I've got another Path of Exile beta key to give away.

I will post it here (simple word jumble, like before) tomorrow (Monday) at 2:00PM PST.

By the way, has everyone been getting a Tribes Ascend beta key okay? Some people say they're really easy to get, others not so much. But, it's a very awesome game that more people should be playing.

* UPDATE:

Just a reminder that this giveaway is at 2:00PM PST. I'm seeing a lot of traffic at 11:00PM PST (2:00PM EST), but I won't be posting it for another 3 hours.

* UPDATE:

PoE Beta Key: FRQBT-X7LY5-UVT2V-D____

Letters: D 5 B S

If you've been reading older comments, I've been anticipating another little "something something" this coming week (Mon Feb 20 - Fri Feb 24). I figure that if I commit to a prediction closer to the date in question, there's a less likely chance of plans being altered due to one particular individual who "runes" surprises. :)

As you've known for a while now, Bashiok and Zarhym announced an upcoming trip to Paris, to "trade strategies" with the EU CM team. They're in Paris right now, and traveled a couple days ago.

Exchanging strategies is something that could easily have been done over email or video conference, though, and considering how frugal Blizzard is with things like travel expenses, I think there's another reason they're in Paris other than "just to exchange ideas". It's more likely that they're in the EU with a specific purpose, and they're probably working with the teams to prepare them for something big.

Bashiok is denying, in regular Bashiok fashion, that they are not there for anything to do with beta testing in the EU.

I didn't think about that. People are going to think we came out to plug in EU beta servers. Funny.

However, that just makes me even more suspicious and I think it's actually a cover for something else going on.

Seeing as how they traveled before the weekend, rather than at the start or middle of next week, there's a very high probability of an announcement early in the week (Monday most likely.) It won't be a release date announcement, mind you.. even though they have an internal release date scheduled, it's still too early to announce it so close to this past Shareholder's meeting.

Because they are visiting Paris, I suspect that it will be an EU specific announcement or something EU related happening. And because EU has been promised beta keys in the near future, this is probably the best time to do it with all of the other excitement taking place in NA.

Back on February 6, Nakatoir hinted that there will be "more information in the following weeks about the global giveaways as well as for regional betas for you." There's a very high probability that this will happen within the next few days, and ideally early in the week since Bashiok and Zarhym need to hop on another plane at the end of the week to travel again.

Don't expect beta keys to be immediately available though. It will probably be much like the US giveaway; there will be various contests, sweepstakes, instructions, region specific stuff, twitter stuff, a lot of rules (regional restrictions), and starting & ending dates.

(Just a note, they're not technically "physical beta keys" that are being given away. It will be just like the US contests where you submit your email address, the fansite forwards their account lists to Blizzard, and Blizzard upgrades your Battle.net Account with "the beta key.")

There are also hints in that same Nakatoir posting that NA was used primarily for heavy server performance testing, which tells me that they're not going to worry about the same so much in EU. Meaning, that you should not expect as many beta keys to be given away in the EU that were given away in NA. And, they will probably be divided up (Network Team's choice) into multiple regions for varied testing (and latency) metrics.

* UPDATE (02/20/12):

Confirmed! Diablo3x.com via their Facebook account, just confirmed that they received 150 beta keys from Blizzard France and that they will be providing an update soon.

And, svenskadiablo.se also confirmed that they have received 225 beta keys that they can give away on February 20 (today) and more on March 5.

Dear www.svenskadiablo.se,

We're happy to tell you that from the 20th of February, we have 150 Diablo III beta slots for you to sacrifice to your community through contests and / or sweepstakes. Additionally, from the 5th of March, you can offer a second wave consisting of 75 slots.

Something tells me that they weren't supposed to announce these until today though and it was supposed to be after Blizzard had already made their own official announcement (just like they did in the US.) Have any other EU fansites announced (leaked?) that they have received beta keys?

* UPDATE:

Diablo3.gamona.de have just posted their official announcement, and rules for their contests. So, they're giving away their (150) beta keys now.

Now, it's just sitting tight for the Official EU Battle.net forum post. I think some of these giveaways were a little premature. :)

* UPDATE:

And.. diablo3.ingame.de just announced the start of their own contest (150 keys) too! (Thanks anonymous.)

Here's a list of their authorized/official fansites, so they should be receiving keys in various quantities. I'll update the list when (if) they make their announcements.

