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It's a reference to a Night Elf unit from Warcraft III, called a Wisp.

And rightfully so! You disregard the the mighty Templar at your own peril.

Another blizzard is doing for the community right now is holding an online invitational tournament. Most of the players are people who did well at wcg.

First round was North America vs Europe which Europe won in a close match. Europe is now facing team Europe in about a week. Europe should walk over them because they have 3 Korean progamers, including ZulyZerg and Xellos both OGN Starleague champs =P.

Yes they have for PC games, although not this centralized and in depth.

Many games have had statistics as in depth try this one.

Bungies made a good game props to them. But they didn't innovate that much. Their like Blizzard, they make good polished games by learning fromt he mistakes of the innovators. Their rarely innovators themselves.

I could be mistaken, but according to Blizzard the Diablo II music was composed by Matt Uelmen. It's a fabulous soundtrack done with all manner of uncommon instruments.

Seems like this was one of the guys who made the music for the starcraft broodwar intro "morituri te salutant".
One of my favorite songs, so anything he makes just has to be good :)

you can get it from blizzard btw: bwintro.zip
More songs from blizzard here

Here's another issue. Players who detract from the overall experience. Espicially when game administration refuse to do anything about it. Not a case of 'can not', cases of 'will not'. Albeit, some games are adopting tougher policies on cheaters/assholes and are cracking down on them. Good. Good for them. More of you should be doing it.

Obviously, some people dont "just play the game" in mmorpg's. It gets to a point where you just suck it up, wait for the next fix and use that gift in disguise. The games that have gone paranoid have one sign, *buster. If you hadnt complained about it and started just using the bug in the MMORPG, then the world and the game world would be better off. If you want your purist world, go code it yourself, since you dont care for critics, only the rabid at the mouth fanboy purists with your cd key policy.
As it should be said, I am root, you and your code bows before me lest it be forcibly changed in memory to reflect my will, even if for multiplayer games.

I suspect Blizzard know this already from their sales figures. Why else would they be making a 3rd person console-oriented stealth-action game, geared much more towards the Japanese market (in a way which will still appeal in the US and EU), rather than building upon their success with this supposedly legendary Korean market?

I'm not so sure about this. While it may be true that the Korean market is exaggerated, it still is a major market. Consider the languages/nations the Blizzard homepage is available in: US, Korea, UK, Germany, and France. Japan isn't there.

Also consider this press release from Blizzard: "...Blizzard Entertainment unveiled plans to utilize a local World of Warcraft(TM) team in Korea, which will grow to over 100 Korean employees in the next 12 months....".

And then there's the location of Blizzard's Battle.net servers. You've got providers in the U.S., Europe, and... Korea. So, while it's nice to downplay Korea's impact, Blizzard clearly has invested a lot into the Korean market (including sponsoring Starcraft tournaments). Which suggests that Korea is the powerhouse that people suggest, at least with respect to blizzard RTS games...

Does it mean one might be able to create the zerg!! And IIRC, the zerg were created in Starcraft, they did not exist in the first place.

I can't wait to see hordes of ultralisk, lurkers and mutalisk rushing the pentagon.

Cows.

Agreed, the idea is pretty cool, I hope it'll be in the game.

A couple of years back, Blizzard announced that it'll add a new race to Warcraft III, the Panda race, it was an April fool.

however, last year Blizzard added the Pandaren Brewmaster to Warcraft III's expansion, The Frozen Throne.

Agreed, the idea is pretty cool, I hope it'll be in the game.

A couple of years back, Blizzard announced that it'll add a new race to Warcraft III, the Panda race, it was an April fool.

however, last year Blizzard added the Pandaren Brewmaster to Warcraft III's expansion, The Frozen Throne.

And, the Pandarens did make it into the Frozen Throne expansion for Warcraft 3.

It's a start, but considering what it will have to stand up against.. I've seen to many infested command centers.. even with seige tanks and wraiths, etc. Good luck, USA. The Opposition Oh, yea, wait. Real World..Fantasy world. Real World..Fantasy world. Real World..Fantasy world. Real World..Fantasy world. Real World..Fantasy world. When's Pentagon II coming out?

We have plans to give many beta tests away via contests (I hope to have more information on this next week). All other beta testers will be selected randomly from the applicant database.

This sucks. My Beta test resume is better than my real one.

The alpha has been leaked.

You think it's bad now (well, actually two days ago, that's when they closed the 1.10 beta)? According to Blizzard's LoD page, ladder games in the final 1.10 will be even harder than the beta!

"Ladder Games offer a more challenging type of gameplay than players will find in Normal Games. Monster AI speeds have been increased. Reaction times increased for Ladder Nightmare and Hell games. Basically every monster acts like a super unique. Monster Hit Points have been increased for Nightmare and Hell Ladder games too."

