There are four difficulty levels after Normal, and the game is designed to take one character through at least twice - the really good gear only starts to appear at the end of Normal, and some runes and skills don’t even open up until Nightmare. There are five classes that all play differently as well, from the revolting pets of the Witch Doctor to the dark ranged attacks of the Demon Hunter.
I seem to have gotten my Diablo 3 in my WoW! Like chocolate and peanut butter, they belong together. In all seriousness, if you are looking for a lightweight themed interface for World of Warcraft as we approach the Diablo 3 release, this is the one. That way when you are playing WoW, you feel like you are in Diablo 3 and when you are in Diablo 3… ok you get it.
Find it here on WoWInterface (Roth UI by Zork): http://www.wowinterface.com/downloads/info9175-RothUIDiablo.html
Diablo 3 Beta: E2 - Pew Pew (Wizard Gameplay)
In episode 2, you will see the first few levels of the Wizard class and unlock a bunch of the initial abilities, which consists of a direct damage nuke, AoE (area of effect), wand, and a channeled frost spell (my favorite).
Rookie Mistake by a Veteran Developer
I have been a Bioware fan since I first fired up Baldur’s Gate. Ever since then, I’ve bought every one of their titles (almost) and regarded them as nearly untouchable. No longer, and today’s SWTOR 1.2 announcement is why:
- Free In-game Legacy Tauntaun Ram for all active subscribers. YAY.
- Active accounts with a Level 50 character will receive thirty days of game time for their support and loyalty. HMM.
- Starting on April 13th through April 19th, 2012 former subscribers will be able to log-in to their accounts without having to re-subscribe. UHH.
What has really happened here? Why not reward based on subscription time instead?
Forgetting the silly Tauntaun pet, Bioware has decided to reward accounts with level 50 characters and non-loyal former subscribers. Is it right to reward someone who, for example, has only been subscribing since April 2 yet has a level 50 character? While at the same time ignoring someone else who has been a subscriber since day one yet doesn’t have a level 50?
They also seem to enjoy rewarding unsubscribers. I might have to try that.
Bioware, you aren’t a rookie developer, so don’t act like one.
Disclaimer: I don’t have any level 50 characters. I’m a casual player with an extremely busy life outside of gaming (like many others).
Made with Paper
PAX East 2012 was a much bigger presence this year. They expanded the floor to about twice the size it was last year. This left more room for some of the upcoming titles like Borderlands 2, Firefall, and Max Payne 3 to show their stuff. Last year, Star Wars: The Old Republic soaked up all the attention, but this year it was fairly spread out across a few titles.
What was I most impressed by? D&D Neverwinter looked really slick, but that was the first I’ve seen the game. Also, The Secret World looked very polished and offers a bit of a different spin on MMO gaming. I will be keeping a very close eye on that one (already signed up for the beta).
I know I missed a ton of content there, but this is what caught my attention during my (too brief) 3 hour visit to PAX East 2012.
In this episode of Force Poke: Twi’leks might have removable Lekku, EA is apparently worse than Haliburton (including my thoughts on the ME3 ending whine-fest), and I can’t seem to keep my companion alive while recording these.
This is a quick look at the new cooldown animations and text overlay, recently implemented by Bioware. The configuration options go deeper than I expected with adjustable cooldown font sizes and countdown display (tenths of a second). There are also four different variations of cooldown overlay and flash displays.
Watch to see it all in action.
Maybe whining really works?
A few days ago, I got all pompous and tweeted this:
If you recall, there was a fairly large response from the community about Bioware’s implementation of flashing cooldowns. They were supposedly making some people sick. Sick, as in *puking* sick.
This just in: Soon warcraftic.com will be selling pacifiers.
I think we all want Bioware to progress the game’s user interface (UI). However, it should progress based on a scheduled road map of related interface enhancements, not reaction-based changes. Development hours DO matter to a gaming company. To spend more than 30 seconds changing how a cooldown flashes, is simply a waste of time.
Looking back on it now, this whole thing is a process. It’s a path towards “getting it right”, from a UI perspective. Yesterday, we reached a major waypoint with the patch 1.1.4 UI changes:
So, here we go. We have what was previously only available as an addon in another popular MMORPG, now native in SWTOR. I hope Bioware keeps implementing those “must have” features as native components to the game, while still keeping those tasty APIs in the back of their minds.
This is a bit long, but captures the beginning of the game (Monk class) through finding Deckard Cain. The monk class has had some nice animation improvement and skill tweaks - watch to see how they play out in the early levels.
Oh yeah and I do a pretty horrible Deckard Cain impression midway through.