*Sigh*Quote from UmpaI'm sorry but what you say about your desires and what you actually say generally is very contradictory. There's nothing objective at all about your stance.
My stance has come from an objective look at the world. I don't think I said my stance was objective? (Maybe I did? My memory becomes worse and worse every day...) Anyway, my stance is anything but objective. That being said, if there was empirical evidence of the existence of the god of the Bible, Quran, TaNaKh, or Bagavad Gita, then I would convert to that religion immediately. The chances of that evidence ever showing up, though, are very very slim from what I can tell. But if it does, I'll be the first to say that I was wrong.
Quote from UmpaI think "a thirst for information" would be more appropriate than "a thirst for knowledge". It almost sounds like you went from one extreme to another. This may not be true, but the way you mock the religion presents this image of you(at least to me) that says you're a person with such an extreme view that you have zero respect for the Christian religion specifically. Which doesn't look like an objective stance at all. It looks more like you just picked a different side to be on, so you mock the other side.
I'm sorry, I'm not sure I understand the difference in information and knowledge?
And Christianity is not alone. I have similar views of Islam as well. I am currently studying Judaism and Hinduism. If either of them make sense and agree with the world, then I will convert. If they are in opposition to the world, then I will laugh at them. This is the only way I can deal with absurd claims.
Quote from UmpaI guess a good analogy would be a football player and a geek. You're more reminiscent of the football player who mocks the geek for not being macho like him. As opposed to the football player who knows what it's like to be on the other side. They're both football players, but one has this distinct and delusional sense of identity.
Actually, reverse the roles. Religion is the football player, and I am the geek. The difference is that Atheists (the geeks) are finally starting to go to the gyms and bulk up.
Quote from UmpaPersonally, I was pretty religious as a well as a child. Being raised Jehovah's Witness I went door to door proselytizing. However as I grew older I became more aware of what I could and could not ever truly know. The existence of god being one of them. If it was to be on a spectrum, I am still closer to to the religious side. I know I can't know anything. But I can have good information from science. And I can have good inquisition from philosophy. From there I decided that I believe in consciousness. Ergo, I believe in the soul. Which in turn still leads me to believe in an afterlife of some sort of fashion.
Well, Richard Dawkins has a scale of 1 to 7 where 1 is absolutely believe in any deity, and 7 is absolutely no belief in any deity. He puts himself at 6.5, but I do disagree with him. I'm closer actually to 6. While I think there is no deity, and I am almost 100% certain there is no deity, I cannot know for certain, and the uncertainty is enough to keep me wondering. Does that make sense?
Quote from UmpaBut. I know I can't know any of that. And, if none of that is true, that's ok. I'll have a wonderful eternal rest. I don't really know where I'm going with this honestly...I just don't understand all the animosity. People will be people. Of course they will willingly believe something they have no true knowledge of. That's no reason to pick on them. As a whole, we're not very intelligent.
I don't think I am picking on anybody?
Quote from GladHeHasBeta
i condemn christianity as a whole for the same reasons i condemn black people as a whole
93% that ive met are fucked up, its just easier to hate them as a whole.
why do stereotypes exist? because they are TRUTHHHHHH.......................... most of the time
That's...not cool...
Go somewhere else and talk about that, because that's not right. There are very good people that are Christian, just as there are very good people that are black.
Very, very uncool dude.
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Still, I'm pretty confident adding all follower dialog to one article will make it well over 100k big. It will be a lot of loading, perhaps having dedicated "dialog" page for followers and classes might be a good idea eventually? We could see how dialog develops once the game is released first though.
Basic ones can be made from
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I assume you don't want this made public?
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1. It's hard to see which threads have new posts; currently there's an extremely thin black line to the left of the thread name. Constantly squinting and leaning in towards the screen whenever one enters a new forum is not a pleasant experience. Either making the line much more noticeable or bringing back the old design where unread threads were bold and read threads weren't would be much obliged.
