Tag: Diablo III

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Geek

Diablo 3 Day I Pitstop: How’s your Internet Connection?

If it’s one thing gamers will never compromise, it’s their Internet connection. The launch of Diablo III has prompted gamers around the country to scrutinize the quality of their Internet connectivity. As a fan myself, I really take these things seriously and no amount of marketing BS will convince me otherwise. The proof is in the pudding and it seems that not everyone is a chef.

This feedback is based on a number of qualitative feedback from friends and personal experience as well.

So far, it seems that Diablo 3 works fine with the following ISP’s

Wireless:
Smart (tethered) – I tether my MacBook with my iPhone 4s and get to play just fine. Some people prefer a fixed wireless broadband connection though.

Globe (tethered) – I get to play with Rico of Technogra.ph (he tethers using a Samsung Galaxy S II)

Wired
PLDT – Generally good. I hopped into a number of games of friends and we’re rolling seamlessly.

On another note, one ISP stands out to be the provider to avoid for Diablo III:

Sky Broadband – Woes to Sky Broadband. They really dropped the ball on this one. I used to swear by Sky publicly as the best wired connection money can buy in the country. Service has dropped to a really poor rating in the past 2 months.

Brendan outlined it all here in a comment:

Hi there,

Many many emails to Skybroadband support center regarding Blizzard downloader P2P issues and unplayable in game experience with Diablo 3 (may be DNS, but may be that they have restricted Port 1119, which Diablo 3 uses) – to no avail.

Sky simply does not respond to queries and when you call them they tell you to send an email through to support center. Its a vicious circle.

Playing it on my friends PLDT connection works perfectly.

After 2 years with Sky, seems like PLDT really is the way to go.

– Brendan

As my cousin said, ” Pre-term fee for Sky is PHP 2,000.00, Diablo 3 is priceless. If it doesn’t work at 3Mbps, I’m dropping them for (insert ISP here).” Sorry Sky Broadband. I swore by your services. I really did. But sad gamer can’t compromise.

You know what’s most interesting? My wireless tethering is faster than my ethernet connection. Why, Sky, why? Note that I write this not to smear Sky’s reputation but 2 months of your IT support not knowing what the problem is makes for really bad service. Fans have waited for Diablo III for about a decade and we absolutely need to be online to play this (there is no offline mode). So you definitely should understand why gamers feel really bad about this and need to switch. We waited 9 years for Diablo III. We absolutely can’t wait for you.

To the others: how’s your gaming experience? Add me up: LOLMOWER#1648

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Mostly Everything

Look what just finished downloading!

Total File Size: 7.6GB
Launch Date: May 15 2012

You can pre-purchase the game as early as now in time for the launch in about 2 months.

Categories
Mostly Everything

Behold Blizzard’s Battle.net 2.0: Manage WoW and Grab Starcraft II Beta

battle_net-2

Note: If you’re having problems logging in to the new Battle.net, I found a solution! Add a “www” to the “https://” address. Thus it will look like this:

https://www.battle.net/account/index.xml

battle-net-error

Now, on to it!

It’s finally here! Blizzard is taking the Steam route and merging World of Warcraft accounts into Battle.net. If you aren’t familiar with the company’s free online gaming servers it’s probably because you grew up buying pirated versions of Diablo, Warcraft and Starcraft — you never got to enjoy the awesomeness that was Battle.net. It was way ahead of its time — owners of Starcraft and Warcraft II and III could compete in online ladder matches while Diablo II players could go for Hardcore mode where your toons are submitted to the virtual graveyard when you die — permanently!

So I just did what any Blizzard fan should do and merged my World of Warcraft account with the new Battle.net ID.

wow_wotlk

The biggest benefit to signing up with Battle.net is it’s beta program — this is how Blizzard will be distributing their limited beta keys for Starcraft II. The new Battle.net will also be the portal for online store purchases and account management for all their games. What are you waiting for? Create a Battle.net account now in time for Diablo III and Starcraft II!

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Mostly Everything

Our portable LAN party solution

pict2316

The holidays are usually devoted to a lot of gaming, especially when my friends from high school fly home from the States. This is a set up of 5 portables running on a home WiFi network – two of which are Macs. The objective was to run through Diablo II: Lord of Destruction from the start and get as far as we could.

The most interesting part was installing Diablo II on two OS X machines and networking them with three other Windoze portables without having to run Parallels or BootCamp. I’ve talked about CrossOver for Mac OS X before and this is what we used to do a native install of Diablo. Original Blizzard installers are usually compatible with both Mac and PC but it was way too geeky to resist doing a native Windows run of Diablo on OS X. 🙂

So yeah, if you’re wondering how far into the game we got … age (and carpal tunnel) dictated the best of us and we got as far as Act I, defeating Andariel.

Please don’t judge. We’re just regular geeks. 😉

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Mostly Everything

Diablo III, coming for real – let’s dungeon crawl!

Any Diablo player can relate to these: Remember how we used to trick the system and dupe a Ring of Jordan with our 3 1/2 floppies? Or exploit the overpowered poison damage with the Amazon until Blizzard addressed this with a patch? Or that thing with the Necromancer and Corpse Explosion?

Get Ready to Quit DoTA, because here it is, in the (rotting) flesh — Diablo III preview screenshots from Gamespot. Finally, they’re real!

Some highlights form Gamespot’s preview is quoted below, although we suggest reading the entire article for a pretty good overview of what to expect with the gameplay:

With different types of monsters on hand, it’s fortunate that the character classes in Diablo III will be just as epically powerful as you remember. The Barbarian is still a melee specialist (though not without his specialized ranged attacks).

…

The Witch Doctor will have control over disease, can summon pets, and can even control the minds of his or her enemies. We saw a few examples of these different approaches in the game demo: Locust Swarm is a spell that summons a nasty horde of flying locusts that can overwhelm an opponent.

…

Using new skills will be easier than ever in Diablo III, thanks to a new combat system and user interface that seems to put a premium on skill usage over potions. As explained during the gameplay seminar, Blizzard developers felt that potion use was too prevalent in the previous game, resulting in combat encounters that were rarely more than wars of attrition, as the user kept pounding health potions en masse.

…

In Diablo III, potions will still play a part of the action but their importance has been downplayed thanks to a couple of changes. The first are health globes, which drop off defeated enemies and will serve to boost the health of your character and those around you if you’re playing co-operatively. As the developers put it, the idea of enemies dropping health is one that will keep the player moving forward in the game, as opposed to trying to avoid combat.

…

The random scripted events sound like one of the coolest additions to the game. Each playthrough, players will encounter scenarios that are quite different from their previous trip through the game. In one area, you might see a house filled with undead enemies–along with a story about the home’s former residents.

…

On the other hand, we can confirm the game’s release date; it’s the same date as for all Blizzard-developed titles: “When it’s ready.”

So can’t wait. So many games, so little time! And we’re 100% sure this will have a strong online component as well.