Some time ago I found the mp3s of Diablo II at Blizzard. I really like the ones of the expansion set and some of the outtakes.

Obviously MMORPGS rely on monthly fees as a stream of revenue so I wonder what sort of staying power this game will have? What will the user base be like in a year from now, when the novelty has worn off for a lot of players?

I also find it interesting that Blizzard recently axed 400,000 battle.net accounts for cheating

If Battle.net charged a MMORPG-type $10 monthly fees like SWG, then they would be throwing away $4 million a month in revenue (I realize that the user base for Blizzard games would not be nearly as large with monthly fees). But if a widespread exploit took hold of SWG and started ruining the game for others, would they have the guts to close thousands of accounts and throw away potentially millions of dollars a month to combat it?

Since according to you, war3 consists of building lots of a single unit type plus a hero, and since there are well below 184 distinct massable unit types, the pigeon-hole principle proves that at least some of those strategies are non-massing strategies.

That's a nice way to put words into my mouth in order to make yourself seem right.

1. "war3 consists of building lots of a single unit type plus a hero" ... apperantly you agree since on Wednesday July 02, @11:50AM you wrote:

   Rushing is attacking with swarms of the same unit type. You level up your heroes then send out the masses. It's really quite simple.

   
   
2. "there are well below 184 distinct massable unit types". According to battle.net there are 43 core non-hero units.
   
3. There are currently 190 strategies posted. (Since this list is maintained by one guy, he weeds out duplicates. )
   
4. The pigeon-hole principle states that given 43 massable unit types and 190 distinct strategies, at least 157 of those strategies must envolve something more than "lets build lots of unit X".
   

There are 184 variations on rushing. The entire game is rushing.

Interviews with Blizzard game designers before release mentioned that they specifically intended to set up the gameplay so that games were much, much shorter.

The entire game is memorize build order->make heroes->make squads of units->level up->go rush enemy base.

A Rush originally meant a very early attack. Over the years its meaning has been twisted to an attack at any point of the game or an attack with a lot of units. Some players have different definitions of 'Rush'.

A true "Rush" would entail skipping the "run around levelling him up" phase.

No, it wouldn't. Rushing is attacking with swarms of the same unit type. You level up your heroes then send out the masses. It's really quite simple.

But, how dare you sir, to question my comittment to trolling. Here are the pics as promised:

Getting my robes lit.
Ouch. That's gonna take a while to heal.
Fire!
Picture taken from the third floor balcony of the food court
It hurt like hell at first. Then shock set in.

Don't let anyone say that I'm not hardcore.

Check this post by the admin of the Arreat Summit; he lists the major changes in very broad form, but new "anti-cheating measures" are among them. I've never been a big fan of playing on the realms, but I might have to try building a ladder character or 3 just to see how well I can do...

this It takes the whole uniqueness of classes away. I guess it could be interesting.

Much of the stats on diabloii.net for unique items, runewords, set items and skills are all wildly inaccurate. I have so far heard two Blizzard representatives saying they were "WAY wrong" and "ancient data". The leak of information was unintentional and an unfortunate side-effect of a mistake during the web server upgrade process. The leaked patch data seem to be from 1.10 in an early stage of development, likely even before their Quality Assurance team has tested the stuff for balancing, since they are still doing it.

So... Before you complain about the items and runewords being too powerful (there have been some complaints like this) and that the Necro/Druid didn't get their necessary skill changes, remember that much (most?) of the "revealed" data on the diabloii.net site is simply incorrect or missing.

For correct information, check Arreat Summit (official Diablo II information site) and the information that will be released during/after E3 (i.e. May 13 - 16 or shortly after).

This is open to the whole world, not just USA/Canada. But there will probably not be a beta test server in Europe which means you might lag if you don't have a high quality connection.

Sorry, forgot link to above announcement:

link

Its in the first post there.

Depending on implementation details, they can still maintain a lot of control. As was mentioned, Blizzard's Battle.Net uses P2P between the individual players for long-lasting, high-bandwidth connections that run a game. But the administrative functions- user login, player matchmaking, and game startup- are handled on their own systems.

That way, they've got fairly low server costs, yet control how the product is used. Woe to he who thinks to wrest the central server from them.

It wasn't mentioned in the Press Release, but a while back I saw this on the page that shows the updates to the strategy guide:

http://www.battle.net/war3/pandaren/

The screen shots make them look like Furbolgs with different texture, but they don't show any of the heros.

woo hoo!! Now I can patent the Wisp Rush and don't have to pay Blizzard a penny!!!! hehehe :) Me

The spitball scenario doesn't match up to the ISP scenario, because (1) in a classroom most kids know each other fairly well, (2) a non-disruptive, family-like attitudeamong students and teachers is beneficial and an important part of the learning experience, and (3) there's a good chance that most of the kids saw the spitball get launched while the teacher's back was turned, and they're just keeping their mouths shut. So you're getting punished for 'aiding the offender', not for actually shooting the spitball. When some stranger on your ISP cheats, there's no way you could have known about it beforehand or done anything to stop it. You're not guilty of any part of the offense.

