Recently I made it to Hell mode in Diablo 3 and a night or so later I got an email from Blizzard saying this:

"You've proven your valor in the battle for Sanctuary in Diablo® III. Now take your skills to Azeroth with a FREE digital copy of World of Warcraft® Battle Chest®, which includes 30 days of game time, The Burning Crusade® and Wrath of the Lich King® expansion packs."

World of Warcraft Battle Chest free? The email came with a key. I thought this might be some kind of phishing, but the email seemed legit and the URL's matched up to Battle Net proper. Clicked the link logged in to Battle Net and I had World of Warcraft, The Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King for free. It took me through the steps to pay for a subscription, so I declined that but I can do a free 30 days of the whole deal if I want.

I signed up for the World of Warcraft Starter Edition some time ago and stopped at level 9 or so. I went back into my Starter Edition account and poked around a bit. I created a Undead Mage or some such and called him... Wait for it...

SnuggyBunny.

It makes a lot of sense that Blizzard is hanging out free copies of WoW up to Litch King. Making the barrier to play NOT require the purchase of 5 games is a good idea.

Did you get this email? If you did would that prompt you to try out WoW?

-
Not the only one talking about this either:
http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/534914-world-of-warcraft/64652371http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=500259
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=500259

A few days ago I finally made it to Hell in Diablo 3 with "SnuggyBunny" my Witch Doctor. Beating Diablo in Nightmare wasn't too difficult. I sort of stopped going to the Auction House and only used the gear from game drops until I recently picked it back up. I think that made the game a bit harder than it would have been otherwise. After I started over in act one in Hell I decided to hit up the Auction House to see what kinds of things I could buy with all the gold I had. I had about 250k gold so I figured spending 50k on a weapon would get me something better than I had.

I had a two handed axe that hit for about 98. My total damage with modifiers and such was about 1200 damage. I found an two handed axe for a 50k buyout that hit for 1000. Its total strength and attribute modifiers took me from 1200 damage to over 10k. Its fun stomping the shit out of everything for sure but going from 1k -> 10k damage by dropping 50k gold seems a bit over powered. I wonder what I could get for 250k?

Snuggys recent look is above, check out all his stats and gear here:
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/jdodson-1332/hero/3331502

That said, it was fun to beat Diablo again and had fun doing it again. No secret Diablo 3 disappointed me a bit so its good to go back after taking a break and have a lot of fun with it. That said, coming back to grind every so often is fun and I look forward to playing the other classes as haven't really started with any of them yet save the Barbarian who is still in Normal.

After I beat Hell I got an email from Blizzard... More about that in my next post.

Moar DLC to whet your Borderlands 2 palate in Mr Torgue's Campaign of Carnage. According to Gearbox this DLC will be released next week.

Excited? Interested? Looks pretty bad ass.

Two new Starcrafts Animations. Episode 12 "She's The Bomb" above and Episode 13 "Spore Loser" you can watch here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3H7G5v75Dc&list=SP0QrZvg7QIgpoLdNFnEePRrU-YJfr9Be7&index=15&feature=plcp

For Aiur!

I now bring you the thrilling part 2 to my interview with the always awesome Panickedthumb.

You can read part one here:
http://cheerfulghost.com/jdodson/posts/738

jdodson: What was the last game you beat?

panickedthumb: This is kinda sad actually. I can't remember. I just took a scan through my Steam library to find out. Does Diablo 3 count? I haven't beaten Inferno with any character yet, but I've beaten Diablo himself quite a few times now. Otherwise, it's Deus Ex: Human Revolution I guess. Perhaps I'm going through a phase, but lately I've been having trouble holding my focus on a game long enough to beat it. This happens from time to time. I usually end up on a gaming hiatus for a while and then come back fresh.

