But how is it true for skill choices? There weren't just a right and wrong answer for skill choices in D2, but in D3 any sense of building your character through the choices of skills seems to have gone out of the window.
To which Bashiok replied:
I dislike real world analogies, but try this one on for size:
"That's like saying because you can change clothing, that assembling an outfit goes out the window."
When you're choosing skills, runes (and yes, there are choices as you unlock more and more of them), and gear, you're assembling them toward a cohesive whole. While you'll be free to change, that doesn't mean that you'll want to. The customization is there, but the sense of a whole 'thing' is there too. Much as you would change, for example, the jacket you're wearing with an outfit, you might swap a single skill, or change some runes around, but you can still arrive at something that works.
And even though Bashiok dislikes real-world analogies, I must provide one of my own in support of the ability to choose an unlocked skills and runes for our characters at any point in the game:
When a Cricket player is standing on the pitch, and the opposition has delivered the ball, he has several choices:
He can allow the ball to pass, without making a shot
He can defend his wickets by blocking the ball
He can deflect the ball into another direction, and score a run
He can drive the ball along the ground into the boundary to score four runs
He can drive the ball over the boundary without touching the ground to score six runs
And never mind the multitude choices he has when actually playing a shot at the ball. If our hypothetical player wants to reverse sweep, he will. Or if he wants to take a few steps forward to turn a yorker into a full toss before he strikes the ball, then he will.
The point I'm trying to make is that in Cricket, the players make use of every one of their skills at any time, and their choices happen depending on the situation. And they do not get penalized for making a particular choice.
The same applies to the Diablo 3 skill and rune system.
Think of it as if your character has been in training for many years, and he or she has aquired many different skills. And now, on the battlefield, when they encounter an enemy, they would most obviously choose which of their multitude skills will be the most effective in dealing with that enemy. The warrior will make use of every one of their skills at any time, depending on the situation...
Because I've been a fan of the Diablo series since day one?
But seriously, the real reason is because I'd like to see whether or not Diablo III will work properly with my new D-Link 2640U Router on my 3072/512 ADSL line here in South Africa.
In December, I was fortunate enough to have a friend from Ireland visting for Christmas, and was able to play the Beta for a few hours. By my DSL line was so unstable, I got dropped from the game every couple of minutes, and had to login again. I think the longest session I had then was maybe 15 minutes. Even so, I eventually got around to killing the Skeleton King.
My experience has also verified that Prometheus (my computer) is able to run Diablo III:
AMD Phenom X4 9600 Black Edition
ASUS M3A32-MVP DELUXE Mainboard (790FX Chipset)
4096MB DDR2 Memory
ATI Radeon HD 2400 Series Graphics, 256MB
Windows 7 Ultimate X64
I was recently able to determine that my DSL instabilities was a direct result of the ISP-supplied router. And since replacing it with the aforementioned D-Link 2640U, my average download speed has increased from about 15KB/s to a whopping 320KB/s on the same 3072kbps line. And line instability has dropped from an average of about 12 disconnects per hour to maybe 1 or 2 on a 24-hours period.
So why do I want to play the Diablo III Beta? I want to know for sure that I have not wasted the R600 on buying a new router, or the R1200 on pre-ordering both the Collectors Edition and Standard Editions of Diablo III...
I'll start by saying that there is no a single living human being on this beautiful Earth that can prove god exists. Neither are there any you can prove god does not exist...
And I'll backup the above statement by saying this:
Following the standards of living presented in anyones chosen religious scriptures may lead to a better life, or it may not, because far too many people today choose to follow some scriptural guidelines, while ignoring others because they are inconvenient or stand in the way of their own desires.
Many will point to The Quran, The Bible, The Torah, or whatever scriptures they believe as their proof of god. But who alive today can honestly provide 100% proof that their chosen religious scriptures are in fact real? Whichever you chose to believe, you must remember that it was written by people.
Sure, they are translations of centuries old documents. But can you prove that those translations are in fact accurate, or even complete? Today's Bible, when originally compiled by the believers that eventually became known as the Christian Faith, they chose only to include the documents that supported their beliefs, and ignored those that where in contrdiction to their desires. And even then, I think they they themselves could not prove beyond a doubt that anything of what they compiled into the Bible was indeed true...
