Diablo 3 deal, worth it?

At Blizzcon this year Blizzard has announced "the bomb": players who commit to 12 months of WoW subscriptions will get a free digital copy of Diablo 3! Is this wow or meh? It depends. I have made a quick analysis and if you're undecided, this might be for you.>

My analysis is purely financial and doesn't take the emotional aspect into consideration but since a large chunk of money is involved, I think it makes sense to figure out some numbers.

Notice that "committing" to a 12 month subscription does not require you to pay for the entire 12 months in advance. Nor does it require you to buy a 6 month package which is the highest one you can buy. This means that you can go month-by-month if you wish, but you'll have to engage in some sort of digital contract with Blizzard where they can be certain you will uphold your end of the bargain.

Currently you can pay month-by-month at $15 a month, for 3 months at $14 per month or for 6 months at $15 per month. My calculations are based on the two extremes but if you want to take this deal, the best thing is to go with two 6-month subscriptions, if you can afford it.

1. Month-to-month
Cost per month: $15
Cost for 12 months: $180
Real cost for 12 months (-$60 the value of Diablo 3): $120
@ $15 / month you will have to play $120 / $15 = 8 months of WoW to break even

2. 6 month subscription x 2
Cost per month: $13
Cost for 12 months: $156
Real cost for 12 months (-$60 the value of Diablo 3): $96

@ $13 / month you will have to play $96 / $13 = 7.4 months of WoW to break even

It sure seems like a long time to play WoW before you can call this a good deal. But wait, there's more. The "package" also includes an exclusive mount and access to WoW's next expansion (still not sure if this means Mists of Pandaria or the one after that, whatever that may be). While we can put a tentative value on the mount (mounts are $25 in Blizzard's store), beta access is a more subtle thing, something that can be either useless or priceless, depending who you ask.

So let's adjust our amounts by subtracting $25 for the mount.

1. Month-to-month
Cost per month: $15
Cost for 12 months: $180
Real cost for 12 months (-$60 the value of Diablo 3): $120
- $25 the cost of the mount: $95

@ $15 / month you will have to play $95 / $15 = 6.3 months of WoW to break even

2. 6 month subscription x 2

Cost per month: $13
Cost for 12 months: $156
Real cost for 12 months (-$60 the value of Diablo 3): $96
- $25 the cost of the mount: $71
@ $13 / month you will have to play $96 / $13 = 5.5 months of WoW to break even

As you can see, at the very least you will have to play 5 and a half months of WoW in order to break even on this deal.

There are more factors to consider at this point.

If you're not into Diablo 3 and you don't care about the other rewards, skip this deal.

If you're not into Diablo 3 but would like the mount and/or beta access, the deal is still good. Plus, you can donate your free copy of Diablo 3 to someone else.

If you are a die-hard WoW player and would also like to try Diablo 3, meaning that you are guaranteed to play WoW for at least 6 months, if not more, then this deal is killer. This is especially sweet if you know you'll be playing for another year.

If you're the type who gets bored with WoW 3 months into a new expansion, skip this deal. Just go month-to-month and buy Diablo 3 separately.

If you are still playing WoW between now and when Mists of Pandaria is released, now would be a great time to buy the deal. Just think about it. Assuming MoP is released around mid-2013, that gives you 6-8 months of solid play. When MoP hits, you have already broken even. From then on it's pure profit! Not to mention that you would have (presumably) also played a few months of free Diablo 3.

The bottom line is that you must think really hard if WoW will be fun for you for at least 6 months, or else you'll be throwing money out the window. There's also the matter of the guaranteed access to a future beta. If that is priceless to you, then by all means, get the deal.

At any rate, all this applies mostly if you are both a WoW and Diablo fan but you need to be aware that at some point in 2012 both games will be out and both will compete for your attention at the same time. Also, Mists of Pandaria will cost an additional $40, so take that also into consideration.

For me this deal is out of the question. Had Diablo 3 come out when Cataclysm was released, I might have been tempted. As it happens, I quit WoW for good about 2-3 months after the last expansion. I won't be returning to it any time soon.

Announcing Diablohead, my new blog!

Hi everyone! I wasn't sure if I should start a new blog focusing on Diablo 3, instead of sticking to this one but I made up my mind quickly. I don't see myself returning to WoW any time soon and since I'm changing focus completely to Diablo 3, it's only fitting to start a new blog.

