene. Writers change the laws of physics too often.
* I was also thinking about creating a list of things that cause virtual economy imbalances or disruptions. They're very delicate and fragile after all, and small things can completely change the value of gold and items in Diablo 3. But, it's all pretty common sense; exploits cause hyperinflation, new items in expansion packs, hotfixes and even patches can cause major changes in gold value. I'm still thinking about this one.
* I might have made a mistake in that 11.1 million subscriber clarification post. I'm waiting for more details, and if I'm wrong I'll make a correction to it.
* Daeity wasn't kidding when he said that the blog gets a lot of visits from Blizzard offices. There's been a lot of activity the past couple weeks. Most recently, a Blizzard visitor (216.148.0.72) came from the Somethingawful.com forums, meaning that he has a personally paid registered account or Blizzard pays for accounts so that they can monitor communications about their company. They were really interested in the Daeity's old post about "Subs in Trouble". The other one that Blizzard employees are very interested are the articles about RMT where Blizzard had stated in the past that they consider RMT illegal. Like this one. The link is still working as of today even though it was edited by Nephadne on 03/06/11 from an original posting date of Dec 2010. All of the focus has been on subscribers and contradictions about RMT.. hardly anything else is being read.
* Apparently Square Enix might be creating a "Square Games" division to re-brand themselves. To do this right, their first game better be a proper sequel to Chrono Trigger.
* Finally, that thing I was mulling over.. I might post about it in the next couple of days or so.