I interpret the tweet as meaning that Asia, EU, US, etc will all have their own launch time, but all timezones within a region will have the same launch time; e.g. all US servers will be online at 12:01 am PDT.
If someone doesn't want to learn about or otherwise spoil the game, they can always, you know, not look at websites that contain information about the game. Bashiok actually revealed a few weeks back that he very intentionally does not read about games he is interested in, in order to maximize the initial experience.
First off, I think that fans have made a big deal over something that's actually pretty small. Blizzard will provide us with tools to deal with obvious leechers in the form of vote kick and ignore options. If the public matchmaking works anything like WoW's dungeon finder, you should not be automatically partied with people on your ignore list. In the worst case, you can always put the offenders on ignore and bail on a game.
I used the term "obvious leechers" in the proceeding paragraph because this thread touches on a huge can of worms that unfortunately I think is going to get carried over from WoW. What do you define as a "leecher?" The traditional definition is someone who sacrifices damage stats in order to build as much MF as possible, and expects the rest of the party to carry him to epic loot drops. Therefore, the real issue is that the leecher is not doing enough damage. This is a slippery slope. Someone who stacks Gold Find will end up labelled the same.
Let's get a little greyer. What about a player who stacks a lot of +health globe HP? More +Vit than you think he should? Are they also leechers? What about skills? What if I take Threatening Shout on my Barb instead of another dps skill? Am I at risk of being labelled a leecher? With no real way of measuring dps, a lot of these accusations are going to end up being subjective and based on a cursory inspection of a player's gear. Hopefully I'm wrong.
Ultimately, I don't think it'll be a huge deal. I'll get the occasional public game where my party can't kill a boss in Inferno because of a lack of dps. I'll probably shrug, chalk it up to bad luck, and move on.
Additionally, any +elemental damage is already calculated into the weapon's DPS value. I am ecstatic about this, as it makes comparing weapon value SO much easier.
I won't be shocked or dismayed if there's login and stability issues for the first day or so. That's just the reality of major systems deployment. Beta and internal testing will catch 95% of the issues, but it doesn't compare to millions of people trying to log in and play.
Typically these sort of things are announced via press release, although I imagine they would also post up an announcement on the official site as well.
Very likely Steam needs that version of the .NET framework to run.
EDIT: I should read your whole post first, haha.
Likely each game you install needs the version of .NET Framework that is was built using. If I look at my installed programs, I've probably got at least a dozen different versions of the .NET Framework installed.
I think it makes sense. If you watch any of the game play videos, people end up skipping over a lot of the interactable items, particularly in multiplayer. I think that they slow down the pace of the game a lot, which is something Blizzard has been trying to avoid.
WoW dying would seriously hurt Blizzard. It is by far and away their largest source of income right now. I can't see Diablo 3 bringing in over $1.5 billion a year.
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Naaa, I believe a blue has stated that the opportunity to get missed sigils will come post-launch.
Maybe Blizzard's proper game data site.
Maybe a wallpaper.
Probably a wallpaper.
The choice is always in your hands.
I used the term "obvious leechers" in the proceeding paragraph because this thread touches on a huge can of worms that unfortunately I think is going to get carried over from WoW. What do you define as a "leecher?" The traditional definition is someone who sacrifices damage stats in order to build as much MF as possible, and expects the rest of the party to carry him to epic loot drops. Therefore, the real issue is that the leecher is not doing enough damage. This is a slippery slope. Someone who stacks Gold Find will end up labelled the same.
Let's get a little greyer. What about a player who stacks a lot of +health globe HP? More +Vit than you think he should? Are they also leechers? What about skills? What if I take Threatening Shout on my Barb instead of another dps skill? Am I at risk of being labelled a leecher? With no real way of measuring dps, a lot of these accusations are going to end up being subjective and based on a cursory inspection of a player's gear. Hopefully I'm wrong.
Ultimately, I don't think it'll be a huge deal. I'll get the occasional public game where my party can't kill a boss in Inferno because of a lack of dps. I'll probably shrug, chalk it up to bad luck, and move on.
EDIT: I should read your whole post first, haha.
Likely each game you install needs the version of .NET Framework that is was built using. If I look at my installed programs, I've probably got at least a dozen different versions of the .NET Framework installed.