I give you Diablohead (diablohead.blogspot.com)!

I'm keeping my Darth Solo screen name so y'all can tell who yer dealin' with!

I've also installed Disqus for comments on Diablohead, something that I never got around to doing here. I don't know if most people are fans of Disqus but I've found on another of my blogs that it encourages comments because it makes it easy to log in with different systems or even comment anonymously.

There's nothing much left to say except that I'm excited to start this new blog and I welcome all Diablo fans (and non-fans) to Diablohead! If you like my new blog, please bookmark it, subscribe via RSS and spread the word.

A change of focus

Some of you might have noticed that I haven't posted a WoW-related post in a very long time. At the risk of disappointing my remaining readers (however few of them are still left), I will come clean: I have quit WoW for several months. But I imagine most of you have already figured this out.

So what's the point of having a World of Warcraft blog and not playing WoW? Well, over time this blog has slowly slipped into discussing other games and activities. I would have gone mad if I'd talked exclusively about WoW. It so happens that there came a time when I simply felt burnt out. I thought Cataclysm would rejuvenate WoW, and it did... for a month or two. After that, boredom instilled. And then I realized that although Cataclysm had changed Azeroth, the core game had remained the same: same grinding, same questing, same dungeons, same gear race, same same.

I quit WoW after playing it for many years, after leveling half a dozen characters to level 80 and beyond, after trying all the classes, after amassing over 500,000 gold. After all that, I left everything behind and never looked back.

How do I feel after quitting cold turkey? Thanks for asking. I feel just fine. I don't miss WoW at all and I haven't gone through any withdrawal symptoms. In fact, when I imagine going back to WoW, it literally makes me nauseous. Yet, I won't deny completely that one day I might go back to it. I'll have to write a separate post on that though.

Ever since I have once again become enamored with the desire to play Diablo 3, I can't even conceive playing another game, much less WoW, when D3 is released.

As a result, this blog is dead, as far as WoW is concerned. After more than 2 years running it (and over 400 posts), I am faced with the simple fact of having to stop posting about WoW. Wowalone won't disappear off the face of the Internet. It will continue to exist because (strangely enough) a lot of people still visit it, yet it will remain frozen in time.

I have recently changed the blog's tagline. From "The Art of Solo-ing WoW", it became "The Art of Solo-ing WoW, life and other games". I think it's a funny play on words and it describes accurately what this blog has become.

Since I'll be probably playing Diablo 3 for the next 10 years (until Diablo 4 comes out heh heh) and since it's guaranteed that I'll get the urge to blog about it, I've been considering the following dilemma for the past couple of weeks: should I continue on this blog or should I start a new blog?

Continuing here has the advantage of a large readership. Many WoW players will also play Diablo 3. Some of my WoW readers will transfer seamlessly to the new Diablo format. Still, I will alienate a lot of WoW readers.

Starting a new blog has the advantage of focusing everything on Diablo and making a clear cut from WoW. There won't be any confusion as to what the new blog is about. I can have a new design (the current one has grown old) and I can attract new readership.

Overall I think the second option (of starting a new blog) is the most appealing. I'll need to think if I want to keep the Darth Solo persona or not.

So what do you guys think? Who's for a new blog?

Diablo 3 change of heart

Over the past couple of weeks I've had time to simmer down and think. Some of you might have read my radical opinion about the controversial Diablo 3 features announced by Blizzard so it might come as a surprise to hear that I've had a change of heart since then. Well, don't be too surprised. I told y'all that I'm hot-blooded and sometimes I tend to overreact to certain stuff that I feel strongly about. At the risk of turning Diablo purists against me, I will try to explain how and why I reached this new conclusion.

The decision that I made at the end of my rant was that I wasn't going to buy Diablo 3. The main reason was that the game did not have an offline single player mode. Thus, I wanted to boycott it in protest against the lack of an offline mode. I mentioned that I may yet change my mind but changing it barely two weeks later doesn't give me lot of credit, does it? Here's my reasoning behind this.