2. There's no easy way to go to the first unread post of a thread. I have to click the tiny little arrow first to get a preview and from there go to the first unread, rather than through one click going to the first unread, as was possible under the previous design.
3. This isn't as big of a deal, but the Wysiwyg interface isn't my cup of tea. And that you can turn it off is great, but this also prevents you from using all the nifty buttons that bold text or create lists. In the previous version, there was no wysiwyg interface, but it was still possible to mark a piece of text and haave it all turned into a list. If this can be brought back, so that it is active while the wysiwyg interface is disabled in the top left of the posting window, it would be great. Essentially what I want is to be able to push the buttons without having the formatting applied to my reply window.
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What's New?
The class skill pages have been updated with additional information such as resource costs and cooldowns. Check out the
The entirety of our Diablo II items, comprising every normal, exceptional, elite, unique, set, rune word and crafted item have been moved to the data namespace by Apoc. This may not say you anything, but it allows the item data to be used in much more flexible ways. So if someone would like to make item lists for Diablo II items (I'm looking at you kahdrick ;)) this would now be possible.
Some new maps have been added to the fixed areas of the game, such as
There's also some brand new and rewritten lore articles in the wiki for your reading pleasure by yours truly:
What's Being Discussed?
Talkerst has drawn up some ideas on new template documentation for the wiki to make it easier to figure out just what the hell one is supposed to do if one wants to help out. Check it out here and the discussion about it here.
The main page is also (once again) regoing a redesign. Two proposed layouts are up for discussion, the Box Layout and the List Layout. Chime in on the discussion here if you have any preferences.
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(No datamined information though)
The Book of Cain
This elusive book, recently covered by the late Sixen, appeared on Amazon.com some time ago before quickly disappearing. But now we can all rejoice as it has appeared once again and can be preordered. Release is scheduled for mid december, and it's going to be a treat for lore fans.
Inside its pages are many different things. For the first time ever, we're given a creation myth and an explanation of where
Many will undoubtedly wonder whether it will introduce a large amount of retcons into the continuity, and at this point it's impossible to tell just how much has been rewritten or ignored from previously established lore. What we have seen so far from Blizzard however, both in terms of the books and the current Diablo III Beta, is that they prefer to clarify previously murky areas with some small changes rather than change large swathes of information. The prime example of this from the previews we have is the creation myth: it depicts two great beings,
The book totals 148 pages, complete with Blizzard artwork throughout all of the pages, so there's certainly tons of information in it. If you want to stay up to date on the lore in the future, this book will be the one to get.
Check out the publishers page, Insighted.com, or our our wiki for the preview images.
Blizzcon Lore Panel
Reported by ScyberDragon last weekend, the Lore Panel was a first for the Diablo series. The panel begun with mostly the preview information we had about the book of Cain as well as a more detailed account of the lore from the //www.diablowiki.com/index.php?title=Sin_War_Novels">Sin War Novels" class="wiki-link">
While the panel, coupled with all the other information, didn't necessarily give a lot of groundbreaking information, it was very nice to see an entire panel dedicated to it. They did stress that they don't want to upset the lore with tons of new arbitrary changes, much like we saw above in regards to the Book of Cain. The most telling example here was probably the
The Black Soulstone Cinematic
Now for the juicy part. By now I assume all of you have already seen it and that any of you who are interested in the lore about it have taken a dive into the Lore Forum, but I'll provide a brief summary just in case.
The finer details of this cinematic are quite interesting. The initial reaction people have, other than being mind-blown with the quality of it, is the rather weird talk sequence between Leah and Azmodan. Why is he even talking to her? If we however substitute Leah for Diablo, the conversation (monologue really) starts to make a lot more sense.
This has of course caused a lot of speculation to spring up, not only here on DiabloFans but over on the Battle.net forum as well. Is it Diablo he's talking to, or the Horadrim/Belial/Tyrael/Deckard Cain/Bob/Leah/someone else? We don't know, but we haven't had this much speculation since D3 was announced three years ago!
