Be Excellent To Each Other

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011- ... se-preview

It's optional, there will be two auction houses where players can punt their goodies, traditional in-game gold or REAL HARD CASH.

Basically, if you find something cool in the game, you have the option to sell it to other players for real money. (With Blizzard taking a fee.)

I'm not overly concerned myself, if anything I think it's quite intriguing, and by all accounts it's only going to be of interest to those interested in maximum pimpage and willing to pay for it.

Apparently there are no plans to introduce the scheme into WoW (the way loot works in WoW is fundamentally different).

From a console perspective, you can bet your ass everyone's going to be watching this one, 400MS for the best gun in Modern Warfare 4, anyone?

Nay, but then I've never liked Blizzard games.

Hmm - this has always happened on eBay and the like, hasn't it? Legitimising it makes an amount of sense.

Indeed, and the Blizzard guy does make a reasonably cogent argument as to why this model 'fits' with Diablo but doesn't fit with WoW, and explicitly says they have no plans to implement it in WoW.

That said, it's entirely possible to buy a wedge of the best stuff in WoW with real money, you just have to do it via the black market gold sellers.

(You can also buy stuff off Blizzard in WoW, but it's all 'non game changing' such as vanity pets and mounts.)

I'm going to leave a final judgement until I've seen how it fits in the game proper, and Diablo 3 is definitely on my 'buy list' anyway.

I'd be more interested to see if it has any wider implications for other games, as you can bet your ass that publishers will monetise every aspect of games they possibly think they can.

Of course the argument that they are doing it to prevent gold farmers is bollocks. It's a virtual economy, and they have total control over all supply and demand. They could very easily let people trade stuff with the "bank of blizzard".

They're doing it because they want to get paid. Fair enough, obviously, but their explanation is a bit disingenuous.

I totally agree with this and it's the end of the discussion as far as I'm concerned. If anything, it's a good thing rather than anything remotely negative. Sure, Blizzard take a cut of these sales, but come on, who wouldn't? At least idiots can buy ethereal internet helmets without risk of being scammed now.

Oh, and Lewie - you don't like Blizzard games?! Behind Valve they're easily one of the best PC developers on the planet. Hell, one of the best developers across all platforms. Their games are polished to a mighty sheen. WoW and StarCraft II (along with the Diablo games and Warcraft III before them) have given me thousands of hours of entertainment, probably more than any developer ever, ever, other than, again, possibly Valve (Counter-Strike - technically Valve, any way).

Genuine question: How can you just "not like" Blizzard games? StarCraft and WoW are totally different games. One is the best RTS to come out for years, and the other is a frankly incredible MMORPG. Diablo III looks fantastic as well, and I've had it pre-ordered for a couple of years. Is it because they're evil since the Activision takeover? I mean, I understand that, but you can't really knock their work.

More importantly, why isn't Diablo III out yet? It seems such a long time ago since I saw the initial videos of it. Mind you, I'm hoping they don't switch support off for Diablo II when III comes out as I still dip into that from time to time.

It's ridiculous that it hasn't arrived yet, but they're apparently aiming to get it out by the end of the year (for real this time). I expect it next year. Again, like Valve, they can take as long as they want really.

Blizzard are one of the few companies who don't set arbitrary release dates and rush to meet them. They take as long as they want and get things out the door when they're happy with them; and they don't seem afraid of canning something if it isn't working, rather than releasing a piece of shite.

I can only respect that, really, even if most of their games haven't really grabbed me.

A lot of good wow realms have been utterly fucked by gold sellers, it's more of a problem for people starting out because they find they just can't compete for farming spots and just end up quitting the game. Farmers will farm, people who hate grind will buy and both sides will hate each other.

I guess I did really like the first Starcraft, not really been in the mood for an RTS since SC2 came out, and I don't pay ~£30 for PC games.

Never enjoyed any of the warcraft or diablo games though.

Oh, Blackthorne was the shit.

Blizzard's games ARE very polished, but I have to agree with LewieP, I just don't like 'em. I don't get Diablo at all for example. Clickclickclickclickclick... shiny trinkets... clickclickclickclick... more shiny trinkets. I just don't see the appeal. And Starcraft 2 I bought after the immense hype, but I find the single player game frustratingly obnoxious in its awful, awful plot, characters and dialogue and the multiplayer seems designed to leach out any enjoyment by forcing you to stress every single second of gameplay until finally your brain rewires itself into some terrifying machine that memorises flow-charts and exact timings.

Ugh.

As I said on Twitter, the mistake people make is that they think Blizzard makes games. They don't. They make fruit machines where you gamble with time rather than money.