The three main "features" that pissed me off were (in reverse order):

3) No mods
Unfortunately for those who strongly support mods, I'm ambivalent about them. On the one hand, I never used them in Diablo 2 and wouldn't anticipate using them in Diablo 3. On the other hand, I support people's right to mod their game. Not to sound selfish but... the net result here is that the lack of modding does not affect me. There is another reason why I have come to prefer the lack of modding, and it's related to 2). You see, both the gold and real money auction houses will play a huge role in Diablo 3. Because the stakes are much higher than in, say, WoW because it's real money vs fictional money this time, I certainly wouldn't want gold farmers and such to have a huge advantage in controlling the market. Because (hopefully) there won't be mods that help people buy and sell stuff automatically in huge batches (like in WoW), everyone will play on a level field.

2) Real money auction house
Initially I was horrified by the thought of real life creeping into my game. I thought that being able to buy items for real money will "cheapen" the game. But then I read other people's opinions on this and I also realized on my own that it really doesn't matter what other people do. Diablo 3 is not WoW. It's a lobby game, meaning that people aren't playing in a persistent world but rather in a myriad instances, either by themselves or grouped with 3 others but forever isolated from all the zillion other instances. There's also no PvP to speak of. As a result, I shouldn't give a crap what gear others are wearing. And if I happen to randomly group up with someone who has bought their gear for real money, guess what: I will benefit from that by being in a stronger group which can kill more monsters at a quicker pace, meaning that I will have a higher chance of getting better items myself.

Now, I have come to embrace this new real money AH concept wholeheartedly. In fact, I think that Blizzard is making quite a genius move here. Not only are they mitigating (if not eliminating) illegal trading, but they are also providing an additional source of revenue for themselves. After all, someone needs to pay for those servers, right? I know, that wouldn't be an issue if offline play was allowed. The cool thing is that those fees will come not from a monthly subscription (like in WoW) but from those people who are willing to buy items from the AH for real money. Well, also from those whose auctions fail to sell and they forfeit their posting fee. Meaning that the rest of us who won't buy items for cash can "benefit" from free online play.

There's been a lot of excitement building up around the idea of being able to make real money playing your favorite game. I'm a bit skeptical as to the exact sums a player can make but I've realized that I do want to participate in this. I am fully aware that most likely very few (if any) people will be able to make a living from this, yet, what other game lets you make money while having fun? If there's one case of having your cake and eating it too, this is it. And this ties nicely into my final point.

1) Online-only play
To summarize, here are some of the main reasons why I, personally, was completely against online-only play: game dependent on the internet connection and/or Blizzard's servers; unable to play it on the go; high cost for a game which is "crippled" to online-only play; localization and the fact that moving to another continent would require me to buy the game again.

Don't get me wrong: I'm still opposed to a lot of these. It would have been nice if Blizzard had offered offline single player. Not to sound selfish (again) but personally I don't really suffer from internet connectivity issues. Yeah, occasionally my cable will go down for a short while but that's not an end-of-the-world scenario after all.

The thing that made me reconsider my boycott is the real money auction house. You see, the RMAH gives online play some validity. Those who don't wish to engage in real money activities have the option not to. But for those of us who made big gold on WoW's auction house, Diablo 3's RMAH offers a strong enticement. Sure, it's almost guaranteed I won't make thousands of dollars each month by playing Diablo 3 in my spare time, but, say, an extra $100 a month is a very big deal for me. Heck, even an extra $100 a year would be welcome, especially in these tough economic times.

As for having to buy another copy if I move to Europe, I figured that's no biggie. I should be able to easily make that money back on the RMAH, essentially playing the game for free. In fact, if I did have to move, I would be able to run both the NA and European versions of the game at the same time. I could even sell stuff on both markets if I wanted to.

Finally, here's the most important reason for why all this, taken together, can make sense to some of us. If your spouse or significant other keeps bitching about your time spent playing that damn game, you will now be able to retort with: "But honey, this is my second job, I'm actually making money playing this game!"

After a long internal struggle, I am once again excited about Diablo 3. The latest annoucement, about the 4th difficulty level called Inferno makes me even happier. It makes a lot of sense in the way they decided to implement it.

I'm hoping that I can get in on the beta but I'm not counting on that as I know that beta invites will be really scarce.

So what do you guys think? Am I a dirty bastard for doing an 180 in such a short time, or does a guy have the right to change his mind?