Datamined Information
Note: No datamined spoilers in this thread.
This has to be mentioned too, whether you like it or not. Datamined stuff has been appearing since the beta started, and it does hint at some specific plot developments pretty strongly. However finding it all was a little troublesome, and so Daemaro compiled it all into one huge spoiler thread. If you want all the information currently available to us, you will have to check that too. I won't spoil any here though, but do check it out if you want to.
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Assuming that Azmodan is speaking to Diablo rather than Leah herself, and that Diablo intended to fool all Great Evils, perhaps the Black Soulstone is his failsafe, his wa to return to life after death. Perhaps it was intended to be used by all the Three, perhaps with it Azmodan can usurp their powers. Regardless of which, it would seem reasonable to assume tha the Black Soulstone is somehow linked to the power of the Three.
It makes no sense. Azmodan is still alive, so why wouldn't his throne be empty? And if it's cause he's in Hell, who are the other two guys with him?
Angels would certainly have been screwing with them as well, but I agree that he's most likely referring to a demon, and given Leah's heritage, likely Diablo. If for no other reason that the fact that Diablo is the principle villain of the game and it would make the most sense for him to lead such a ploy.
Which assumes Tyrael is dead, something I hightly doubt. I think Tyrael would have survived the explosion of the Worldstone plenty easily.
The Black Soulstone will of course still be the last fragment of the Worldstone though if we assume Baal's soulstone was destroyed after the end of LoD.
Agreed, I think the new creation myth provides a much necessary back drop for the lore and an explanation for the driving forces behind Heaven and Hell, but I don't expect us to ever see a fully fledged return of Anu and Tathamet. If the story is even to be interpreted literally.
Or it is exactly what he has learned, and the very reason he's searching for it.
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DiabloFans has seen a veritable onslaught of new information in the last few weeks. The Friends & Family Beta start, leaked information, community site updates, skill calculators, live streams and then finally the start of the Closed Beta have all come. It has been very exciting, but for those few (read: 99.98%) who have in fact not gotten access to the beta, it's been less about the gameplay and more about what is actually in the game.
What's New?
As some of you may have noticed, the main page of the wiki has had a lot of new stuff added to it lately. Perhaps you've browsed the main page and continued from there, or perhaps you've been directed there from elsewhere.
Most of this information is still very hard to get a good grip on. Try browsing through the item category and while pretty much every item in Diablo III is placed here, you're likely not going to get very much out of it unless you know exactly what you're looking for.
Similarly, we have around a thousand new images (and we're not done yet) that have yet to be placed in any specific categories, making it even worse to navigate.
Add to that the 3,000 affixes, hundreds of crafting recipes and, well, I think you get the point.
Sounds bad.
Indeed. Now that the information is in the wiki, it's time to structure it and make it more useful for everybody. A couple of these things have already been started, but there's much more to do. Here's a quick overview of what's been happening in the wiki recently.
For stuff that isn't currently also available in one form or another on Blizzard's site, there's also a project started up to create area pages for all known places in the beta. You can see an idea of what's happening on the
Well, this sounds positively intriguing!
I sure hope so, otherwise this article would have been a pretty big time waste that I could have spent doing more important stuff. Like sleeping.
But if it does sound interesting to you, then I urge you to hop over to the wiki forum and of course the wiki itself to take a peek at what needs doing and lend a hand where needed. You should also check the //www.diablowiki.com/Diablo_Wiki:Community_Portal">Community Portal" class="wiki-link">
Happy editing
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The core problem of the older system was that it showed where you received negative rep. Any person is more or less going to react negatively to being down-repped, and that information was definitely something people used in order to guess who did it to them. But very few are going to be upset for not being repped to begin with.
That being said, unless such a function is available in IPBoard, there not much we could do even if we wanted to.