And to further illustrate my point, and whether you believe me or not is irrelevant, because we're all entitled to our own beliefs and opinions. But I've encountered people who claim that the works of J.R.R. Tolkien (The Silmarillion, The Hobbit and The Lord Of The Rings) are too accurate and too detailed to be fiction, and are therefore based on ancient documents that have been in the Tolkien family for many thousands of years. It has been said that given a few thosand years more, it may even evolve from it's current state of fiction into some form of holy scripture, in the same way that the Bible has evolved over 2000 years into something that is no longer necessary to provide proof of it's accuracy.
Do I believe in a god? Most definitely I do. But my god's name is science...
It's not a failure to understand on our parts, it's a complete failure of communication on theirs. They release a beta in September of last year, after saying all year that they're still planning on getting the game out before the end of 2011, and saying that they anticipate that his beta would be comparatively short to their other ones etc. Then out of the blue they push it back with the tantalizing promise of "early 2012". All the while, adoring fans are getting the shaft by both Blizzard's poor understanding of how to set and follow a deadline, and their inability to effectively communicate with customers as to why their product isn't in their hands already.
This game has been in development for at least five, if not six years or longer. Do you have any idea how many successful games from lesser companies have come out in that time span? Not to mention 3 WoW expansions?
So yes, at this point, "as soon as possible" needs to start meaning what that customers and fans want it to, not what the company who has already been developing a game for double if not triple what the development cycle of a game thinks it should be. End of story.
We're all entitled to our own opinions, right? You want the game out NOW. And from a certain perspective, so do I. But if Blizzard decides to wait a bit longer, it won't be the end of the world. I have other concerns to keep me occupied until then. As good as the series has been over the past 15 years or so, it's not the end-all be-all of our existence.
I'll say again : Blizzard can (and should) take as long as they must before releasing Diablo III in order to make it a success.
Or has everyone forgotten the early release disaster that was Windows 98? That's the kind of thing that happens when too many "enhancements" are made to a piece of computer software and is released too soon. Was is not only a few months after the initial Windows 98 release that Microsoft released Windows 98SE that fixed all the countless problems of Windows 98?
The point I'm trying to make is that if Blizzard folds and starts listening to the fans with regard to a release date, then Diablo III is going to be a disaster. And if that happens, then most (if not all) of the fans wanting it right now will once again be bitching, but not because of the game being late, but because it is rubbish due to an early release.
Unlike countless other titles (such as "Call Of Duty", the "Tomb Raider" series, Sims or "Crysis" to name a few) for which I paid good money, played to completion in a few days, and now the boxes are collecting dust on a shelf, never to be played again. I have been playing Diablo II for now just over ten years, and expect then same from Diablo III.
Everyone just needs to take a deep breath and calm down a little. Diablo III will get here when Blizzard is sure the game is good enough for people to continue playing for the next then years!
I want the release date as soon as physically possible in order to organize my time so that I can avoid my life and play this goddam game!
I find it odd that people always say "release Diablo III as soon as possible"!
Has no-one stopped to think that perhaps for you and other people, "as soon as possible" means right now, but for Blizzard, "as soon as possible" could only be six months from now?
Blizzard works on their own schedule, not ours. Diablo III will be released when it needs to be.
Woo, yet another person mindlessly quoting Blizzard like it's prophetic or something we haven't heard before. P.S. they are in charge of it, so they could put it out tomorrow if it struck their fancy.
I wasn't quoting Blizzard, so perhaps I could rephrase myself? When I said "Blizzard works on their own schedule", I basically meant the same as you - "They are in charge". Too many people think that the phrase "as soon as possible" means right now, when in fact it could mean a little later, or even several months from now. What part of "as soon as possible" do people no understand?
I'd personally wait another year if I have to for the official release of Diablo III. I've been waiting since the 2008 Worldwide Invitational where the game was first announced. One more year (or a few months if not that long) isn't going to kill anyone...
I want the release date as soon as physically possible in order to organize my time so that I can avoid my life and play this goddam game!