More reasons against Diablo 3's online-only DRM

If the reasons I gave in my World of Diablo post against Diablo 3's online-only mode weren't enough, here are some more, that I've discovered over the past few days:

1) Weekly/server maintenance. We all dislike World of Warcraft's weekly maintenance though we know it is necessary. It's almost a given that Diablo 3 will also have some form of regular maintenance. Why? Because you can't run gaming servers continuously without a minimum of downtime.

So what, many of you will say. Well, here's a scenario. It so happens that you get time off from work/school/etc right on the day when the game is being maintained. You've been itching to play D3 and now you can't, because the servers are offline. Bugger! This has happened to me on more than one occasion with WoW.

2) Some people are in the military and/or deployed overseas where they don't have access to the internet or the connection is spotty and they can't play games which require an internet connection. Sucks to be them, right? Too bad that some of them are HUGE Diablo fans. They'll just have to suck it up and wait until they get back home, in a few months/years. And if they have to redeploy, fuck'em, right?

3) Some people who are working long hours and/or have kids and thus not a lot of time on their hands, might get a little bit of time for themselves every now and then, only to find out that the game is under maintenance or their internet connection is out.

4) Here's a big one that's been bothering me lately: character names. What do I mean by this? Well, we all know that in WoW, character names are unique. I haven't seen anyone so far talk about how character names will be handled, considering that Diablo 3 can only be played online. I highly doubt Blizzard will allow duplicate names. This means that players won't be able to pick their favorite names. Damn it! It would have so worked if the game had an offline single-player mode!

I'm not saying that Diablo 3 should be offline only. No, I'm cool with the online multiplayer aspect of it. But I do realize that many people will miss LAN play and I think it's really sad that Blizzard decided not to include it. However, the inclusion of single player offline mode can be done easily and completely separate from the online mode. It's simple: keep offline characters on your computer, totally segregated from Bnet characters. Wouldn't it be nice to have more satisfied customers?

World of Diablo

I've had a couple of days to think, after my bitching, moaning, thrashing, screaming and ranting about Diablo 3 and I've realized that I was wrong. Yep, I was looking at this whole affair from the wrong angle.

You see, Diablo 3 is not actually the successor to Diablo 2. No, it is, in fact, World of Diablo. Now it all makes sense: the online-only DRM, the geographic restrictions, even the cash auction house. It's not an RPG, but an MMORPG. You don't pay a subscription but Blizzard does expect to turn a little profit on the side by capitalizing on this auction house. I'm sure they have other ideas on how to make even more money. Hey, I'm ok with that, as long as it doesn't impact the game.

Seeing that the game will be locked, it would have been nice if it were free-to-play. But again, I wasn't expecting that and I don't mind paying for a quality product. In fact, I was desperate for the chance to give Blizzard my money. Alas, it wasn't meant to happen.

Let me explain once again why this "stunt" that Blizzard is pulling is such a bad thing for certain people. As a case study, I will use myself. I'm European, living in the US. I might stay here for the rest of my life but there's also a strong possibility that I will go back to Europe in a couple of years.

Let's leave aside the fact that an always-online game that you want to play in single player mode is a bad idea. I will return to this point later.

Diablo 3's restrictive DRM means that:
1) I won't be able to play the game in Europe, since it is restricted to US servers.
2) If I can choose to play on US servers, by some miracle, I'm sure the lag will be pretty bad. At the very least, it won't be similar to playing in the same geographical region.
3) Even if 2) is true, meaning that I will be able to play on US servers, my friends in Europe will all have the EU version of the game. Which means... you guessed it, I won't be able to play D3 with them at our annual week-long LAN fest. Yes, we used to have these every year (they still do) and the 5 of us would play mostly... Diablo 2 for the entire week, leveling our characters from 1 to 80, subsisting on steak, wine and beer, no wives or girlfriends to distract us.

I can hear some of you saying "Wait, you're complaining about having to pay an extra $60 in the event that you move to Europe?" Well, yeah, for some more reasons:
4) I expect to buy a (SINGLE PLAYER) game once and be able to play it anywhere in the world.
5) Blizzard is planning at least 2 expansions to this game, meaning that it won't be "just" $60. Each expansion will cost the usual $40 or so, meaning that I have the potential of paying up to $150 all over again, thanks to their DRM scheme.
6) If you think that $60 is no big deal, I'll be happy to accept your $60 and I'll stop bitching instantly.