Human Revolution was a masterpiece by the way. It's probably my favorite game I've played this year. Stealth, RPG elements, tight cover-based shooting. It's a good length too. Much longer and it would have felt like a drag, much shorter and you'd feel cheated.

jdodson: Beating Diablo 3 does count, yes. I don't care what the kiddies say, just because I haven't beaten inferno 50 times with all the characters doesnt mean I have beaten the single player aspect of Diablo 3. Feel free to respond to that but also I had a follow up there.

jdodson: Recently Linux users playing D3 through Wine have been permanently banned by Blizzard. Since D3 is only playable online and banning is permanent, I wonder what your thoughts are with this recent trend?

panickedthumb: I'm not 100% sure that's true. It seems there's conflicting information. I would certainly like to know the answer to that though. Blizzard says they aren't doing it, but people seem pretty sure they are. If it is happening, it's horrible. They have allowed WoW in WINE for years, why should this be any different?

jdodson: I don't know. I guess I believe people more than I believe Blizzard. No reason beyond it seems like Blizzard has more to gain being dodgy and a person has less to gain. I think my bias is showing, but if it all came out and those people really are dirty cheats then they deserve a perma-ban.

jdodson: Would it scare you to have you Battle.net account banned?

panickedthumb: Since D3 is online-only, yes. Especially because they seem unwilling to listen to any reason when attempting to get unbanned.

jdodson: Your Steam account banned?

panickedthumb: YES. More than Battle.net, but I think I'm less likely to get a Steam ban, and I think if it was erroneous I'd be more likely to get my account back than with Blizzard. That's one downside to digital distribution. Lose your Steam account, you've lost everything.

jdodson: I agree, I think Steam has a reputation of being a "good guy" over Blizzard. Why do you think people trust Valve more than say Blizzard here?

panickedthumb: They seem to be more willing to work with their customers. They aren't
quite Zappos but they seem to go a long way to make their customers
happy. This isn't always the case, of course, but they have a
reputation for being one of the good guys for a reason.

jdodson: The Mario franchise is pretty huge, even now. I wonder what you think was the game that stands out above the rest for you?

panickedthumb: Super Mario Galaxy 2 is probably the one that stands out above the rest. It was impeccable. No, it wasn't a big change over the first Galaxy, but it refined everything about the first one. It certainly isn't my favorite, that has to go to Super Mario Bros. 3. That may be because of nostalgia, I'm not sure, but it's definitely my favorite. However, the Mario franchise is 3D now, primarily, and Galaxy 2 is the pinnacle of the 3D series.

jdodson: Memes. They will always be with us. Not sure if that is a good or bad thing. What Meme rubs you the wrong way? Is there one you absolutely love?

panickedthumb: I used to like memes, then I took an arrow to the knee. Yes, that one is my least favorite. It is funny, but it got so overdone it's like Ace of Base in the 90s. None stands out as being my favorite, but I'm quite fond of the STAHP meme going around right now. I'm sure it will get overdone soon enough. Here's an example. Bonus, it's video game related: http://knowyourmeme.com/photos/388586-stahp

jdodson: What would happen if you actually took an arrow to the knee? Would you stop adventuring in video games?

panickedthumb: My hypothesis is that you knew I was going to answer "took an arrow to the knee" as my least favorite, and this question is purely baiting me. ;)

No, if anything else, it would make me game even more. It's not like I'm going for a run is it?

jdodson: What's the first thing you would do with a 3D printer?

panickedthumb: I would make this thing:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=C9tOc47ceWQ

My wife thinks it's creepy though, so I'd have to keep it at work or something.

jdodson: I think its creepy if you don't like Spiders. So my Wife is out too on this one. Too bad I can hide it in a box, hopefully some kid doesn't come along an pin me for my non-alive spider fan thingy killing a student as I didn't open the Chamber of Secrets, I just kept a non-living spider in a box!

panickedthumb: I don't like spiders, but I still think it looks awesome. :)

jdodson: I imagine you have had some pretty bad experiences in video games. What one sticks out to you as being one of the worst.

panickedthumb: Losing my 100+ hour Final Fantasy VIII save file. I literally nearly cried. I feel like this question should have a longer, more detailed answer, but it's pretty self-explanatory.

