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Diablo III coming May 15

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Re: Diablo III coming May 15

#61

Post by xenophanes »

vyrotek wrote: post #27

While I'm very (very) excited for this game.. I'm very nervous about my productivity this summer. There are few things that can pull me away from coding. This is one of them. Maybe D3 will open some new startup opportunities? Yes.. yes that's what I'll tell myself. It's all research.

You could sell a game guide for D3, however Blizzard legal hates those. They've done stuff like file takedown notices with ebay, over and over. Then when the guy filed a counter notice, they refused to go to court, waited for the time period to expire, then started filing more takedowns for his new game guide auctions. This disgusting behavior got his ebay account suspended! And they refused to ever explain specifically how the game guide violates their copyright or trademark (hint: it doesn't.).

I personally wanted to make a game guide for Infinity Blade 2 but epic legal threatened me out of it (and we had a friendly pre-existing relationship, which counted for exactly nothing. they'd interviewed me for their website and sent me free stuff, and i had a free guide on their forum with 200k views that they had made sticky). Dealing with their legal crap wasn't worth the hassle. I was even willing to give them undeserved money to be left alone, but they wanted a large cash payment upfront and were unwilling to discuss any other payment approach.

Anyway the point is game guides should be a pretty good small business opportunity -- there is a very real market for help playing games better and being more successful in them -- but there are (baseless but real) legal problems so be wary.

You might expect game companies to be thrilled to have services sold around their games, which their customers find provides game-related value to them. Just like Apple is happy to see other people selling iPhone cases. But a lot of game companies are not happy and will harass you.

Re: Diablo III coming May 15

#63

Post by xenophanes »

fbuilesv wrote: post #60
jeremymcanally wrote: post #13

Oh, they're fiendish indeed. They're offering the game for free if you sign up for a year of WoW. That's just mean. I managed to abstain from that, but I did pre-buy and pre-load the game. I was just so excited they had Mac support (which, last I'd heard, was sort of up in the air I thought).

The Mac support has always been great for Blizzard games and D3 is no exception. I've been playing the beta in a 2009 MBP for a couple of weeks now and everything looks pretty smooth. Unlike companies like EA, Blizzard spends real time making sure their Mac offerings are as good as the Windows ones and that is enough for myself to be a supporter.

FWIW the beta had a crash bug on mac where if you go to a certain place (the circle of summoner people that start the quest to get your templar sidekick), it crashes. 100% guaranteed crash. I had to play in bootcamp to get past it.

They fixed it in a later patch. But it wasn't exactly great support if a 100% mac crash bug, in a short beta playthrough, didn't get found/fixed before they pushed the version.

Also, FYI, there are a number of mac-only bugs in Warcraft 3, today. I have to play on bootcamp or wine for various custom maps. And Starcraft 2 has had mac-only mouse bugs (like your cursor disappears in the middle of the game. leave and re-enter fullscreen to fix). Based on patch notes they might have fixed that recently, i haven't checked. It happened pretty often and is obviously very frustrating.

Re: Diablo III coming May 15

#64

Post by reitzensteinm »

TwoBit wrote: post #53

I love Diablo but this was getting to be like Duke Nukem.

Interestingly enough, Duke Nukem Forever was announced just four months after Diablo 1 was released - April, 1997.

So D3 has been in the making longer than your average PC title, but it's not quite as bad!

Re: Diablo III coming May 15

#66

Post by xenophanes »

getsat wrote: post #56
jeremymcanally wrote: post #13

Oh, they're fiendish indeed. They're offering the game for free if you sign up for a year of WoW. That's just mean. I managed to abstain from that, but I did pre-buy and pre-load the game. I was just so excited they had Mac support (which, last I'd heard, was sort of up in the air I thought).

Every Blizzard game released in the last 17 years has been released on PC and Mac at the exact same time (as far as I can recall).

Wrong. Diablo 1 had a long wait for Mac.

http://www.diablowiki.net/Diablo_I

Re: Diablo III coming May 15

#67

Post by fragsworth »

Teapot wrote: post #37

Disappointing graphics so far. This is what i think Diablo3 should look like these days, http://uiu.bravehost.com/THIS-is-what-Diablo3-should-look-li... Anything less and i´m not interested.

Looks like you want to play another FPS. There are enough of those already. Top-down action RPGs are a different genre.

Re: Diablo III coming May 15

#68

Post by simonsarris »

thetron wrote: post #12

I am super excited for this, but a little disappointed that Blizzard apparently doesn't understand exchange rates. The Australian dollar is currently worth (marginally) more than the US Dollar, and yet the game costs an extra $20 here. I don't understand how this is justifiable.

I'm not sure if you're having a rhetorical meow or just want to know what's going on here, so I'll offer an explanation.

It's not about exchange rates and never ever will be. It's about purchasing power. It's just normal market segmentation, like how textbooks are cheaper in India/China than in the U.S.

Whats the average purchasing power of an Australain versus an American?

The Australian dollar is worth more than the US Dollar, and what's Australia's minimum wage? What's America's? They're about $15 and $7 respectively. If anything, Blizzard could probably stand to charge Australians even more.

But I'm sure they've done the math on this, and there might be other factors, but I'd gander that in terms of purchasing power the costs of the game to an American and Australian are probably pretty similar.

Now if you were making money in the U.S. and had to spend it in Australia, then you'd be very right to meow about exchange rates, since they don't take into account purchasing power, but very very few people who buy the Australian game are going to be in that position.

Re: Diablo III coming May 15

#69

Post by digitalsushi »

rkalla wrote: post #40
vyrotek wrote: post #27

While I'm very (very) excited for this game.. I'm very nervous about my productivity this summer. There are few things that can pull me away from coding. This is one of them. Maybe D3 will open some new startup opportunities? Yes.. yes that's what I'll tell myself. It's all research.

I would lie if I said the same thought hadn't crossed my mind... while we are still in the era of comments like yours (and mind) being brushed off somewhat half-jokingly, can you even imagine in 10-20 years what kind of addiction-causing experience games will be? I think we are still 2 generations of game tech away from it, but at some point the addiction many people experienced with pathetically unadvanced games lik…

I agree there is a mental pandemic to be. Imagine 20 years out when ultraporn, AI, and VR helmets are a suitable replacement to having a relationship with real humans. I'm all for tech, but I think that tech that splits us up and disconnects us really does make us a little less human. There's another side to it that lonely people could technically be happier in such a configuration, so maybe my argument is nullified by realizing it's just a tool and it's people that are at fault. I think I just did a 180 in a single post.

Re: Diablo III coming May 15

#70

Post by anonymoushn »

zmj wrote: post #44
vyrotek wrote: post #27

While I'm very (very) excited for this game.. I'm very nervous about my productivity this summer. There are few things that can pull me away from coding. This is one of them. Maybe D3 will open some new startup opportunities? Yes.. yes that's what I'll tell myself. It's all research.

I am interested to see how the real-money auction house works out. Somebody's going to be making some money off that.

It will probably work a lot like RMT does in every MMO, except that blizzard will tax it.
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