If all these reasons are still not enough, here's another one:
7) Let's say I can get over all of the above and I'm even willing to buy the game twice, just so I can play it in another country (in SINGLE PLAYER mode). BUT, all my characters will be stuck on the US server and lost forever (unless I return to the US). Has anyone even considered the implications of that? All my blood and tears and hard work leveling those characters and equipping them will be for naught and I would have to start from scratch when I go back to Europe. Just imagine if you were forced to leave all your WoW characters behind, the ones you spent a few years on. You wouldn't like that a lot, would you? But Diablo should not have been an MMO in the first place!

I should have seen this coming, what with StarCraft 2 pulling the same bullshit. But I never imagined that D3 would follow the same damn path. The devs were careful not to spill the beans on this for 3 years but all the while they gave the impression that Diablo 3 would definitely have a single player mode. While some of us suckers took this to mean that it will be playable offline, without having to go through Bnet, I guess the joke was on us.

Now here's some more food for thought: I'm sure that if Blizzard had announced, in addition to the triple bombshell, that not only Diablo 3 would be exclusively online but you'd have to pay a monthly subscription to play it, a lot more people would have bitched about it but in the end most of them would have still bought it. In fact, now that I think about it, I believe that Blizzard has really lost an opportunity to further monetize on this, seeing that D3 is now an MMO.

So once again, why is online-only SINGLE PLAYER a very bad (dare I say retarded) idea, even for those of us who have access to high-speed broadband? Here's a bunch of reasons:
- I'll start with the usual: if you're on a plane, on a beach, in a cabin in the mountains or anywhere else where there's no internet access, guess what: you can't play
- your internet goes down: you can't play
- your router or modem drops the connection or resets: you get disconnected
- a storm in the area knocks down your cable: you can't play
- Blizzard goes out of business (seems unlikely but it can happen): you can't play
- 10-20 years from now, you can still play Diablo 2 but chances are you won't be playing Diablo 3
- an important one: remember when Ubisoft/Sony/others were DDOSed? That can happen just as easily to Blizzard. Guess what: you can't play your SINGLE PLAYER game if something like that occurs.

But it's no big deal if you can't play your game a day or two right? I say it is, because it didn't have to be like that. All we ever wanted from Diablo 3 was a modern graphics engine and some tweaked skills and classes. The fan community would have been happy. I'm not against change and progress but I do oppose change which doesn't make sense and/or hurts the paying customer.

The way things are looking right now, I will hang on to my money and see how things evolve. I want to play this game badly. For those who've waited 10 years for it, you all know how it can be. But I don't want to pay twice for it, just because Blizzard decided to tighten their grip on how people can enjoy this game.

In my previous post I mentioned piracy. Let me make one thing clear. I don't advocate piracy. Blizzard's games would be the last things in the world that I would pirate, even if I supported it. Yet, I do hope Diablo 3 will be cracked by some enterprising individuals, just to stick it to Blizzard. I hope they enable the game to be played in single player mode, offline, and perhaps even patch in some form of LAN. Personally I won't touch this cracked version because I don't want to but I hope it will send a message to Blizzard that players are deserving of some respect when their money is on the line and if that respect is not forthcoming, the company doesn't deserve any in return.

One thing is certain: the genie is out of the bottle. Blizzard has chosen the dark path and it will stick to it forevermore. There's no turning back at this point and we won't be seeing any more offline games from them.

I might be overreacting. I am hot blooded, after all. Who knows, it might turn out that I can play my US version in Europe, with my friends, after all. But I'm not counting on that. Until then, I'm watching from the sidelines.

Diablo 3 triple bombshell

So if you're a Blizzard fan, more specifically a Diablo fan, and not living under a rock, you've probably heard the 3 major news pieces from Blizzard regarding Diablo 3 today:

1) Online-only play (no offline play)
1a) Regionalization
2) No mods
3) Real money auction house

I am so disappointed and disgusted with these announcements that I had to post something, even though I haven't posted anything for a long time. Let me address each of these points to explain why I am absolutely mortified and incredulous at how Blizzard has managed to butcher a game that looked so promising, until today.

1) Online-only play

Seriously Blizzard? What were you thinking? When StarCraft II pulled this stupid stunt I though that there's no way in hell Diablo is going to follow the same path. Guess I underestimated Actiblizzard's greed (or the stupidity of whoever concocted this bullshit).