I find it odd that people always say "release Diablo III as soon as possible"!
Has no-one stopped to think that perhaps for you and other people, "as soon as possible" means right now, but for Blizzard, "as soon as possible" could only be six months from now?
Blizzard works on their own schedule, not ours. Diablo III will be released when it needs to be.
My favourite Diablo memory? That has to be my first ever encounter with Duriel!
When I first got Diablo 2, I believed that the Amazon character would play similarly to the Rogue of the first Diablo game, and for the most part my first character choice was correct, because I made it all the way through Act 1 and to the end of Act 2 without dying once.
But then when I got to the Seven Tombs, and eventually found the one that I thought would contain Baal, I heard the classic "Looking for Baal?" in that horrible guttural voice. Noticing that I froze and slowed on entrty into the chamber, I portalled out and got myself a couple of anti-freeze potions. Which, of course, didn't work, because anti-freeze potions don't work with the "Holy Freeze" aura used by Duriel....
And before I knew what was happening, I had repeated the action of creating an emergency town portal, getting myself killed, and returning to the chamber so often that I had run out of money, so I could not buy more potions, armour or weapons, and I was totally unable to do anything further to recover my bodies.
So I quit the game and lost several days worth of play.
I then re-started with a new character, this time choosing the Sorceress, and was able to defeat Duriel in time. I went further to become the first to finish the entire game among my group of friends.
Over the 10 years that I have played Diablo II, and the Lord of Destruction expansion, I have created 7 level 99 characters, 4 of which are Sorceress, 1 Barbarian, 1 Necromancer and 1 Druid.
Everybody always says they remember the Butcher in Diablo I.
Me? My first ever meeting with Duriel will never be forgotten!
Hey guys, my friend and I are playing Diablo 2 atm. We both have characters now in Act 2. The thing I am wondering is that, my friend doesn't have the expansion set. So, is it possible for us to both start playing the expansion and keep our current Diablo 2 characters?
Please and Thank you! =)
Both computers must have the expansion set installed to start or join expansion games.
Installing the expansion will not delete your local characters, which are stored in "<INSTALLATIONFOLDER>\save".
Having not been lucky enough to be chosen to play the Diablo 3 BETA, I was always concerned about whether or not the game would work on my PC and Internet connection, and had resigned myself to possibly purchasing the game on release and not being able to play because of the Online-Only requirement (which I still think is a dumb-ass idea from Blizzard).
However, I had a bit of luck in December when an old friend who moved to Ireland many years ago came home to South Africa to visit his parents for the Christmas holidays.
My friend was fortunate enough to have been chosen for the D3 BETA, and he had it with him on is portable hard drive, and using his login details, I was able to play through the BETA with a female barbarian.
At least I now know that my computer and internet connection (3072K Uncapped) will be able to cope with Diablo III, and I've gone so far as to pre-order the Collector Edition. Here are my computer specs:
CPU:AMD Phenom 9600 Quad Core
Memory: 4GB
HDD: 1x80GB Primary, 2x2TB Secondary
Display:ATI Radeon HD2400 Graphics
OS:Windows 7 Ultimate x64
PSU: Huntkey 700W
Internet: 3072KB DSL, Uncapped
Using only a 3072/512 (downlink/uplink) ADSL line, I was able to play without any real problems, and thanks to the wonderful check-point system, I could easily continue my game after my DSL line disconnected (which happened fairly often ). I've since been able to resolve my DSL stability issues I had by replacing my Telkom provided DSL Router with a D-LINK 2500U.
But despite my being able to provide a sustained download rate of about 320KB/s and an upload rate of about 40KB/s, there is still one major point of concern that I'd like to have cleared up, though:
With only several thousand beta testers actively testing the game, it was obvious that even with my limited broadband capabilities I was able to confirm that I could also play the game, but what is going to happen at release when there are several million people accessing the servers? Will my 3072/512 ADSL Line be enough to handle Diablo 3?
