Well, having to be connected to battle.net continuously when playing D3 isn't the end of the world, but I'm not really a fan of it. I really like the ability to play a game whether I'm in my home or at some random location with no net connection! Thank god for Torchlight 2, I guess, which I'll absolutely be picking up when it comes out.
For me the biggest privacy issue is the interpersonal one, where I am ALWAYS appearing "Online" to any friends I add via BattleTag or RealID, or even recent players who were in games that I happened to join with a friend. Whether I like it or not, these people know I'm online and who I'm playing with. They can see that it's 4AM in the morning and I was online for the past 6 hours. Why is that anyone's business? Why should I be forced to share that information with people who I'm not really comfortable sharing it with?
I mean, what if I joined a game with a friend, and he happens to know coworkers of mine - I join his game, and a couple of my coworkers are in his game. Now, I'll be on their "Recent Players" list, and they will be able to see my online status for whatever length of time, at least days (I'm not sure when ppl's names leave from that list), or perhaps until they play more games with others. Regardless, I have no choice or control over that. If I'm playing Diablo 3 all night, they will know. Maybe I'm not okay with them knowing? It's none of their business, and I should have the ability to control that personal information. To me, it's a major flaw on Blizzard's part to not realize this.
Hey if you guys want to give some thanks for this I'd love a "vote up" on my post! Actually, it doesn't matter very much, but it's a cool way to say thanks. haha Anyway, enjoy the music!! I know I have been! haha
My rationale is that they allowed anyone and everyone to download the open beta, even without having a battle.net account (as anyone could download the installer from the publicly-accessible URL and then install the beta, thus giving access to the MPQ files containing the music. MPQ editors are also free to access.
Well, this is pretty funny timing, considering I've been trying to raise awareness about the issue in Diablo 3 that we cannot "Appear Offline", and any of our friends (BattleTag OR RealID) as well as recent players can see you online, see whether you're in a game, and see WHO you're in a game with, whether you like it or not - you have no choice whether to appear online or not. Major privacy concern IMO.
In the consumer protection category, video game company Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. won a Big Brother Award for a change of terms that raised a host of privacy concerns, including a scan of the computer’s working memory to prevent cheating, chat recording that captures text communications, game recording and player rankings that reveal how often and how long players have been playing. “Our reason to give today’s Big Brother Award is the full interaction between numerous components, under the label ‘Real ID,’” the judges noted.
Hopefully this will pressure Blizzard to consider these issues a little more closely in the future. I can still very clearly recall the major controversy about the "real name" issue a while back.
could you convert them to something a little higher quality? say 256 or a WAV file? if not, throw them my way via pm please
The .ogg files used in the game are 160kbps so I converted them to 192kbps to hopefully decrease loss of quality via the conversion (since compressing a lossy format with another lossy format obvious causes increased quality loss).
Sure, a couple ppl have msged me, I'll get back to you ASAP
If a mod or someone can OK this I'll just post a direct link so everyone can download.. Heck, I even included old versions of 2 tracks that were in an earlier version of the D3 beta but not present during the open beta (although they are nearly identical to the later versions). Makes for a cool little collector's item, IMO.
Not to whine about the sound but...from the entire hour long Uelmen recording they ended up adding just 3 minutes of it in the game?
Plus @youarefired your sig might spoil people who have yet to watch the movie.
I seem to recall hearing somewhere that Russell Brower took some portions of the songs that Matt Uelmen made and worked those melodies or components into the songs he was composing. I read that in a comment on a forum or on Reddit or something so I don't know how accurate that is. Sounds very feasible though. Also in the article you'll notice he mentions a lot of elements from Uelmen's work being incorporated into the game music, such as :
The hammered dulcimer is a voice that carried over from Matt’s work - it’s a cool instrument for the kind of spooky ambient texture that floats over drones.
From the music in the beta I definitely felt like there was a lot of influence from Matt Uelmen's material. Of course I'm very glad about that
We have a population of only about 1,300 people and at out local gamestop (midnight release) there is an estimated 100 people who will show.