English / D3Expert.com: http://www.d3expert.com/
English / Diablo3X.com: http://diablo3x.com/ (150 keys)
English / Gosugamers: http://www.gosugamers.net/diablo
Danish / Diablo3x.dk: http://www.diablo3x.dk (TBA keys)
Finnish / Goblin Explosives Network: http://www.goblinexplosives.net
Hungarian / Diablo III Hungary: http://diablo3.hu
Serbian / Diablo.rs: http://www.diablo.rs/
Swedish / Svenskadiablo.se: http://www.svenskadiablo.se (225 keys)
Turkish / Blizzturk: http://blizzturk.com/diablo
German / Diablo-3.net: http://www.diablo-3.net
German / InDiablo.de: http://www.indiablo.de aka ingame.de (150 keys)
German / DIII.de: http://diablo3.gamona.de (150 keys)
German / Diablo 3 Source: http://diablo3.4fansites.de/
French / GamersOrigin: http://diablo3.gamersorigin.com/ (100 keys)
French / JeuxOnline: http://diablo3.jeuxonline.info/
French / Judgehype: http://diablo3.judgehype.com/ (225 keys)
French / Millenium: http://www.millenium.org/diablo-3/accueil/news/ (TBA keys)
French / Mondes persistants: http://diablo.mondespersistants.com/ (TBA keys)
Spanish / Diablo 3 ESP: http://www.diablo3-esp.com/ (150 keys)
Russian / BlizzGame.ru: http://diablo.blizzgame.ru/
Russian / Warcry.ru: http://www.warcry.ru
Italian / BattleCraft.it: http://www.battlecraft.it (100 keys)
Polish / Battlenet Network: http://diablo3.net.pl (150 keys incl. 25 reserved)
Polish / Diablo III Poland: http://diablo3.com.pl/ (150 keys)

Unofficial, but too big to ignore:

http://tweakers.net (400 keys)
http://mygaming.co.za (450 keys)

Also, most of the sites who have "150 keys" might actually have received 225 or more. These are just the ones they're giving away for the first wave, but there's still a second.. plus the ones they reserve for staff members and friends.

I'm surprised no one from Reddit has picked up on any of this yet.. it's been a few hours now. So, if you're look for some free karma, you may want to link to this useful information in /r/diablo.

* UPDATE:

Apparently, Bashiok updated his US post this morning (02/20/12 @ 8:38AM PST) with additional (non-NA) beta giveaways:

D3Downunder: http://d3downunder.com (100 keys)
AusGamers: http://ausgamers.com (125 keys)


* UPDATE (02/21/12):

And there it is.. official Blizzard announcement regarding the EU fansite beta giveaways. :)

You can continue using that link instead of the ones I created above now.

Funny how so many fansites launched the official Blizzard contest, before Blizzard even made the announcement. And, as you can see, they aren't giving away as many keys as they did in NA.

They're still updating, and trying to collect information from the various fansites. It's still going to take a lot of time, manpower, and organization to manage all of these contests and sweepstakes from so many fansites in the EU. This is the job of Community Managers. Still think it's a coincidence that 2 CMs from HQ experienced with these contests paid them a visit? :)

I don't think they have much time to exchange strategies and pal around during the craziness this week (plus, with all of the forum outrage over the lack of keys.) I think Bashiok and Zarhym are there to help out.

Just went live less than 10 minutes ago. Diablo 3 Skill and Rune Changes by Jay Wilson (comments are disabled on their blog post by the way.)

Here are the important parts:

First, they’re now called skill runes, and they’re called skill runes because they’re no longer a physical item, but built directly into the skill system.

With the new skill rune system, you’ll be unlocking new skills as you level up just like you always have… but in addition you’ll also be unlocking skill runes.

Before I wrap up, I did want to cover that one of the added benefits of the new system is that you’ll be unlocking something every level all the way up to the level cap (60).

Just as we set different skills to unlock at specific levels, skill rune choices unlock at different levels as well.

Here's a good part about how they were trying to force the skills into items that could be sold on the RMAH. When you're trying to be creative, you shouldn't be "forcing" anything..

We fully expect that some of you will be disappointed that runes won’t be part of the itemization system. Internally, it took us a long time to let go of that notion too and stop trying to force them into being items, and instead embrace the intent of the system. Integrating runes with the skill system directly gave us a bunch of great benefits, and even without runes we’re launching with more item types than Diablo II had.