jdodson: Wow, that sucks. My condolences. I can't say as I have lost a VG save... But one time in College I lost all my work as a Freshman. It mattered more to me then than it does now I think. After that I started my habit of backing everything up. Haven't lost anything yet.

panickedthumb: BACK UP EVERYTHING. Always. I can't stress this enough. If you don't
learn it before a disaster, you *will* learn it the hard way one day.

jdodson: In 6 words or less explain why we have 3 modern CG Chipmunk movies.

panickedthumb: Wait. We have three? I honestly had no idea. If I have to explain it though:

Kids have weird taste in movies.

As part of my series of Interviews with Cheerful Ghost users I started up a conversation with panickedthumb. He had and idea that we have a Interview but sort of trade ideas back and forth. Its a good format, one I plan continuing with the next few interviews.

It is a bit long so it will be broken up into two parts.

jdodson: Recently you picked up Dishonored. What are your thoughts on this one? Are you interested in seeing more of this game made?

panickedthumb: I love it. It's so incredibly engrossing, and yet... I haven't been able to motivate myself to play much of it. I feel like this is the opposite of pick-up-and-play, and I haven't had a lot of time at a stretch to play it lately. I hope to get back into it tomorrow, so I'll post a follow-up if I have more to add.

jdodson: Why is that thumb so afraid?

panickedthumb: This: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6b53mXQYT4 was a special feature on Kung Pow: Enter the Fist. It was a menu item simply called "A panicked thumb." I watched it and laughed for a good long while. Since then, that's been my handle on everything. I looked it up, and it's from Thumb Wars, a Star Wars parody in a series of Thumb parodies. They are totally hilarious and I recommend them to anyone who appreciates bizarre humor.

I probably would have changed it but at some point it became a brand, and I can't imagine changing it now. I'll be panickedthumb until I'm old and gray.

jdodson: If you could see one thing added to or changed about Cheerful Ghost what would it be?

panickedthumb: Dude, I don't even know. You've implemented nearly all of my suggested features. I guess some elusive way of better connecting people, but in all of our numerous conversations about CG I've never come up with the magic bullet. So I guess the one nameable thing I'd like to see at CG is growth. :)

jdodson: What are some of the most under rated games in your opinion?

panickedthumb: The Katamari series. Especially the ones on PS2, but really, the whole series. I think I could roll that ball around for days on end and be perfectly happy. Wait. I already have. I made spreadsheets for those games so I would know what items I had collected and what I hadn't. It brings out an obsessiveness in me that no other game can. And it's beautiful.

jdodson: A few years ago there was a new Kaminari game, how do you think that served the series?

panickedthumb: *Katamari ;)

jdodson: See, isn't it obvious I haven't actually played one of the games? OK maybe not entirely true, I got the demo for the one on PS3.

panickedthumb: Are you talking about the one on Vita or Katamari Forever on the PS3? Since the second game, We Love Katamari, each subsequent game has gotten lower and lower review scores. I suppose there's a reason for that. There's only so much you can do, so far you can expand, with a mechanic like that. But honestly, whenever I get the itch to play a Katamari game, Katamari Forever is the one I go to. It's one of the very few PS3 games I've gotten a platinum trophy on. It's a bit of a greatest hits type of game, with a few new levels, and a new jump mechanic. I'd say it served the series fairly well, I guess. It was exactly what it was meant to be, and it was a ton of fun. A huge new Katamari game with some new mechanics would be amazing, but I'm beginning to doubt that will ever happen.

jdodson: End of the world happens. Aliens + Zombie attack. 95% of people die except you. 3 months after the event the dust settles and the Zombies die off due to going through the food supply and the Aliens leave. Do you head out into the wild to live off the land or try to find the last vestige of human kind to rebuild?