And just to clear things up, I know that many who reply to my post may very well tell me to upgrade my ADSL line to a faster speed, right? This cannot be done, as I'm already supposed to be using a 4096/1024 line (the absolute fastest that is available in South Africa), except that Telkom has slowed me down to 3072/512 in an effort to improve line stability, because their DSL infrastructure in the Welkom area where I live just is not of a high enough quality to properly deal with a full-speed 4096 line. And no, I can't use another provider, because Telkom currently is the ONLY telecoms infrastructure provider in the country. So I either make use of Telkom Internet facilities, or I go without...
Choose a test in California and post your results. http://speedtest.net/ http://pingtest.net/
As long as you have decent bandwidth and your connection is stable you should be fine. One thing you cannot account for is uptime.. and how often your internet cuts off.
They should look like this: If not you won't be able to play D3.
There you go. My SpeedTest and PingTest between South Africa and Los Angeles. I must be having a good day to get a ping less than 500ms!
Low ping and low jitter. As stated, bandwidth has little/nothing to do with it. Anything under 100msec ping should be fine. Typically it's jitter that causes noticeable "lag". That's usually an issue with your ISP. There are ways to measure your connection's jitter, a google search would serve you any number of free tools.
That's my point exactly: Online Only is NOT an option.
Even on a 4Mb/s line, the ping I get between myself and Europe is in the region of 500-600ms. It worse between South Africa and USA, with as much as 1100-1800ms ping.
This might be difficult for me, internet here stops working time to time. And yeah, you guys probably think I should change internetcompany. But I dont have the money for that and I live on a very stupid location. Thinking of moving and chaning stuff for one game isnt my style. But I will play whenever it works until I get frustrated - IF i get frustrated.
Same here.
I've had 453 disconnects this month alone. Sure, I'd change internet providers in a heartbeat, if I could. Except South Africa only has ONE provider: TELKOM.
If you have a problem with your line, their answer is "The infrastructure in your area can't deal with those high speeds, so we'll solve the problem by slowing you down".
How about making items purchased on the AH Bind-To-Account? That way you can stop people from buying items for 50,000 gold and within minutes re-selling them for 50,000,000 or more?
0
To which Bashiok replied:
And even though Bashiok dislikes real-world analogies, I must provide one of my own in support of the ability to choose an unlocked skills and runes for our characters at any point in the game:
When a Cricket player is standing on the pitch, and the opposition has delivered the ball, he has several choices:
- He can allow the ball to pass, without making a shot
- He can defend his wickets by blocking the ball
- He can deflect the ball into another direction, and score a run
- He can drive the ball along the ground into the boundary to score four runs
- He can drive the ball over the boundary without touching the ground to score six runs
And never mind the multitude choices he has when actually playing a shot at the ball. If our hypothetical player wants to reverse sweep, he will. Or if he wants to take a few steps forward to turn a yorker into a full toss before he strikes the ball, then he will.The point I'm trying to make is that in Cricket, the players make use of every one of their skills at any time, and their choices happen depending on the situation. And they do not get penalized for making a particular choice.
The same applies to the Diablo 3 skill and rune system.
Think of it as if your character has been in training for many years, and he or she has aquired many different skills. And now, on the battlefield, when they encounter an enemy, they would most obviously choose which of their multitude skills will be the most effective in dealing with that enemy. The warrior will make use of every one of their skills at any time, depending on the situation...
0
But seriously, the real reason is because I'd like to see whether or not Diablo III will work properly with my new D-Link 2640U Router on my 3072/512 ADSL line here in South Africa.
In December, I was fortunate enough to have a friend from Ireland visting for Christmas, and was able to play the Beta for a few hours. By my DSL line was so unstable, I got dropped from the game every couple of minutes, and had to login again. I think the longest session I had then was maybe 15 minutes. Even so, I eventually got around to killing the Skeleton King.
My experience has also verified that Prometheus (my computer) is able to run Diablo III:
- AMD Phenom X4 9600 Black Edition
- ASUS M3A32-MVP DELUXE Mainboard (790FX Chipset)
- 4096MB DDR2 Memory
- ATI Radeon HD 2400 Series Graphics, 256MB
- Windows 7 Ultimate X64
I was recently able to determine that my DSL instabilities was a direct result of the ISP-supplied router. And since replacing it with the aforementioned D-Link 2640U, my average download speed has increased from about 15KB/s to a whopping 320KB/s on the same 3072kbps line. And line instability has dropped from an average of about 12 disconnects per hour to maybe 1 or 2 on a 24-hours period.So why do I want to play the Diablo III Beta? I want to know for sure that I have not wasted the R600 on buying a new router, or the R1200 on pre-ordering both the Collectors Edition and Standard Editions of Diablo III...
