NO. I WAS FIRST. Actually I freaked cause I thought my account was compromised for a second. I just recently got identity thefted, so I'm a bit paranoid.Quote from Winged
Dolaiim no worries, good discussion is good discussion right?
Quote from Winged
An yes I'd agree earliest is July, though again.. Logic says Blizzard never reaches goals at the earliest possible date.. Again, when July 20th rolls around and the BETA isn't here yet I'll say I told ya so again
Definitely. That's why I made sure to say the earliest a beta could start is July 1. The latest a beta could start is Sept. 30th.
I'm not actually disappointed. I am, however, surprised and amazed that a 3-month margin of error was the best they could do for a BETA START DATE. I listened to the full conf call (I'm used to them since I work for a publicly traded company, and am a private investor), and it never ceases to amaze me that Blizzard can look Goldman and DB hedge fund managers in the face, who hold thousands of their shares, and basically admonish them for being curious about what YEAR this game will be released.
Once you go public, you have one boss: Your shareholders. There's a reason Act/Bliz stock has done nothing for a long time.
Calendar year 2011, not fiscal year.
Simple equation:
(July 1, 2011) <= (BETA START TIME) <= (Sept 30, 2011)
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It takes at least 3 weeks from the gold master build to worldwide release launch. You have to verify (sanity test), package, ship, pub/marketing, deal with legal hastles, etc. These will be amplified due to RMAH legalese and treaties. Given that Christmas vacation is here and productivity plummets in December, a January release is impossible.
But let's be realistic for a minute.. D3 right now has NOT even undergone code freeze.. meaning they are not feature code complete.. Typically, it takes 3-4 months to ship from the "feature code complete" milestone, but with Blizzard that milestone (and the associated time table) doesn't necessarily make sense, since they iterate so much, as opposed to traditional "watershed development" methods.
Honestly though, you know it's not coming out before March. I mean, they have just finally started making final decisions about actual feature content (runestones, artisans, etc). It will take, in my estimation (been a software engineer for almost a decade now), ~2 months from the time Bliz is truly "feature code complete" to launch. 2 months before there's even a prayer for a gold master.
And you know Blizzard's track record for delaying ship dates.
For my money, March 2012 is a long shot. I'm setting my expectations for April or May 2012.
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I refuse to use the RMAH because it's against my personal beliefs. But either way, we all know the table is tilted.. those who like the RMAH and forgive the obvious profiteering are the ones who believe they can tilt the table back towards themselves. Maybe they're right. I don't care.
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I am in complete agreement with you guys. You should not be able to complete Hell unless you are very skilled and very diligent, and have farmed for the gear necessary to complete Hell. Hell should weed out the casuals.
Inferno should be even more difficult. Inferno should be crazy hard.
However, my original point is twofold, and doesn't treat the topic of "how hard is hard?"
Point 1. If difficulty is the only replay mechanic that extends the life of the game, then Blizzard has designed a game with very poor replay value.
Point 2. At no point in the interview did I extrapolate the idea that Hell would be only sorta hard, and Inferno quite hard. If The 2nd hardest difficulty is already weeding people out, and the final difficulty is more difficult than that, that's all the challenge that is needed for me.
Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the article thoroughly, and I love Mag's passion. Just providing some counterpoint for discussion.
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He said there will be a wall in Hell difficulty, and that it will be beyond the abilities of some players. That's all I need to know, because there's an entire other difficulty level to get through.
But the bigger issue is this: The replayability of D3 is not inextricably linked to its difficulty. It is, however, inextricably linked to being fun, fresh-feeling, and challenging. If a game is too insanely difficult, where luck and co-ordination become more important than skill.. and if most players hit the limits of their abilities before they get to Inferno and can farm for end-game gear, the game will have far LESS replayability than the scenario described in the interview.
If some players hit their limits in Nightmare, and a lot of players hit their limits in Hell, then D3 will fail. Challenging is one thing. But WoW end-game raid caliber difficulty, with insanely unforgiving co-ordination and wipe mechanics, has no place in the Diablo universe, imo.
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I can't even count how many times that line has gotten me laid.
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The premise of Wall Theory is that if your debate degrades to arguing over the dimensions of a wall, then your thread has become truly bad.
Edit: There's a lot of math to back it up, which I will not go into here.
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I agree. They may not utilize the latest/greatest DX11 tricks, but my god, the artwork is gorgeous.
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HAHAHAHA +1
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I literally don't even...
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R-R-Really?
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.. well, at least there isn't any funny-math to clutter my mind...
._.
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I am sir
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So you can keep WoW subscribers by slutting D3 out as a WoW promotion.
OH SHNAP.
Proof that mods aren't necessarily worth a damn. Someone posts what is effectively a troll, and you off-handedly insult people who are having a well-considered discussion. Good game.
P.S. He's claiming he knows the precise and only reason Blizzard is doing this. That's non-speculative? Do you know what speculation means?