As I type this I can't get into Diablo 3. I moved from a state where I was understanding of Blizzard to making the choice to make Diablo 3 a multiplayer game to thinking, maybe they bit off a bit more than they should have with Diablo 3. Perhaps its too much for them to handle because Ive spent more time thinking about outages than playing Diablo 3. Currently at 9.30PDT they are undergoing emergency maintenance:
I hope they clean these issues up pretty soon. That said, when I was in game it was flawless and smooth. Its just the hours of downtime that is a problem. After all this clears up, expect more detailed posts about how fun the actual game is. Oh right, it is fun... When you can play it.
PS Error 37 & 3003, I hate you.
Update from blizz:
"We're continuing to work on the issues currently affecting the Americas region, which are resulting in failed login attempts and service issues. While we've identified the causes and are working to resolve them, we expect our efforts to require an approximate two hours to complete. We expect game services to fully return by approximately 11:45 p.m. PDT. We apologize for the downtime, and appreciate your continued patience."
I was able to play for about an hour last night. It was fun, but here and there it was laggy (I think this was because I was still downloading some of the last patch). The most obnoxious point was when the game lagged out... and then I was dead. I can only imagine if it had been a hardcore character that I had worked on for a while, the fury that would be rising through my soul.
Other than that, I was happy.
jdodson Admin Post Author
wrote on 05/16/2012 at 04:54pm
I was excited to have the Battle.net integration. Great way to see friends and get groups together. However, I got Diablo3 for its solo playability as well. With the many delays, set backs, beta work and so on this was probably one of the worst launches from Blizzard since The Burning Crusade hit WoW and it took about a week to play the game.
Yes I am pleased with the aspects of the game but making it dependent on Battle.net to play. I don't think so anymore. Let my computer check in with Battle.net. This is not and MMO or anything that NEEDS it.
I'm playing Monk right now. I'm up to level 5. It's been fun, but I'm really just opening up what the class can do. We'll see what happens when I unlock mantras and start playing cooperatively.
jdodson Admin Post Author
wrote on 05/16/2012 at 10:01pm
Ben: I agree, play indeed! If they sorted out the issues then I am fine. Worked great this morning.
Tungsten: Monk is great. Healing, auras and it kIcks ass? Really started to gel for me in beta around level 10.
I'm agreeing with your statement: they aimed too high. They wanted this game where they could not only control the copies of the game (DRM and so on), but they also want to control things like item drops and level layout. (just speculation) I'm not sure what it is that is supposed to be coming from the battle.net connection, but it is greatly lagging my game and completely driving me crazy.
How are the other classes different from the beta? The monks skills are all upside down right now, and I'm liking most of them (although they moved the dash up to the number keys from the RMB. It was my favorite skill in the beta and I want it easier to use)
jdodson Admin Post Author
wrote on 05/17/2012 at 02:00am
From what I know about the Barb can't jump into other areas anymore. Barb used to be able to jump over distances or caverns as a skill, that is nerfed.
Beyond that I really dont' know, I am playing Witch Doctor and I didn't play it before in beta.
Its 12.29am Tuesday May 15th and Battle.net is down for maintenance. Error 37, servers are busy abounds and people are mad complaining right now. One of my friends said his pal connected and tried retrieving the character list and it was so slow.
Apparently the amount of traffic is DDoSing the battle.net servers. But its a good kind of DDoS because they are all paying customers. Going to stay up a little longer to see how bad this get? This feels like people won't be playing for another few hours, but I have absolutely no idea how many people are trying to play? A few million? I guess that would cause some issues but doesn't Blizzard have 10 million WoW players?
Oh a tip on the BlizzardCS Twitter:
"We are aware the Battlenet sites are in maintenance. No ETA when they will be available Updates to follow."
Not a great time, but if its a planned outage I guess....
Anyways, my client installed without a hitch. I have some options available that others don't seem to. I can watch all of the cinematics for each class right now. In fact I can watch all the cinematics for the first act. I imagine this is a bug but even if it wasn't I don't want to ruin any of the game so ill watch them in the game.
If you are running into connection issues check this handy dandy Blizz created guide:
Anyways, hopefully the issues clear up and people can start playing post-haste as there are minions to slay in Sanctuary!
**EDIT** I just tried and it looks like Starcraft 2 works fine but I can't login to WoW.
**EDIT 2** Update from Blizzard: "Please note that due to a high volume of traffic, login and character creation may be slower than normal. If you're unable to login to the game or create characters, please wait and try again. We've temporarily taken our Battle.net websites offline and launched more servers to accomodate for the traffic. We hope to resolve these issues as soon as possible and appreciate your patience."
