Activision-Blizzard’s Diablo III DRM issue isn’t fixed with apologies

  By Mr Wolfe | May 17, 2012 - 10:28 PM | Games, News
Comments Off

Diablo 3′s error woes have been making big waves, and RockPaperShotgun‘s Nathan Grayson has written an excellent editorial explaining why people shouldn’t let Activision-Blizzard off the hook just because they apologized.  Doing so, he says, sends a signal to other developers that players will be forgiving if they decide to follow the same route.  One quote in particular, from id Software’s Tim Willits, is provided as evidence:

“Diablo III will make everyone else accept the fact you have to be connected. If you have a juggernaut, you can make change. I’m all for that. If we could force people to always be connected when you play the game, and then have that be acceptable, awesome. In the end, it’s better for everybody. Imagine picking up a game and it’s automatically updated. Or there’s something new you didn’t know about, and you didn’t have to click away. It’s all automatically there. But it does take juggernauts like [Diablo III] to make change.”

That’s not the kind of change we can believe in, folks, but Diablo 3 probably will change it all anyway.  Here’s another piece discussing the stupidity of the “online single-player” game, on GameInformer.  They say:

So what’s the big deal about asking them to take the next step to be online all the time? For one, it means that we as gamers no longer own the games we play. By purchasing a game like Diablo III, you are no longer buying a product, you are buying the right to use a product at the discretion of its owner.

This much should be obvious, don’t you think?  When you play a multiplayer game which hosted on a company’s servers (see: Metal Gear Online) you know that they might shut down the servers some day, even though you paid full price for it.  You paid for access, yes, but without any promise that there will be something to access a few years from now.  That sucks, but at least it makes sense from a logistics point of view.  If you remember Diablo II’s multiplayer service, any character left inactive was automatically deleted after three months, saving Blizzard’s servers the storage headache.  But why in the hell should a single-player game carry the same fate?  It’s a greedy, short-sighted, and cruel system of control.  Is Activision-Blizzard contractually obligated to provide you anything in return for your dollars?  No, of course not.  They could shut down Diablo 3 tomorrow, if they wanted to.  Or they could just cut you off, for whatever reason.  The ridiculous errors people are encountering drive home the bleak reality of this.

UPDATE: Jim Sterling’s coverage of the MetaCritic backlash is worth looking at.  Although I keep noticing people say that Blizzard has been working on the game since 2001.  Much like StarCraft 2, the game was not actually in serious development for a decade; I’m sure they were tinkering, but the water only started to boil when Activision bought Blizzard, and started promising that a new Blizzard game would be released every year from now on.

OUCH: Leave it to John Walker to take a righteous sword to Diablo III’s many problems like no other.

“War On Our Shores” secret Rising site teases story, mentions the Tea Party?

  By Mr Wolfe | May 10, 2012 - 12:48 PM | Metal Gear Solid: Rising, News
Comments Off

There’s a new Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance teaser site up now, called “War On Our Shores”.  It features the voice of a character named Senator Armstrong, who seems bent on incriminating himself over the phone to somebody who wrote a speech for him.

I’ll admit it: everything about this game is guilty pleasure to me, and the writing in this is no different.  The speech does a good job nodding to the story of Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, and provides some decent social commentary as well.  I wonder whether the “Tea Party” mentioned in the trailer is actually supposed to refer to the current-day libertarian movement?  If so, I have to give them big credit.  Maybe Platinum Games can churn out an enjoyable plot in two months after all?

There’s also this trailer, named “Eye”, which was uploaded May 4th.  It’s got more hints, including backwards-audio which I’m too lazy to decode.  The subject is clearly a little boy, and at the end we see the words “Subject Name / Raiden” and “2/3″, indicating that this is a flashback, and that we will have another of these videos.  Something else I noticed is that according to the login data on the screen, the username is “jtripper@216.55.248.24″.  Look up that IP address and it brings you to Valley City, Ohio and a guy who I’m positive has no clue about Metal Gear.  According to the “whois” data it was registered in 1997 by Infonexion Corp..  Hmm, something tells me this isn’t an ARG on par with Portal 2, and I should have stuck with my first instinct, which was to not bother looking deeper.