panickedthumb: Somewhere in between? You can be sure that in that kind of situation, factions are going to form and start power-grabbing. The last vestige of human kind isn't going to be a single place, it will be many different groups with different ideas about what's best for rebuilding. Fighting would be inevitable. I'd try to form a self-sustaining community with my last remaining friends and family, their friends and family, and so on, so that we wouldn't need to depend on anyone else and could try to avoid the fight as much as possible, and hopefully have some bargaining chips so we aren't just overrun by which ever militia thinks they own the place. Perhaps I'm cynical, but I don't think preserving human life would be the most important thing to those who seek power in an apocalypse.

jdodson: So you agree more with the Dystopian Mad Max kind of apolcalytptia than say a.... Come to think of it I don't know of any end of the world scenario where love and fuzzies wins.... I guess in the absence of Government most people think we de-evolve to a feudal tribal system hell bent on making wearable ornaments of human bones. From a positive spin, wearable human bones are back in fashion!

panickedthumb: Yeah I think that's how it would end up. Maybe not as bad as Mad Max (which seemed almost purely tribal) but something like the Fallout universe or Monroe's Militia in Revolution. People actually trying to form governments, and becoming brutal and power-hungry.

jdodson: With digital distribution of games and the fact that we can now own so many titles, I wonder if that has changed how you play games?

panickedthumb: It has. Steam in particular. I still feel like MS and Sony, and ESPECIALLY Nintendo, are really lagging on this. I have honestly given Steam way too much money, I've bought more games than I'll ever play, and it's because they make the deals so ridiculously amazing. There are some great games that I would have never played if they weren't 75% or more off the retail price. There are some bad things about it too, like feeling like your ever-expanding backlog might swallow you whole, but I love it. There will always be some games I want to have a box for. The collectors items. But digital distribution is the future, and I'm glad I'm on the ground floor.

jdodson: I agree, we will have thousands of games in Steam before we die. I wonder though is there a negative of us owning so many games?

panickedthumb: It's the cereal aisle dilemma. I think it may be plaguing me now, and that's why I can't find what I want to play. You walk into this vast aisle of cereal and like 80% of it looks delicious. What do you pick? It's daunting.

jdodson: Borderlands 2. Seriously I am going into the living room after writing this and will start Borderlands 2 up. You should too. Does that help?

jdodson: You have been elected Chairman of the Board of Bethesda but unlike Carrot Top you mean business! Todd Howard comes to you begging for leadership, they need an idea for a new game! Panickedthumb is sitting in the seat of power able to direct Bethsda's next efforts, what does he do?

panickedthumb: A new *game* or a new franchise? Like something entirely new or does a sequel count? I'll assume you mean a new idea altogether, and make their previous franchises off-limits.

I love their engine, personally. There were major changes between Morrowind and Oblivion, so I'm referring to the engine from Oblivion to the present. It has tons of bugs, and game launches are always buggy, but perhaps because of the hundreds of hours I've spent there, it's like second nature. I'd like to see what they could do with something real-world yet futuristic. Not the alternate-history future as predicted by 50's sci-fi they have in the Fallout games, but an idea of what the distant future could look like. Space travel, interplanetary quests, tons of playable races, all with the basic rules set out by Oblivion/Fallout 3.

Secondary idea: iD made some Doom RPG games for mobile. Now that Bethesda owns that franchise, how about a real Doom RPG for consoles/PC. Hundreds of hours in an RPG set in the Doom universe?

Sign me up!

jdodson: This is interesting to me as you well know I love Doom. Do you think we will see this in Doom 4?

panickedthumb: I wouldn't be surprised if Doom 4 adds some RPG elements at least. Perhaps not a full-on 100+ hour RPG masterpiece, but it's hard to find a game these days that doesn't have RPG elements. In fact, I'm not sure a numbered sequel in the series *should* be a full-on RPG.

jdodson: Yeah, it does seem like Doom is a jump scare shooter in some version of Hell. So maybe a non Doom 4 with RPG elements? I could see that being cool.

Stay tuned for the thrilling conclusion in PART 2!

