Johnny

There is no doubt in my mind that Apple is perfectly willing to exploit their market position however possible.

Dean is correct. I am honestly not quite sure on the specifics because I've not been in a position where it has mattered to me. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxation_in_Sweden

It's hardly dumbing down. The choices in Diablo III are much more about figuring out the right abilities for the moment, compared to the rest of the genre. It requires a lot of understanding of your abilities and how the combat flows. It's making the game more easy to approach while adding more depth to the combat. It's a win-win approach.

I've seen a lot of complaints about the skill system as well. From people who haven't played the game. It's way better than a skill tree because it offers so much more flexibility and customization in how you play your character. And you're never locked into a decision, or forced to calculate the maximum DPS you can get with the optimal skill build. While with a skill tree, if you want the last skill in Fire, you're gonna have to pick up most of the other ones; it's very rigid. Diablo 3's system cuts out all the stupid spending of points and pitfalls while giving you many more actual choices (as opposed to calculations).

Not sure what those people could have been hoping it'd be. It completely outdid all my expectations, along with those of all my friends. And the game looks absolutely gorgeous.

So because I'm waiting for Connor's Monk to catch up, I've abandoned my Wizard for now and rolled a barbarian. There's no class that as effectively gets across what makes this game great. You click on something and the game makes you feel like a demigod immediately. Yeah I tried the Demon Hunter and it just felt like I was slowly chipping away on the enemies' health. Didn't like it at all. Would sound more believable if it was just a part of the discussion like with Sim City V and Ubisoft games, and not the only fucking thing people are willing to discuss. We've had the conversation pages back and nothing has changed. Your opinion on it as well as mine has been very clearly documented. I'd rather not this thread becomes a retarded retreading of the same old arguments like the Piracy and US Politics threads. You can pause the game if you're not playing with other people. Might want to ask him what he's smoking.

@FLD: Wizard is pretty effective at killing things rapidly. On the other hand, if I fuck up I'm immediately dead.

As far as is known to the public, Blizzard retains the same level of autonomy they had before the merger in regards to creating their games. I don't think it's impossible that it's how it is to some degree to combat piracy, but I doubt it's the main or only reason. Blizzard aren't known for being pants on head retarded, and is still one of the few companies I've not seen blame lacking sales on piracy. Not that they have any lacking sales to blame on anything, but yeah. --- Regarding in-game stuff: I've just taken a break at the Act 3 outpost. Holy shit that Act 2 final boss boss got hard for me. My character is such a glass cannon I kept getting killed in 1-2 hits. Had to swap out my skill build and a large portion of my items for things with +vitality.

Just for the record (and I know you probably weren't directing that at me) I hated it when Ubi did it too, and refused to buy the games until they patched it out. Connect-at-launch is still stupid, but I can deal with it. Also I have nothing against Blizzard, in fact I'm generally very pro-Blizzard. I fucking love Starcraft 2 and quite enjoyed WoW back when I used to play it. Yeah, not directed at you, more at the general attitude towards Blizzard and Blizzard fans the last few years. I'd agree with this, except I do know that some people managed to hack items onto the closed battle.net system in Diablo II despite that not letting you transfer characters back and forth (which Open Battle.Net did let you). I'd rather there was a way to play it offline, but I can also see why they'd want to take extra precautions with letting people have local access to as little of the code as possible. Not that I buy that this is their entire and only reason for it, mind.