["War On Our Shores" heads up via PSU.com]

Path of Exile announces sixth class, the Shadow

  By Mr Wolfe | May 7, 2012 - 12:08 PM | Games, News
Comments Off

A combination of Intelligence and Dexterity, the Shadow is the sixth and final class for Path of Exile, the ingenious action role playing game I’ve been happily beta testing and supporting with my dollars.  You may remember me offering two closed beta keys?  I still have one, if you want to join the fun.

RockPaperShotgun has the exclusive reveal, so go there for all the first impressions.  Shall I reveal the big secret they won’t tell you?  Essentially the Shadow is a more customizable version of the Assassin from Diablo II’s expansion, Lord of Destruction.  Assuming you decide to focus on the most natural setup, you’ll be creating advanced traps, slashing with claw weapons, and dabbling in all the various trickery of magic and speed, not brute power.

RockPaperShotgun

It’s worth saying that Path of Exile is extremely non-linear in its character progression, and that the trap system is built to compliment that ocean of choice.  According to the developers, almost any skill in the game can be “trapified”, so you can convert your boring old fireball spell to an incendiary mine, for example, right after they walk through the trap which curses their elemental resistance.  If you’re clever (and you should be if you play the Shadow) you will surely enjoy the possibilities.

Finally, this Friday there will be a Public Weekend, where you can jump in and try stuff out.  It’s all for testing purposes, so do them a favor and give them feedback on how the Shadow plays, eh?  The game will be free to play when it’s released, and it is very good.

Site redesign underway

  By Mr Wolfe | May 1, 2012 - 8:44 AM | News, Site
Comments Off

Ah, Springtime!  It’s a time for new beginnings and fresh starts, don’t you think?  I do, and that’s why I decided it was time to update the site’s design.

I’m going to keep screwing around with it until I figure out how to make the blockquotes the right color, and some other things — I want to return to the classic look in essence.  It’s an amazing theme with tons of customization, and so I might fiddle around with a bunch of things over the next week.  Bear with me, it’s all for the better, children.

UPDATE: Is there anyone reading this who’s good at coding?  I fixed some things, then I screwed up something else, of course.  I have a couple of questions, please email me if you know your way around CSS.

Rising: full crappy teaser shown, website up

  By Mr Wolfe | April 30, 2012 - 10:53 PM | Metal Gear Solid: Rising, News
Comments Off

You can go here to see the full Metal Gear Rising live-action teaser, along with the new site.  Seems pretty obvious: this is a distant memory of Solidus and Raiden back in the Liberian civil war, when Jack was first getting his memory screwed with.  Jack’s arms are thin and boyish, and the voice is obviously not raspy and death-like either, as it would be after MGS4.  The appearance of Solidus means it’s not between MGS2 and 4, either.  The African man and shabby tent setup also suggest it’s his child soldier memories.

Did I mention that it’s crappy?  The actors, direction, digital effects — everything looks sub-par.  Not surprising though, considering that Revengeance is a failed project being raced through production.

As for the official site, looks like you can enter commands in the bottom area to unlock easter eggs.  I wonder how long it will take to find the hidden stuff.

Go ahead and search for hints if you care

Looks like my speculation was misjudged.

Finally, I probably shouldn’t show you these pictures because they were tucked away on the site.  The fact that they’re hidden makes them feel less stupid and boring!

Theory on the Rising plot

  By Mr Wolfe | April 30, 2012 - 11:46 AM | News, Theory
Comments Off

Thanks to the retired Ravi Singh, I saw this teaser for a Metal Gear Rising announcement:

I didn’t bother to comment on it, but before the real announcement is made today, I want to toss out a theory.  April 30th is, of course, the day Jack and Rose met, as we were repeatedly reminded in Metal Gear Solid 2, and the tagline of “Make it right” at the end of the trailer makes me suspect that the plot will revolve around Rose being in danger.  Raiden and Rose reconcile at the end of Metal Gear Solid 4, so perhaps Rose is held hostage, and Raiden needs to fight the PMC’s in order to save her?  Perhaps too, his memory is altered in a test, and he needs to fight and kill in order to unlock his memory of Rose and find her so he can “make it right”?

Wild speculation, but we’ll see.