0
And I'll backup the above statement by saying this:
Following the standards of living presented in anyones chosen religious scriptures may lead to a better life, or it may not, because far too many people today choose to follow some scriptural guidelines, while ignoring others because they are inconvenient or stand in the way of their own desires.
Many will point to The Quran, The Bible, The Torah, or whatever scriptures they believe as their proof of god. But who alive today can honestly provide 100% proof that their chosen religious scriptures are in fact real? Whichever you chose to believe, you must remember that it was written by people.
Sure, they are translations of centuries old documents. But can you prove that those translations are in fact accurate, or even complete? Today's Bible, when originally compiled by the believers that eventually became known as the Christian Faith, they chose only to include the documents that supported their beliefs, and ignored those that where in contrdiction to their desires. And even then, I think they they themselves could not prove beyond a doubt that anything of what they compiled into the Bible was indeed true...
And to further illustrate my point, and whether you believe me or not is irrelevant, because we're all entitled to our own beliefs and opinions. But I've encountered people who claim that the works of J.R.R. Tolkien (The Silmarillion, The Hobbit and The Lord Of The Rings) are too accurate and too detailed to be fiction, and are therefore based on ancient documents that have been in the Tolkien family for many thousands of years. It has been said that given a few thosand years more, it may even evolve from it's current state of fiction into some form of holy scripture, in the same way that the Bible has evolved over 2000 years into something that is no longer necessary to provide proof of it's accuracy.
Do I believe in a god? Most definitely I do. But my god's name is science...
0
We're all entitled to our own opinions, right? You want the game out NOW. And from a certain perspective, so do I. But if Blizzard decides to wait a bit longer, it won't be the end of the world. I have other concerns to keep me occupied until then. As good as the series has been over the past 15 years or so, it's not the end-all be-all of our existence.
I'll say again : Blizzard can (and should) take as long as they must before releasing Diablo III in order to make it a success.
Or has everyone forgotten the early release disaster that was Windows 98? That's the kind of thing that happens when too many "enhancements" are made to a piece of computer software and is released too soon. Was is not only a few months after the initial Windows 98 release that Microsoft released Windows 98SE that fixed all the countless problems of Windows 98?
The point I'm trying to make is that if Blizzard folds and starts listening to the fans with regard to a release date, then Diablo III is going to be a disaster. And if that happens, then most (if not all) of the fans wanting it right now will once again be bitching, but not because of the game being late, but because it is rubbish due to an early release.
Unlike countless other titles (such as "Call Of Duty", the "Tomb Raider" series, Sims or "Crysis" to name a few) for which I paid good money, played to completion in a few days, and now the boxes are collecting dust on a shelf, never to be played again. I have been playing Diablo II for now just over ten years, and expect then same from Diablo III.
Everyone just needs to take a deep breath and calm down a little. Diablo III will get here when Blizzard is sure the game is good enough for people to continue playing for the next then years!
0
I wasn't quoting Blizzard, so perhaps I could rephrase myself? When I said "Blizzard works on their own schedule", I basically meant the same as you - "They are in charge". Too many people think that the phrase "as soon as possible" means right now, when in fact it could mean a little later, or even several months from now. What part of "as soon as possible" do people no understand?
I'd personally wait another year if I have to for the official release of Diablo III. I've been waiting since the 2008 Worldwide Invitational where the game was first announced. One more year (or a few months if not that long) isn't going to kill anyone...
0
Has no-one stopped to think that perhaps for you and other people, "as soon as possible" means right now, but for Blizzard, "as soon as possible" could only be six months from now?
Blizzard works on their own schedule, not ours. Diablo III will be released when it needs to be.
0
Unfortunatly, graphics was set to 1024x768.