Dude.. that's actually totally crazy. That's an amazingly high percentage of the population. Uhh, I guess this means lineups at midnight launches in my city are going to be really long! haha
You're telling me that in life you've never encountered lucky bastards who won something while you didn't ? (eg. Winning a lottery or game giveaway) never encountered a situation where you weren't picked for a group either social or sports or otherwise? Where there was a gift/toy/item that you really wanted but so did everyone else and you had to wait a few months? (Eg. iPad launch) When investing in the stock market or your 401k, and how some people who picked stocks which skyrocketed in value despite the market and your portfolio going down?
First off, I already said like 2 pages ago "I don't actually care that much". I don't. I'm making a point for the sake of discussion, and expressing my annoyance with what I think is a pretty crappy choice by Blizzard. Also, who the hell are you to judge me? Why are you making personal attacks and judgements about me? It's irrelevant. We're here to discuss Diablo and/or Diablo III. This is diabloFans.com , not psychologyOfDiabloFans.com .
Second, I don't care that other people got into the closed beta and I didn't. It sucked, but then I got to play for quite a while during the open beta, so that was pretty excellent. What I think was a crappy choice by Blizzard was then to further reward those players with a Feat of Luck and an in-game banner sigil. Seriously, that's all I'm freaking saying.
There are going to be tens of dozens of sigil unlocks just from gameplay. One more isn't going to make a difference to anyone in the grand scheme of things.
That's not the point. See my previous paragraph that summarizes what the problem is.
Also you made a comment about special Dye + Wings in a previous post that you're losing out on? Anyone buying a collector's edition get's this.
Yes, I know. I preordered the CE. If you had actually read my post you'd realize I mentioned the Tyrael wings and exclusive dyes as a way to give evidence to my argument that purely-aesthetic items in games have actual value to people, and they will pay money for them (I furthered this point by citing the fact that people spend tons of money on character skins in League of Legends).
Back to my main point, if you're in your late 20's or older and are crying out at the unfairness of people getting a feat of strength, you have bigger issues that a game. If you're not yet in your late 20's and are and are crying out at the unfairness of this, then its a life lesson. One of many you will encounter, so deal with it, see a shrink, find an outlet, whatever. Otherwise you'll find yourself in a whole heap of trouble in a few more years.
You don't want real discussion because this is a non-issue to a rational mature adult. And this sounds bad but Shit Happens, get over it.
AGAIN, I don't actually CARE. Quit being such a fucking prick towards me.
Well, you used an interesting term, "quitting" - a game like this, you aren't really paying a subscription fee or anything, so it's more like "stop playing for a while". I doubt anyone will stop playing D3 forever just because Blizz launches another game, MMO or otherwise.
BTW, that upcoming MMO from them is "Titan", is it not?
Man, I'm going to be totally honest here because I think a dash of honesty might open some eyes. I find it totally disheartening and pretty depressing how so many people are dishing out personal attacks and insults towards people who aren't happy with the whole FoS/sigil thing. This kind of crap really reminds me why I rarely post on forums.
Seriously, I want to have some real discussion but nearly every response I receive is some kind of insult or attack. I don't see why I'll ever post here again when this is the way people are treated here. I'm here to have a discussion - whether right or wrong, whether we agree or not. I didn't come here to have people tell me I'm "mentally deficient" or to "get the stick out of my ass" or "stop bitching like a 5 year old for christ's sake". What an unbelievably worthless excuse for a "discussion".
Edit: I'm not even exaggerating, I'm now going to bed in a totally shitty mood because I thought I'd have some genuine debate/discussion about this issue but all I got was a bunch of people totally shitting on me and plenty of others. Thanks, I really appreciate it.
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For me the biggest privacy issue is the interpersonal one, where I am ALWAYS appearing "Online" to any friends I add via BattleTag or RealID, or even recent players who were in games that I happened to join with a friend. Whether I like it or not, these people know I'm online and who I'm playing with. They can see that it's 4AM in the morning and I was online for the past 6 hours. Why is that anyone's business? Why should I be forced to share that information with people who I'm not really comfortable sharing it with?