Here we are on the eve of the Diablo 3 launch. I am not sure I have anticipated a launch quite as eagerly as this one. I kept hitting the refresh on my Amazon package track and was really excited it moved 30 miles. Yeah, its like that for me.
If all goes well I may head to 12p line at a Best Buy with a friend that wants to pick it up tonight. Ill take pictures and all that, hopefully there is a nerd rush and someone mistakes the event for a Pretty Petz 2 launch. "Wait, you mean this isn't Catz 4 Back in Mittens launch line? OH MAN!" Or maybe thats what I will say.... Hmmmm.
Anyways, as always here is a few Diablo 3 news bits for your consumption. Don't joy puke early, you need to save your strength for the midnight drop.
According to Amazon Diablo 3 is the most pre-ordered game ever. Makes sense to me.
"A representative for Amazon told Joystiq that Diablo 3 is Amazon's most pre-ordered PC title ever. "Today, it became the most pre-ordered PC game of all-time on Amazon.com – even exceeding pre-orders for Blizzard's own StarCraft II and World of Warcraft: Cataclysm," the rep said."
Looks like Oskar Pannier, the guy that did a few Diablo 3 comics he posted to Facebook got a new website located at http://hellyeahcomics.com. One such comic is shown above. Cool to see he will start doing it regularly and he has a proper website for it now.
Blizzard keeps talking about the console port of Diablo 3. Its so complicated and what they say makes so little sense to me I won't bother summing it up. You can decode it yourself here:
I have an operating theory on how to get it to work...
I delete the corrupted file and it tries to re-download it. It inevitably tells me that it is corrupted again, but it gets further in the download. Maybe when it finishes the download...
We'll see. I'm also operating anti-virus free (don't worry, it'll be back on before anyone reads this) and I deleted a my Battle.net folder.
jdodson Admin Post Author
wrote on 05/15/2012 at 02:03am
I created another Portal 2 map: "Levels be Three Let them Be."
Not entirely sure what the name means, but it sounded good to me.
Its a bit more puzzley than my first map and it requires you to use one cube the entire map, which is kind of neat. Been spending quite a bit of time playing other peoples Portal 2 maps and building my own. This is my second map and as such spent more time decorating it than the first map. Trying to place the observation rooms and lights such that the test chamber doesn't look bare. Also pushing up single blocks and putting a light on top to make things look a bit more natural. I like the way it all turned out.
The map description:
"Run, jump and catapult yourself to the top tier. You only have one cube and you will need it for the entire course, so don't lose it!"
I just made and published my first Portal 2 map called "The Joys of the Underground." The new Portal 2 map editor is pure awesome. I haven't had this much fun making maps since Wolf 3D. For the first 45 minutes I was just building things, then I started pushing out walls and built a huge chamber. 3 hours later "The Joys of the Underground" was complete.
Let me know what you think. The map isn't hard but it is pretty fun and I LOVED creating it. I will be making more maps for certain. Making a map creator tool that doesn't take a PHD to use is nice.
The editor is amazing. Great product. It was actually kind of sad: I could finally make any level I could dream up, but I realized I'm very bad at dreaming them. All my attempts turned out boring and straight forward. Playing some of the other community maps, you can see that some people are very good at it.
jdodson Admin Post Author
wrote on 05/13/2012 at 02:39am
I was just tinkering around with what I could do and I made something I kind of thought was fun. I kept tinkering and it was OK.
Working on another one now that is just tinkering and a bit more grand. Somehow I like big maps.
jdodson Admin Post Author
wrote on 05/13/2012 at 03:40am
One gripe with the tool this far. I made a huge epic map. 10-20% of the way building it, Portal 2 crashes. Ok, load it back edit the map.... Crash. Again... Crash.
I found it beatable without even having to go underground. There's a way to take the laser reflection cube with you into the next room and you can use it to activate the switch. Thought I'd let you know. Other than that, it was pretty good. It required a little head scratching, but was pretty quick to get through.
jdodson Admin Post Author
wrote on 05/14/2012 at 09:26pm
How do you take the redirection cube to the next room? Isn't it fizzled out?
In the first room there's the ledge with non-portal-able surfaces that leads into the next room. You can get up there by portaling onto the small box-like protrusion on the opposite wall by the entrance, putting a portal on the ground next to the non-portal-able ledge, putting the other portal on the ground in front of you, and jumping off. If you take the redirect cube with you, you can access the exit. I hope I explained well enough. I can screen shot it out if you would like me to.
jdodson Admin Post Author
wrote on 05/15/2012 at 12:41am
Nope I get it now. Ill remove the ledge or make it non-portalable.