Yeah, there are always those ready to blast me for daring to wish for an offline game in this day and age. Well, you are wrong. There are countless reasons for offline play (including personal ones) and scenarios where it is desired, nay, the only option.

The first and easiest argument for offline play is that not every Diablo fan on this planet has access to the internet, or to reliable internet. I should be indifferent because I have a fast broadband connection but even that occasionally goes down. When there's a particularly nasty storm outside my cable can go silent for 24 hours or more, while the power is still up. Try playing Diablo 3 under those conditions.

The second argument is that maybe I'd like to play this game while traveling, on a plane or a beach or wherever the fuck I please, where there's no internet access. Good luck with that.

The third argument is that play will be dependent on Blizzard keeping those servers up. Sure, we can all imagine that Blizzard will still be here in 20 years but in reality nothing is guaranteed. Companies can rise and fall unexpectedly and no single company is immune to that. Hell, Blizzard might decide at some point that they've had enough supporting Diablo 3 (though I admit that this is far-fetched), and just pull the plug on their servers.

The fourth argument is that I just want a goddamn single-player game that I can enjoy without having to go online. I don't want to socialize, I don't want to mix with others and I don't want to log in to Battlefuckingnet. Blizzard says that you don't have to play with others while online, you can just create your own game. In that case, why the fuck can't I do this offline??

I'm sure others can find even more arguments. These are just off the top of my head.

Blizzard's justification for this clusterfuck is that it will provide a "secure environment" bla bla bullshit. Fuck that. I don't need a secure environment in the privacy of my own computer. In my circle of one I'm more secure than Fort Knox. The underlying reason is, of course, piracy. They are hoping that this will cut down on piracy because, after all, if you can't play it offline, you can't pirate it. I'll get back to this point...

The obvious solution, which Diablo 2 had, is to separate offline and online characters. Simple. Offline characters will never be able to play online. Blizzard claims that people who level their characters to 30-40 and then want to get online won't be able to. Boo-fucking-hoo. Everyone knows what they sign up for from the beginning. No one will cry over this because, I repeat, this is how Diablo 2 worked and no one expected otherwise. This argument is, therefore, fail.

I thought that I could get over the fact that LAN play was missing, and I actually did. I figured that, what the hell, I don't LAN that much anyway so as long as I can enjoy the game offline, I'm cool. Heh, I wasn't counting on Blizzard's diabolic solution.

1a) Regionalization

Another thing that pisses me off, and comes with the territory, is that Battlefuckingnet now divides the world into regions. For most people this won't make a big difference because most of their friends are local anyway, but there are a few of us who have friends on other continents.

Take me, for example. I'm European but I live in the US. My best friends are still in Europe and a few of them were hardcore Diablo 1&2 players (just like myself) and are still big Blizzard (and WoW) fans. Will I be able to play with them on Battlefuckingnet? Of course not. My version would be localized to the US, while theirs would be European.

Well, screw those guys, I can just play on my own here in the US. But what if I move back to Europe in a couple of years? I'd have to pay another $60 (or whatever this game will cost) because my copy would be locked to the US and either I won't be able to access US servers from Europe or the lag will be too bad to play. Oh and of course I won't have LAN so I can play with my old friends at LAN parties.

2) No mods

I can't say I'm a big fan of mods. In fact, I've never used them in Diablo 1 or 2. Nonetheless, I support a gaming community's right to mod the games they own, provided it never gets on official Blizzard servers. But wait, there is no offline mode, nor LAN play. The community gets screwed over again.

I completely understand Blizzard's interdiction of mods but that should only apply to playing on their official servers. Offline, anything goes. Or it would, if offline play was an option.

3) Real money auction house

Initially I was cautiously optimistic about this new feature. I seems quite revolutionary at first glance. However, the more I think about it, the dumber it seems. Well, it's obviously a smart move from Blizzard's perspective. After all, they'll be taking a cut of the action. Though they claim they're not in it for the money (because poor them, they'll just be breaking even, whatever the hell that means), make no mistake: they're only in it for the money.

It's not altruism which compels Blizzard to introduce the cash auction house. A gold AH would have been sufficient. But nooo, Blizzard has discovered yet another golden-egg-laying goose and they have to milk it for what it's worth.