I mean, what if I joined a game with a friend, and he happens to know coworkers of mine - I join his game, and a couple of my coworkers are in his game. Now, I'll be on their "Recent Players" list, and they will be able to see my online status for whatever length of time, at least days (I'm not sure when ppl's names leave from that list), or perhaps until they play more games with others. Regardless, I have no choice or control over that. If I'm playing Diablo 3 all night, they will know. Maybe I'm not okay with them knowing? It's none of their business, and I should have the ability to control that personal information. To me, it's a major flaw on Blizzard's part to not realize this.
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Anyway, just posted today:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/05/and-privacy-invasion-award-goes-to
Hopefully this will pressure Blizzard to consider these issues a little more closely in the future. I can still very clearly recall the major controversy about the "real name" issue a while back.
There's another much longer writeup about Blizzard's privacy concerns back in April: https://www.bigbrotherawards.de/2012-en/.cons/ Very informative read.
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The .ogg files used in the game are 160kbps so I converted them to 192kbps to hopefully decrease loss of quality via the conversion (since compressing a lossy format with another lossy format obvious causes increased quality loss).
Sure, a couple ppl have msged me, I'll get back to you ASAP
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I seem to recall hearing somewhere that Russell Brower took some portions of the songs that Matt Uelmen made and worked those melodies or components into the songs he was composing. I read that in a comment on a forum or on Reddit or something so I don't know how accurate that is. Sounds very feasible though. Also in the article you'll notice he mentions a lot of elements from Uelmen's work being incorporated into the game music, such as :
From the music in the beta I definitely felt like there was a lot of influence from Matt Uelmen's material. Of course I'm very glad about that
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Yeah, lulz, right? That's the whole point of forums - discussing stuff. Wow, how many times do I have to say this?
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If anyone's interested I can share a ZIP of all the music. There's about 1h45m worth of music just in the beta alone!
No comment from mods after a day or so - if you don't want this on here just edit/delete my post.
Here's the download: http://is.gd/HwwTLC Enjoy!
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Dude.. that's actually totally crazy. That's an amazingly high percentage of the population. Uhh, I guess this means lineups at midnight launches in my city are going to be really long! haha
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First off, I already said like 2 pages ago "I don't actually care that much". I don't. I'm making a point for the sake of discussion, and expressing my annoyance with what I think is a pretty crappy choice by Blizzard. Also, who the hell are you to judge me? Why are you making personal attacks and judgements about me? It's irrelevant. We're here to discuss Diablo and/or Diablo III. This is diabloFans.com , not psychologyOfDiabloFans.com .
Second, I don't care that other people got into the closed beta and I didn't. It sucked, but then I got to play for quite a while during the open beta, so that was pretty excellent. What I think was a crappy choice by Blizzard was then to further reward those players with a Feat of Luck and an in-game banner sigil. Seriously, that's all I'm freaking saying.
That's not the point. See my previous paragraph that summarizes what the problem is.
Yes, I know. I preordered the CE. If you had actually read my post you'd realize I mentioned the Tyrael wings and exclusive dyes as a way to give evidence to my argument that purely-aesthetic items in games have actual value to people, and they will pay money for them (I furthered this point by citing the fact that people spend tons of money on character skins in League of Legends).
AGAIN, I don't actually CARE. Quit being such a fucking prick towards me.
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BTW, that upcoming MMO from them is "Titan", is it not?
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Seriously, I want to have some real discussion but nearly every response I receive is some kind of insult or attack. I don't see why I'll ever post here again when this is the way people are treated here. I'm here to have a discussion - whether right or wrong, whether we agree or not. I didn't come here to have people tell me I'm "mentally deficient" or to "get the stick out of my ass" or "stop bitching like a 5 year old for christ's sake". What an unbelievably worthless excuse for a "discussion".
Edit: I'm not even exaggerating, I'm now going to bed in a totally shitty mood because I thought I'd have some genuine debate/discussion about this issue but all I got was a bunch of people totally shitting on me and plenty of others. Thanks, I really appreciate it.