Thanks!
jdodson Admin Post Author
wrote on 05/15/2012 at 02:50am
OK I believe I fixed that bug and a possible other one, thanks for the heads up!
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2K just dropped two gameplay videos for Borderlands 2. They handed out the same gameplay footage to all the big game news sites and then the news sites commented over the footage. The above video is IGN's take on the siren video drop. Some interesting footage of the class.
The game looks mad epic. Can't wait for Clap-Trap to bring the wub wub. This is a game I will pre-order and nab on the PS3. What will you play it on? Are you going to pick it up?
One minor gripe from the IGN video commentary: "How many times do you need to mention Borderlands is like Diablo?" Yeah, we got it when the game dropped, thanks.
I will most certainly pick it up and it'll be on PS3 so I can play split screen with the wifey. :) I usually don't preorder games but I think I will for this one so I can pick up the extra DLC class and just because I loved the first game so much. I actually don't know what class I want to play first. Soldier was my favorite from the first game, but so far the Gunzerker looks really fun and fits my preferred play style.
Yeah they mention the Diablo thing a lot. It's probably just because everyone has Diablo 3 on the brain at the moment.
jdodson Admin Post Author
wrote on 05/12/2012 at 10:29pm
Do you get the new class with a pre-order?
The gunzerker class looks cool, I might try him first too.
OK, I'm better now. Seriously, this looks amazing. And hang on, WhiteboySlim, you have to preorder to get all the classes? That's kinda lame. I'll probably do it anyway though.
jdodson Admin Post Author
wrote on 05/14/2012 at 01:59am
They talked about another class they wanted to add after launch. The mecromancer. I hadn't heard you needed to pre-order to get all the classes though. Hope not.
"As a special thank you to our early supporters, the Mechromancer will be available as a free download to members of the Borderlands 2 Premiere Club, which you can gain access to by pre-ordering Borderlands 2 from a participating retailer. The Mechromancer will also be available as premium downloadable content for those who aren't Premiere Club members at the same time."
Probably just so I can get the DLC for free. I haven't looked into who is offering the pre-orders yet. The only games I've ever pre-ordered before were Ocarina of Time and one of the expansions for FFXI when I was still playing that.
jdodson Admin Post Author
wrote on 05/16/2012 at 03:51am
Ill pre-order Borderlands 2, just have to figure out where :)
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Gather round children, for I will tell thee a story of Angels and Demons of old. Past battles fought between good and ill that shaped the very fabric of our universe! Well, that or you could hit play on the video above this post.
"Long before the creation of Sanctuary, the Eternal Conflict between angels and demons raged on for untold millennia. Blizzard Entertainment teamed up with renowned director Peter Chung and acclaimed animation studio Titmouse to create this unique vision of a fundamental moment in the battle between the High Heavens and the Burning Hells."
A bit of other interesting Diablo 3 tid-bitery comes from a recent Joystiq article about just how many people joined the Diablo 3 open beta weekend from a recent Activision/Blizzard investor earnings call where Michael Morhaime revealed:
"We recently conducted an open beta stress test for Diablo 3, where anyone could download and try out the game. The response we got was huge, with more than two million people worldwide participating in the open beta." A lot of the testing, Morhaime said on the call, was beneficial to Diablo 3's development – particularly to the Auction House feature."
Awesome. Hopefully that means launch will be flawless.
In other news that makes me squee with delight like a 8 year old... Seems retailers around the United States are unboxing Diablo 3 for launch next Tuesday. A few rouge employees are even snapping a few pics of the un-crated boxes.
Seems like a few companies are celebrating 20th anniversaries lately. Epic is celebrating its 20th anniversary and to commemorate the event they are releasing the "Epic 20th Anniversary Original Soundtrack."
iD Software is celebrating Wolfenstein 3D's 20th birthday today. As such they are releasing it for free on a few platforms as well as dropping the prices for a few other game packs on Steam:
Wolf Pack for $3.75 (75% off of Steam) — includes Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Spear of Destiny, and Wolfenstein 3D: http://store.steampowered.com/sub/418/
I remember packing this game around on my floppies and playing it anywhere I could. This game blew my mind in terms of what games could be when it was new. I loved using the level editor to make my own levels. I made my High School, house and many other awesome levels with the Wolf Editor. I never beat all the Episodes save Episode 1. Had the shareware version for quite some time before I copied the original full game. Always felt bad about that, but I have purchased it MANY times over since as an adult. One memory I have of Wolf 3D is building up a boot disc so I could get the sound blaster to work in game. Cool to see things evolve such that I don't have to do that any more.
What are your favourite memories of this game?
PS the above commentary with John Carmack is amazing, check it out.