Well, apart from the obvious difference that co-op is more fun than going at it solo, the endgame of Diablo games is mostly about hunting and trading items. It's about the online economy which that doesn't exist at all in singleplayer and the game then just sort of dies once you've unlocked most of your abilities. Other than that, yes, it is basically the same. Re: The camera, it is not controllable by the player, though certain scenes shifts the camera around. Specifically I remember a staircase leading down to the final boss of Act 1 shifting the camera to have me looking down at the arena I would later fight the boss in. You can also set it to zoom in on your character whenever you open the inventory. You know, in case you feel like getting murdered every time you check if that axe you picked up is any better than the one you have equipped. EDIT I'm seeing some people say that some Koreans beat the game in 7 hours. That's simplifying it by a lot. Some Koreans beat Normal mode in seven hours. Normal is the "learn the ropes" part of the game and only gets you to around level 30. If it follows the same pattern as Diablo 2, the real challenge/fun/frustration starts in Nightmare. It won't count as beaten until you've defeated Inferno difficulty. Don't take that to say that Normal mode is fast either. These guys were serious Diablo veterans and for most people it's gonna take considerably longer. I have logged almost 10 hours into it and I've just beaten Act 2, Normal on my Wizard.

With Assassin's Creed it's different for a few reasons, primarily: singleplayer-focused titles by a developer whose server support I don't trust in the least. Diablo is primarily a multiplayer title anyway, like StarCraft 2, so I care very few shits about it. Even if there was a separate offline mode I would be playing the Battle.Net mode either way. Especially when the game is just so goddamned fun. I've not had this much fun blowing stuff up in a game since... Well, Diablo 2. It's improved compared to the competition in every measurable way, and many less easy to measure. Either way we went over this when everything was first revealed and I'm getting tired of the whole discussion. I'm fine with people not buying it over the always-online deal - my priorities are not yours and vice versa - but I'm less fine when people (in general, not accusing anyone here) are trying to convince me I should also hate the game. I'd rather just talk about the game itself. Because, really, there's a lot of cool things worth discussing. I guess it's just cool to hate on Blizzard since their merger with Activision though, what with a game like Diablo being always-online gets more hate for it on forums than Assassin's Creed does.

Quite, the economic problems we're seeing worldwide has everything to do with a too controlled economy and nothing to do with capitalism run wild.

Ironically, everyone I know who's angry about it are the people who didn't even buy the game. There's been less issues than I expected to be honest.

More details about Civilization V: Gods & Kings http://www.videogamer.com/pc/civilization_v/news/more_civilization_v_gods_and_kings_details_revealed_at_gdc.html

Lapland refers to several areas. Lapland as in a region of Finland is the region said to be the home of Santa. Lapland as in in northern Scandinavia (Technically Fenno-Scandinavia) doesn't even have any clear borders and is usually not referred to in any context, ever. You might be confusing it with Sápmi. Lappland as in the cultural region of Sweden is not thought of as the home of Santa.

Lapland is an area in Finland which is home to their version of the Santa myth. Lappland is an area in Sweden which is generally not considered to be the home of Santa except as an occasional joke.

I am loving the level editor. Easy to use and still allows you to make some fairly complex stuff. Especially once you start "cheating" it by creating functions more complex than it really wants you to in the background. http://steamcommunity.com/id/robotinblack/myworkshopfiles/?appid=620 Here's my three maps. I'd appreciate any criticism.

So does your brother-in-law have an accent...? I can't imagine people falling for that if he doesn't. Then again, the stupidity of people in general never ceases to amaze me.

I would never use them, but I love hearing/reading stupidly cheesy/stupid lines. I used to read a blog dedicated to them once in a while. I'll post it here if I remember the name at any point.

Well, haven't seen the name that I remember. Then again I don't play THAT much. Mostly because my PC can't run it at a framerate above 40.

I know a handful of people on my steam list is getting it on day one. I'm doing so as well. I think most of the lack of buzz is that people pretty much know what they are getting into. There's not a lot of questions open and nothing really to discuss. Unless you want to try to extrapolate high-level balance discussions based on level 1-13 in the beta. Which I would advice against.

That... seems like an odd detail to drop in a Tribes discussion? xD

IE's default search is (iirc) Bing, but that's the only thing I can think of.

Wait, isn't the browser battle specifically what Microsoft lost a huge law battle over years back when it was decided that their business practices were bad for free market competition? Going down this road again after already being burned for it seems like a fucking stupid move.