If you fantasize about making a living purely by playing Diablo 3 and selling items on the auction house, you are deluding yourself. Valuable items will probably be rare enough that you will only get a valuable drop once in a blue moon. And when you do get that uber-rare legendary item and want to sell it, there will be a dozen just like it on the auction house (from a million other players) and the lowest selling price will be a lousy $4.99. After Blizzard (and Paypal or whoever else) gets their cut, assuming you sell your item without posting it multiple times, you'll be left with less than half the selling price. And this is without even considering all the gold cash farmers that are likely to pop up.

Remember, each time you post an item there's a listing fee. If the item doesn't sell, you still pay the listing fee. If the item sells, you pay a selling fee. I don't know if in the latter case your listing fee is refunded. Think of it in terms of the WoW auction house. Same principle, only you'll be paying real cash to list those items.

I also have a problem with the perceived value of items. If I got a very rare item, in the new system I am faced with 2 very painful choices: should I use that item myself or should I sell it. By selling it, I could make some real money. But by keeping it I could get some real use out of it. Hard choices, right there. Well, at least items are not soul bound.

There are a couple of things about the cash AH that piqued my interest.

First, they mentioned that gold will also be trade-able for real cash. This will create an interesting balance between the cash and gold auction houses (yes, there will also be a gold AH in game, thank Zeus). So it might be possible to make some real cash by selling gold instead of rare items. After all, it's a million times easier to farm gold than it is to farm rare items.

Second, they said that those selling items for cash will be protected by anonymity. Neither their real name or their character names will be shown. I was like, WTF? The problem that I see here is that there's nothing stopping Blizzard from injecting items into the auction house, thus effectively selling their own pixels (which costs them nothing to create) for real money.

Blizzard swears on their mothers' graves that they will never sell items directly and that the only items on the auction house will be found by players in game. Which is the way it should be. But when no one except Blizzard knows who's behind a certain auction, how can we, the players, be certain that it isn't actually Blizzard selling that item covertly, FOR REAL CASH?

I admit that this theory could be entirely bullshit, but it is a possibility. I imagine that if such a conspiracy were to take place, there would inevitably be a leak that exposed Blizzard's nefarious affairs.

What they did is obvious: they decided to remove item selling from eBay and third party sites to their own yard. Good for them. But pretending to have done this for the benefit of the players is disingenuous.

Furthermore, they claim that online play is mandatory for the cash auction house (or even the gold AH) to work. That's perfectly fair. We all now how easily items were duped in Diablo 2 on offline characters. For that reason, completely segregate online and offline characters! Bam, easy solution! Offline characters will never have the possibility to trade with online ones. Offline characters would be saved to your local computer, while online ones will be saved (yup, you've guessed it!) to the server. There would be no way to tamper with the latter. Moreover, you shouldn't even be required to create a Battlenet account in order to play offline games. OK, fine, just register the game in your Bnet once, and that's it. I'll give Blizzard that. But don't require me to be online after that, EVER!

Conclusion

1) Online-only play. Fuck you Blizzard. You've screwed a lot of people royally over this one.
1a) Regionalization. Meh, I'm on the fence over this one because I realize there are certain technical limitations to implementing worldwide play on a single server. Still, it would have been nice not to be segregated. It would have been nice if my copy of the game bought in the US still worked in Europe.
2) No mods. It's none of your goddamn business Blizzard what I do offline with my game. I bought that game with my own money, I can do with it whatever I damn well please. Offline.
3) Real money auction house. Fuck you again Blizzard. Here's a solution no one asked the question for. Though some people have already started seeing dollar signs, it will only serve to make Diablo 3 a cheaper experience.

My take on this is that I'm extremely disappointed, to say the least. As you might have noticed, I've taken the kid gloves off of my usually restrained language. Well, no more Mr Nice Guy. I've waited for Diablo 3 for 10 years (along with millions of other fans) and when it's finally around the corner, they hit us with this royally screwing bullshit. Thanks a bunch Blizzard for respecting your fans.

In return, all I can hope for is that the pirated, unlocked and offline-enabled version will be made available as soon as possible after the game is finally released. I never advocate piracy and Blizzard's games would be the last things in the world that I would pirate but this is too much. They showed how much they "respect" us. We can only repay them in kind.