YouTube channel START has a new comedy web series called Game Shop. I have been watching it for a few episodes and thought this episode was worth sharing. The first few episodes delve into some fairly well covered territory but I enjoy that its about people in a Game Store. I like that the episodes are somewhat threaded and over time they revel more about certain characters.

You can go back and watch all 3 previous episodes of Game Shop. They contain people I have seen in other things, like episode 2 had one of the kids from JJ Abrams last film Super 8.

After watching it what did you think?

To celebrate today's retro Tuesday I won't be talking about a game. The Nintendo Cereal System was a thing released in Nintendo's golden age when they released branded products for everything. The Nintendo Cereal System came with two options, Mario cereal and Zelda cereal. The Zelda Cereal was my personal favourite not because it tasted better but because I liked Zelda more. Oh and being able to eat Octoroks for breakfast is bad-ass.

I never actually convinced my parents to buy it for me(at least that I can remember) but I did get to have a few bowls at my cousins.

Were you lucky enough to have tried this as a kid? What other Nintendo products do you remember loving in Nintendo's Golden Age?

The cereal was pretty much a clone of Captain Crunch and Franken Berry and as such always shredded my gums when I ate it due to it being so hard. I imagine that was a feature to prevent sogginess.

The Nintendo Cereal System Box:
http://i.imgur.com/PILAX.jpg

In 2010 someone was selling a box on Ebay for $200:
http://www.inquisitr.com/62392/it-came-from-ebay-22-year-old-nintendo-cereal-selling-for-72/

You might not have known that during the original run of Borderlands Claptrap had his very own web series. Gearbox recently released a new season and episode. Ill link to the previous episodes at the bottom of this post. Now you can get even more Claptrap!

A few other interesting Borderlands 2 bits. You can now pre-order the new Art of Borderlands 2 book. Sort of thing they should have released in the collectors edition but better late than never I suppose.

Gearbox is also outsourcing the Mac port and it should be released sometime soon. I hope this means Mac/PC Steamplay. The original Borderlands had a Mac port but it wasn't available via Steamplay, it was available on the Mac App Store and Mac retail only.

Claptrap Season 1:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=876X30YznqE&feature=share&list=UUSRO0JNUYTCjsk7VmMdNYKw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bL4QNsaqnz4&feature=share&list=UUSRO0JNUYTCjsk7VmMdNYKw

Borderlands 2 Art Book:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0744014379/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0744014379&linkCode=as2&tag=jdodsonorg-20

Blizzard just dropped the release date Starcraft 2: Heart of the Swarm! I actually mark game release dates on my calendar and March 12, 2013 will be no different.

This release is a bit different from past Blizzard releases as they are not only releasing a physical collectors edition but also a digital deluxe version to include:

Digital Deluxe:
http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/buy-now/digital-deluxe

• Heart of the Swarm for PC and Mac


• Torrasque Ultralisk skin, 3 Portraits, and 3 decals in Starcraft II


• A Baneling pet in World of Warcraft


• Blade Wings & Banner Sigil in Diablo III

Collectors Edition:
http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/buy-now/collectors-edition

• Heart of the Swarm for PC and Mac


• Torrasque Ultralisk skin, 3 Portraits, and 3 decals in Starcraft II


• A Baneling pet in World of Warcraft


• Blade Wings & Banner Sigil in Diablo III


• Heart of the Swarm Art Book


• Zerg Rush Mouse Pad


• Behind the scenes BluRay/DVD


• Collectors Edition Soundtrack

Since Warcraft 3 I have picked up the collectors for Blizzard games. I tear through the book, soundtrack and videos over the weeks after release so the added stuff isn't lost on me. It seems that Blizzard is forgoing the typical USB drive with the previous games in favor of a mousepad. A good idea as I already have a USB drive from the Starcraft 2 collectors.

Did you play Starcraft 2, if so will you pick this up? Which version are you thinking about getting?

It seems Heart of the Swarm is for pre-order on the Blizzard site for $39.99 and the digital deluxe is $59.99. So it seems this normal digital version is priced a bit lower, perhaps priced as an expansion?