Initially they monetized that by you buying diablo for a one off charge, then you played the game, with a sizeable proportion of the player base gambling time for random loot.

They realised that those that like to gamble time like that could be made to pay a running sub - and hence they create a game designed to sink time.

Basically, addictive games like #WoW #Diablo and #Farmville put humans in [url="http://t.co/MB5DUNh"]Skinner Boxes[/url] for profit.

With Diablo they know they can't get away with a sub, so they've gone the final step you can pay to guarantee the skinner box delivers.

Is it exploitative? Yes, definitely. But then so are fruit machines - and people exploited enjoy being exploited.

Well, I plan to use it. To sell stuff... I'd never buy anything, but an official way to get a few actual pennies for something I found online in a game I was playing anyway? Sounds like a no-brainer to me!

Five years ago I'd have said you had a point, but the truth is that just about every game out there now entices you with levelling, unlocks, extra goodies, straight up DLC - anything to keep you playing and/or paying really. You can say that the WoW/Diablo model is a bit cynical in some ways, but so by extension is every game now, not least when you look at some of the ridiculous achievements in 360 games that players are encouraged to pursue.

On top of which, WoW is an entertaining and engrossing game in its own right - if you want to play for all the best loot in the game then of course you're free to do so, but in over three years of playing the game I've never done so and still feel no need to do so.

What I generally do when I get a character fairly maxed out is just roll another and level again, because I enjoy the game itself, and not the grind (and yes it can be a grind) of end-game raiding for all the best loot in the game, hoping to win the drops you need.

If you don't mind me asking Dr Lave, are you criticising WoW from the perspective of someone who's played it, or just how you've been led to believe it works? WoW is more 'gamer friendly' and more 'casual gamer friendly' than it's ever been, and far more about 'just the game' than it's ever been.

Not sure how being more 'casual gamer friendly' defeats Lave's opinion on WoW to be honest. Surely fruit machines are designed to be simple yet fiendishly absorbing.

I kind of agree with him, but I also disagree in that some games just add unlocks as that's what most of them are doing, or as to add more enjoyable incentive, without the idea for a lure. Bad Company 2 has good unlocks, for example. Once you're a third of the way in you've pretty much maxed out your killing power, everything else is trade-off from one factor for another.

But yeah, my Blizzard opinions still hold. I don't get how having a character with a 'rare' magic sword with supposedly exciting stats is remotely actually exciting.

Rare swords usually look very cool or do something special - there is one that turns into an electric guitar you rock out to. Take rare sword to public place, get e-peen. They also have a higher gearscore number, the higher your gear score the larger your e-peen.

Stats put you higher on recount which is a dps/healing meter. Being at the top of the dps recount gives you bragging rights over the rest of the dps and the pure white burning hatred of the tank. No one looks at the healer meters but healers.

edit: I have 6 85s. I don't look at the wow thread on here because wow and I are on a break and I don't want to get sucked back into it.
Doomhammer EU: Shroma, Orvílle, Autumnsong, Asundra, Calana and I can't remeber the name of my mage.

Edit: I'm a fucking I'll give you one guess as to what my mage is called.

The sword you refer to is actually an axe called the Arcanite Ripper, which was a rare drop off a pre-WOTLK boss in Karazhan. Characters who acquired it at the time can still use it, but it's been impossible to get hold of it in the game ever since.

Its stats are distinctly average (even at the time when it was an L70 epic), but its 'on use' effect of 'BUST OUT A FACE MELTER' was of course the real draw.

http://www.wowhead.com/item=39769



And don't completely discredit the DPS meter, rocking out the charts whilst still being a well behaved DPS-er is what it's all about (when you're doing DPS).

Personally I enjoy all three major roles in instances and raids depending on what sort of mood I'm in. Last night I was in a tanking mood so after Mrs AE and AE Jnr were in bed I happily tanked until about 1am in the morning. It's nice when you get a totally shit group but manage to chaperone and guide them to the end of a heroic regardless, hopefully making them better players in the process. I don't mind people being inexperienced/low geared, as long as they're prepared to listen to tactics and learn from their mistakes.



Is it Durka?

Despite the fact I get addicted to stuff pretty easily, I never understood the grinding that people do (I'm referring to Diablo II here that as I've not played WoW). Whenever I'd join someone's game, it would be a case of watching them all bomb off, skip past mostly everything, get to the boss, wipe it out, scavenge whatever drops and then repeat. I was always more for taking my time and actually playing the game some more. I did sometimes go back and fight bosses for better stuff but I wouldn't make a habit of it.