0
When I first got Diablo 2, I believed that the Amazon character would play similarly to the Rogue of the first Diablo game, and for the most part my first character choice was correct, because I made it all the way through Act 1 and to the end of Act 2 without dying once.
But then when I got to the Seven Tombs, and eventually found the one that I thought would contain Baal, I heard the classic "Looking for Baal?" in that horrible guttural voice. Noticing that I froze and slowed on entrty into the chamber, I portalled out and got myself a couple of anti-freeze potions. Which, of course, didn't work, because anti-freeze potions don't work with the "Holy Freeze" aura used by Duriel....
And before I knew what was happening, I had repeated the action of creating an emergency town portal, getting myself killed, and returning to the chamber so often that I had run out of money, so I could not buy more potions, armour or weapons, and I was totally unable to do anything further to recover my bodies.
So I quit the game and lost several days worth of play.
I then re-started with a new character, this time choosing the Sorceress, and was able to defeat Duriel in time. I went further to become the first to finish the entire game among my group of friends.
Over the 10 years that I have played Diablo II, and the Lord of Destruction expansion, I have created 7 level 99 characters, 4 of which are Sorceress, 1 Barbarian, 1 Necromancer and 1 Druid.
Everybody always says they remember the Butcher in Diablo I.
Me? My first ever meeting with Duriel will never be forgotten!
0
Both computers must have the expansion set installed to start or join expansion games.
Installing the expansion will not delete your local characters, which are stored in "<INSTALLATIONFOLDER>\save".
0
However, I had a bit of luck in December when an old friend who moved to Ireland many years ago came home to South Africa to visit his parents for the Christmas holidays.
My friend was fortunate enough to have been chosen for the D3 BETA, and he had it with him on is portable hard drive, and using his login details, I was able to play through the BETA with a female barbarian.
At least I now know that my computer and internet connection (3072K Uncapped) will be able to cope with Diablo III, and I've gone so far as to pre-order the Collector Edition. Here are my computer specs:
- CPU:AMD Phenom 9600 Quad Core
- Memory: 4GB
- HDD: 1x80GB Primary, 2x2TB Secondary
- Display:ATI Radeon HD2400 Graphics
- OS:Windows 7 Ultimate x64
- PSU: Huntkey 700W
- Internet: 3072KB DSL, Uncapped
Using only a 3072/512 (downlink/uplink) ADSL line, I was able to play without any real problems, and thanks to the wonderful check-point system, I could easily continue my game after my DSL line disconnected (which happened fairly oftenBut despite my being able to provide a sustained download rate of about 320KB/s and an upload rate of about 40KB/s, there is still one major point of concern that I'd like to have cleared up, though:
With only several thousand beta testers actively testing the game, it was obvious that even with my limited broadband capabilities I was able to confirm that I could also play the game, but what is going to happen at release when there are several million people accessing the servers? Will my 3072/512 ADSL Line be enough to handle Diablo 3?
And just to clear things up, I know that many who reply to my post may very well tell me to upgrade my ADSL line to a faster speed, right? This cannot be done, as I'm already supposed to be using a 4096/1024 line (the absolute fastest that is available in South Africa), except that Telkom has slowed me down to 3072/512 in an effort to improve line stability, because their DSL infrastructure in the Welkom area where I live just is not of a high enough quality to properly deal with a full-speed 4096 line. And no, I can't use another provider, because Telkom currently is the ONLY telecoms infrastructure provider in the country. So I either make use of Telkom Internet facilities, or I go without...
0
There you go. My SpeedTest and PingTest between South Africa and Los Angeles. I must be having a good day to get a ping less than 500ms!
0
That's my point exactly: Online Only is NOT an option.
Even on a 4Mb/s line, the ping I get between myself and Europe is in the region of 500-600ms. It worse between South Africa and USA, with as much as 1100-1800ms ping.
No way that is good enough for online play...
0
Same here.
I've had 453 disconnects this month alone. Sure, I'd change internet providers in a heartbeat, if I could. Except South Africa only has ONE provider: TELKOM.
If you have a problem with your line, their answer is "The infrastructure in your area can't deal with those high speeds, so we'll solve the problem by slowing you down".