My past predictions were just based on public information and potential challenges to itemizing runes. However, there was apparently an internal leak that also appears to be confirmed due to some of the other, very specific, information just announced.

That Blizzard Leak

Disargeria, from the SomethingAwful forums, had a lot to say on the subject of runes yesterday, claiming that it was inside information from within Blizzard.

I do know for a fact that there are a lot of Blizzard employees with registered accounts on SA. I see them visit my blog all the time.

This leaked information by Disargeria and "Lammy!" ended up on Reddit and other sites, so Disargeria eventually went back and deleted all of his posts, and asked others to delete their quotes.. so, some members simply decided to repost them even more.

Here's what they had to say yesterday:

Runes are no longer items, but are now inherently tied into the skill system. You pick your skill, then your accompanying rune to go with it. Rank 1 runes start unlocking as of level 6 (!!!)

Skills are now going to be further divided into categories (defensive, technique, etc.) Initially, unless you specifically tell the game what you want, it's going to lock you into a recommended 'type' of skill for each slot. Presumably this is to keep noobies from making unviable builds, but allows you to do whatever you want once you're comfy with doing so.

My misinterpretation, apparently there are no more "ranks", they've all been normalized to around what rank 4 or 5 used to be. We unlock individual runes as we level. We'll get something new every level.

This leaves open the potential to boost the rune effects through gear. Previously the rune power was tied to the item, but if it's tied to the character, they can bring in stats on items that boost the rune effects.

They've set an internal release date.

I think the release date has an internal release date, too.

I'm surprised he didn't mention the Bola Shot change. DH feel weak at the beginning and one of the first things they did in the recent cycle was change Bola to round up 3 targets and pull them together before exploding. It does the 100% weapon damage to all three targets, making it a lot less frustrating to use. This also sets targets up to be more susceptible to other AoE like grenades and Chakram and gives the DH some needed control.

It's just the way he references +rune effects. I made that up, it wasn't leaked to me. He also isn't sure if you can opt out of it. Everything he posted is included in this thread, and there is more information to go that hasn't been leaked that for some reason he doesn't know about.

They're not moving back to skill trees, no. They're... making a change for them in normal difficulty. And it's well-intentioned but will upset a lot of people until they realize everyone graduates from normal mode.

Runes are now tied to the skills themselves, and you'll "learn" these runes as you level up. Like, at level 20 you learn the alabaster rune for Crippling Wave. I don't know how easy it is to change, but I'm guessing you can change the runes at the alter.

I think it's like, left click has to be a spammable offensive attack or rage builder or something, 2 has to be offensive, 4 is utility, something like that. And after you beat normal that goes away. Maybe even before normal, they might've changed it to something you can opt out of.

Would you guys mind unquoting me please?

Uh, and by lies I was referring to the bola shot

Reddit linked to this thread.

I'm not trolling, the problem is it's true and I don't want to be connected to it.

Most importantly, this is a very good confirmation now that this information did indeed come from a Blizzard employee and that it's well known internally that there is a Diablo 3 Release Date set.

And, they had a release date a mere week after the Q4 2011 call. Given other evidence, it appears that they even had this release date planned before the Shareholders Meeting (Bashiok had said it was discussed during that week, and it was delayed to Q2.)

In Other News..

Apparently, the RMAH Currency Cap is lower for accounts without Authenticators attached. Meaning that Blizzard will be "strongly motivating" many users to buy the authenticator. Make sure you familiarize yourself with this older post which confirms that Authenticators really do generate revenue for Blizzard.

And it appears that another prediction also came true. Blizzard has added a ton of new item affixes. :)

New item affixes have been added!

Chance on hit to:
Fear
Stun
Freeze
Immobilize
Chill
Blind
Slow
Knockback

And they have also made some changes to affixes to further increase the variety of randomly generated items:

The following affixes now have a chance to appear twice when crafting items:

Min damage
Max damage
All Elemental damage types

Expect more, like double or triple affixes to increase item variety (e.g. multiple Chance On Hit modifiers.) There will be a gentle balance though.. once they collect actual RMAH metrics, they can tweak the total quantity of item variants and either increase them or scale them back.

Now, I just need to test Public Chat when I get a chance so see if it's truly trade friendly (ie, it allows item linking.)