That said, this thread, and the fact that my main PC is up and running again, has inspired me to start another Diablo II character off.

@AE I used to run a lot of 5 mans as a healer but got the BG bug, before I went on the break I was BG healing on my druid and dpsing on my lock/dk full time. I like the no stress aspect of BGs and I'm actually rather good at it where as I disliked a lot of the tanks we got in 5 mans and running as a guild group becomes like a job.

As I finally decided to complete Diablo 1 and 2 this year, I did! 1 was a lot smaller than I remembered with only 15 or so dungeons, 2 took a bit longer. I think 2 could only manage 1024 resolution which now looks archaic on a 24 inch monitor.

The topic of Diablo 3 having a real cash economy did cause interest on the Entropia forums I frequent, as Entropia was the original legitimate RCE game (along with Second Life I suppose) it'll be interesting to see how it works out, but having played Entropia for over 5 years now, I'm completely used to virtual items being bought and sold every day for real money. The value is determined by rarity and how useful / economical typically.


I have read that some software Blizzard will install has privacy implications - Vanguard was it?

It's called Warden.

The disclaimer on it is pretty scary, effectively amounting to - 'I hereby give your software permission to snoop on everything my PC is doing at all times when I'm playing and report back to the Blizzard mothership about it.'

In reality though, meh, who cares? It's a bit like Microsoft, they're so in the public gaze that they have to play with a straight bat.

Blizzard's games are entirely hack and cheat free, Warden does what it's supposed to, so I'm all for it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warden_%28software%29

"hack and cheat free"

hahahahahahaha *gasp* ahaha hah aha

So not a wow player yourself then? Chinese/Korean/Russian Motherfuckers worked out how to get below and above the map meaning they can spawn then drop a great distance and create website addys out of corpses. When they are under the map they can see when all the resource nodes spawn and zoom about invisible farming them all. One of the reasons I don't play until they sort this shit out is because I farm while in queues and got too pissed off with "ooh ore!" *start to mine* "ah FUUUUUUUUUCKskhjespoij'werfpoj"

Erm, got any sources for that?

And yes I am a WoW player, as my five L85 characters (with another two not far off) will bear testament to

I certainly saw an awful lot of the ‘Write words in the sky using tens of level 1 clones’ hack back when I played. I didn't see an awful lot of game-changing cheating, but there was plenty of slightly dodgy stuff around.

Slightly dodgy and fundamentally breaking the game are very different things, plus Blizzard are far more on top of this sort of thing than most.

I saw the 'spell out a gold seller's website in clones' thing going on myself, not sure if it was a hack as such though, and it was soon stamped out anyway.

Is 85 the max now? I presume it is otherwise you wouldnt have stopped 4 times to create a new character.
Congratulations on getting 5 to that level btw, I havent played WoW, just Eve, Anarchy Online and Entropia, but it sounds like youve put some serious hours in.

The clones are level 1 characters, it is a hack. Try mining in Uldum or wintergrasp (maybe not so much now) when you get to a node and it's being mined they are underneath the map - if you have a character that can detect humans on the map then you will see them and the name which can be reported. The bad part of this is that when you look at the character it will be max level and stripped naked. Blizzard will not admit that this hack exists for obvious reasons and there is no freaking way I'm going to google anything that contains "wow" and "hack"

Getting five characters to 85 isn't that hard in cata especially with RAF. You do it in stages with characters because you get x2 rested XP. In all honestly I found 80-85 to be very "is that it?"

Hmmm fair enough - http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/1869560581

Although Blizzard do in fact basically admit there that the hack exists.

You know, thinking back, I vaguely remember experiencing that a couple of times myself, although in all the many (many!) hours I've spent farming, it's been a very rare occurrence.

As for 80-85 it was always going to be a little bit 'meh' as they used the Cata expansion cycle to completely rebuild the olde worlde as well as put the new stuff in, levelling a character all the way from 1 is a wonderful experience now right the way through the old vanilla WoW zones.

I know — that's pretty much exactly what I said

I didn't see anything that made me feel like the game was utterly compromised, and getting in my way, you're right. But I don't think the game is totally hack-free, either, though Blizzard are certainly pretty good at staying on top of things much to their credit.

I'm not a bitter ex-wow player. I am a recovering addict, but this hack depends on your server - there have been points on Doomhammer where blizzard have not been on top of it and it has been game destroying. Couldn't level my crafting because there were no herbs/ore to gather and farmers would put them on very low at 3am. For the money we all put in blizzards pockets there should be a GM sat in known bot farming areas on every realm watching player movements, even having a GM parked in the zone be he watching or answering tickets would cut that shit out.