One Week of Diablo III!
Well.. I say a week.. heh. Launch day was a no-go, with Blizzard having somehow been unaware of how many of their customers would actually want to play, and the servers being unable to cope with this demand. These problems continued the following day, with connection problems, lag, and maintenance on the Battle.net servers.. and still they weren’t finished, as there was yet more surprise downtime and maintenance later on during the week.
The only positive thing that could be said for Blizzard in this was that they got on with the maintenance straight away.. but they should have had some indication of demand from pre-order and sales figures, and from the open beta weekend which was plagued with the same problems, and they should have ensured that their systems were ready to deal with it.
Anyway.. I went with the Demon Hunter, with plans to play the game through alone, at my own pace.. with exploration, reading all the journals, watching all the cutscenes and playing with the crafting system a bit too. I had a friend drag me through Diablo II ages back, and didn’t get to explore or enjoy the story; that isn’t going to happen again.
The first part of the game was available during the open beta.. and available as a trial of the game via the Starter Edition or Guest Passes. The first part of Act 1, up to the Skeleton King, seemed to play the same as during Beta, ignoring the random elements of course!
Diablo III Starter Edition and Other News
Diablo III launches tomorrow.. woop!
For those who aren’t planning to buy the game right away, there will be a Starter Edition and Guest Pass!
Information about this was originally leaked, as Battle.net account holders discovered they had access to the Diablo III beta client.. and that they were able to create characters tagged with a Starter Edition label. Blizzard have since taken the beta down to address “an issue affecting the beta accessibility”. (more…)
Minecraft for the Xbox 360
Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition, 4J Studio‘s ported version of Minecraft, came out on Wednesday, and apparently broke the Day 1 sales records for the Xbox LIVE arcade and becoming profitable within the first hour! Tim won a copy of the game, so he finally had a go.. watching him encounter zombies and creepers was amusing 🙂
I planned to have just a quick go, to compare it against the PC version which I’ve sunk many, many hours into. As usual, I spent my first night up on a pole.. I’ve never been keen on the hole in the ground method! Once I had some resources gathered, it was on to the crafting..
There have been a few changes to crafting, making it a lot easier to use! The system allows you to navigate through categories and then just click on the item you want to make.. and as long as you have the ingredients to hand, the item will appear in your inventory.
Five Days Till Diablo III and Other Stuff
There’s just five days left till Diablo III is released!
The Mark of Valor Sigils are now unlocked on the website, so you can create your own banner for each character to use in-game, using your own uploaded photographs or designs. Blizzard have also made a Launch Day Preparation Guide.. purchasing, downloading, creating a Battletag and so on.
They don’t suggest what to do while waiting these last five days, tho 😉 (more…)
Netherwing
Since a friend showed me his Netherwing Drake, I’ve wanted one.. however, it required Exalted reputation with Netherwing, and this has taken rather a long time to earn via quests in Shadowmoon Valley.
I met a random player in the Mines, who was looking for Netherwing Eggs. He was under the impression that the only way to reach Exalted was via turning in the eggs.. but I found the quests were a more reliable source of reputation gains, and while slower, they were less frustrating. I only found a few eggs after I’d started looking for them, and when I came across a suggested route, I discovered that flying and looking around gave me motion sickness! This has to be due to flying, as I had no problems running around looking for Easter eggs during Noblegarden.
I finally made it to Exalted yesterday, and went back to Shattrath to claim my own Drake 🙂
I picked the Veridian Netherwing Drake as the quest reward, but have also been back to Netherwing Ledge to purchase the others for 200g apiece 😀
100 Pets and Nuts’ Acorn!
I finally got my 100th pet.. the Darkmoon Cub, redeemed for tokens at the Darkmoon Faire!
Children’s Week Pets and the Sea Turtle!
Children’s Week brought the opportunity to grab a few more additions to my pet collection, with Speedy from the quests in Orgrimmar, the Curious Wolvar Pup from Dalaran, and Peanut from the quests in Shattrath!
The Elder Scrolls Online!
The Elder Scrolls Online has finally been revealed via GameInformer’s June cover!
The Zenimax Online team have been working on the game for several years now, which will be set a millennium before the events of Skyrim with an entirely new story for players to discover. There will apparently be three player factions, with PvP conflict as well as PvE.
More information will be posted to GameInformer’s Elder Scrolls Online hub as it is released!
The EA Indie Bundle
EA have decided to get in on the indie bundle scene.. with the EA Indie Bundle, launched on Steam.
This bundle has been causing a bit of a stir amongst some indie developers, with accusations that the huge company is just cashing in on the popularity of “indie” bundles, and more arguments about what the term “indie” means. The games in the bundle are apparently EA Partners games.. the label which publishes third party games from independent developers.
So.. the games..
HotHead Games‘ DeathSpank, and DeathSpank: Thongs of Virtue, Vanguard Games‘ action adventure Gatling Gears; Klei Entertainment‘s action games Shank and Shank 2; and Trapdoor Inc.‘s stealthy puzzler Warp, available for £14.38 until 9th May.. 70% off against £47.94 if buying all the games at full price: a far cry from the usual indie bundles which start off in single figures 😉
I did notice that Gatling Gears comes with a dirty word.. DRM. This game also has a five machine activation limit. Would this be in place if not for EA?
Indie Royale: The May Hurray Bundle
The latest Indie Royale bundle to be launched is the May Hurray Bundle, with six games and the now usual music bonuses.
The first game in the bundle is Dungeon Defenders, an addictive tower defense RPG game with lots of loot and skills to learn by Trendy Entertainment.