I also hope that those who are of a similar opinion will refrain for buying this game, but the truth is that many fans, no matter how horrified, will end up buying it, thus empowering Blizzard into thinking that their stupid tricks were effective. I won't kid myself, nor will I kid you: I might end up buying it in the end. After all, I'm human. But I will do everything in my power to resist the temptation. There's a whole new world out there which doesn't include Blizzard, or even computer games. If Blizzard tries their best to alienate their fans, I can only feel obliged to leave them in the rear-view mirror.

Maybe I'm overreacting. Yet, I can't help feeling a deep sense of loss over this. Perhaps it's time to grow out of this eternal anticipation over the mythical Diablo 2 successor. It looks like that game will never happen. Yes, in a few months there will be a game called Diablo, with brand-spanking new graphics and good gameplay, but somehow it will never be the same. Underneath all that bling, the spirit of the original Diablo games is not to be found.

Buh-bye WoW, hello Diablo 3!

If you've seen the gaming news today, you might have read something like this article which mentions Blizzard's earnings call. Two things were of major interest to me.

First, there's this little matter regarding World of Warcraft's subscriptions which dropped by 600K after Cataclysm. While this isn't very surprising to me, it still feels strange that after such a major and successful expansion a lot of people still reached the burnout point so quickly.

I will come clean: I am one of those 600K. I've been slowly slipping away from WoW to the point where I'm not playing it anymore, I don't care about it anymore and I find unlikely that I will ever return. These feelings are really weird because Cataclysm was everything I dreamed of in WoW: a revamped Azeroth and flying throughout the old continents! Unfortunately, all these enhancements don't change the fact that every WoW expansion is the same 'ol, same 'ol as the previous one.

It might be that we're starting to see the first signs of WoW's inevitable decline. It won't happen abruptly. But I can see how Blizzard will find it harder and harder to keep old players in and at the same time attract new ones. Don't worry though, I'm sure this decline will be so gradual that we won't even realize it. In fact, I won't be surprised if WoW will still be online 10 years from now. It's just that good. But sometimes the same formula repeated just won't cut it.

Myself, I still follow WoW news loosely and watch patch information, I still post articles on this blog (on more general topics rather than particulars) and I also run BankAlt.com which is my pet WoW project (check it out if you haven't). So I'm still connected to the Warcraft universe and I will likely remain connected for a long time even if I'm not actively playing.

The second thing from Blizzard's conference that I found significant is the fact that they are "working hard to release Diablo 3 in 2011". I know that this isn't a guarantee that we'll be able to play Diablo 3 in its final version this year but after 10 years of waiting I can finally be confident that in a worst case scenario I'll be able to play it within a year. If I'm lucky, I might even get a beta invite sooner, and from what Blizzard is saying, a public beta is slated to be opened some time between July and September.

Diablo 3 might as well be one of the reasons that drew me away from WoW. I mean, the closer we get to a public beta (and subsequently to a launch), the less desire I feel towards WoW. And it's only fitting, because part of the attraction of World of Warcraft, back when I started playing, was that it offered a pseudo-substitute to the Diablo universe.

WoW obviously has several things in common with Diablo, both games being about improving your character by gaining levels, learning new skills and finding new and more powerful gear. The similarities end here because WoW is a much more involved game, starting with the MMO aspect, not to mention that very often powerful gear is not so random since it can be obtained with emblems and so on.

I am willing to be patient in regard to Diablo 3. I've been waiting for it for so long that another year (or less) feels like nothing at this point, especially with the beta in sight. I'm just a bit wary of the many ways in which Blizzard could still screw the pooch on this one. I'm scared about the DRM they might implement and I'm scared about the game being based around online play. And then I'm scared about a dozen other small things. I won't lie to you: it's unlikely that I will jump to buy Diablo 3 from the first day. I'll keep my impatience in check for a few days or a couple of weeks until I can see some good reviews. If they mess this one up, I will regretfully have to pass on it. Still, despite my fears, I'm generally optimistic. It's Blizzard we're talking about, after all.

If Diablo 3 is released this year, or even very early in 2012, this might give extra validity to this Blizzard release schedule that was "leaked" some time ago. And if that chart turns out to be true, there's a lot to look forward to from Blizzard, in just a few years: 2 more Diablo expansions, 2 more World of Warcraft expansions, some more StarCraft stuff (in which I'm not interested), as well as their secret new MMO.