Your other points are frighteningly real (well mostly real) and good examples of unjust discrimination, but they are on a completely different level than ISP banning. When someone's cheating in a game, it's possible to identify exactly who that someone is. The character name, their account number (props to blizzard!), there are a number of ways for an administrator to id someone in a game. Broad ISP banning is blatantly discriminatory and unneccesary.

Look at Battlenet. It has a lot of the characterics of a peer to peer system. If you host a Starcraft game where only one person has the map, first it downloads from that one person to one more person, then from those two people to two more people, then from those four people to the other four people (if it's an 8-player game)--in other words, from peer to peer. And there is no one specific set host--Battlenet itself assigns the host based on who has the best bandwidth and processor power...and if that person gets dropped, someone else's machine takes over.

Peer to peer doesn't automatically equate to Napster. It just means people send stuff to each other instead of to and from one master server. Geez, Slashdot stories are like playing buzzword bingo these days.

Putting copy protection on products is identical to putting anti-theft tags on pocketable good, with mirrors and cameras and pickups by the door to stop shoplifters.

With the exception being that copy protection only hurts the honest - it does nothing to prevent the piracy groups from doing thier thing. For real examples of this, take a look at the gaming industry.

Warcraft 3 (and many other titles) use a copy protection on the CD called SecuRom. This copy protection puts invalid data on the CD, with the intention of "tricking" burners. That's all well and good, except it also hinders the ability of certain drives to READ the CD. This is causing problems with legitimate owners of the CD not being able to play the game they paid for. It doesn't, however, seem to have prevented the warez groups from releasing a non-protected ISO. It's kind of funny, actually, that in the first couple of weeks, the most user-suggested workarounds for Warcraft 3 problems (on Blizzard's "Open Support" forum) were "Try the no-CD", and "Try to find the warezed version and see if that works". Blizzard, of course, couldn't condone either one of these, and instead pointed to a general system-tweaking checklist that had little to do with actual game issues.

Battle.net is down and they're releasing a patch 1.10 to "fix" these problems that have been a plague for the past 2 years. Blizzard is such a piss-poor company. Piss-poor developers. Blizzard hires about 45 people total just to work on Warcraft3...sad development. Battle.net is having some problems. Many people's hardcore chars have been lag-dying and some even complain about their char dying for no reason while playing. And to think these crooked people sell stuff on eBay for hundreds of dollars and then to lose it when their hardcore "character" dies. There is even some guy posting songs in the hardcore chatroom about how lame battle.net has become. Apparently, the Diablo2 client is ok and it's just the battle.net server shit is to blame. Funny and is worth a read. They probably fixed this morning's issues already though...

Every other game released today is (except maybe Blizzard's).

You haven't been hanging out in the Open Support forum over at Blizzard's Battle.net site...War3 is (quite literally) unplayable on many systems out there due to a number of fairly nasty crash bugs.

In comparison, the few bugs in NWN seem insignifigant ;P

What's it going to be, guys? You reviewed the Pro800 Turbo, and you always appear to be more speculative and critical of non-Microsoft products.

I don't like it a bit. For your information, Microsoft is releasing the Palladium soon and like their hardware or not, just redeeming Microsoft for good hardware will only make them more successful.

There is some discussion on a Linux port of World of Warcraft in Blizzard's WoW Forum. Maybe for once you all can support a non-Microsoft product even if they legally shut down a project that cannot be shutdown due to its opensource nature.

...unlike optical media, which would obviously not last through...

Wait. Nevermind.

Somebody's been playing waaay too much Starcraft. The only way of generating an EMP Blast of any appreciable size or strength carries with it some other pesky side effects, as well. That, and if such an EMP blast is ever generated, well, it'll take us a while to lament the loss of long-term digital archives...

...but I guess it's little more than sticking my head in the sand by saying that The Terrorists (tm) will never get their hadns on EMP technology...after all, it only takes 100 energy units...

What is the function of the Gem in the Diablo II Battle.net Chat room?
When it has been clicked once, it activates -- causing a blue glow to appear through the Gem. When it is clicked again, it deactivates and the glow disappears. Rarely a perfect gem activation will occur instead of the usual Gem activation.

Silly Saxmaster, as anyone can tell you, their lawyers are neither. They're Undead.

Blizzard is keeping the orcish race, and adding an additional Pandaren race. The race is composed of fierce, black and white, bear-like creatures that will maul their enemies do death. They are masters of mysticism and will rule Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos.

Well, it's not as funny, but check out the fierce pandaren race

You know, it would have been a lot more interesting if the story submitter had done a bit more research. The orcs are not simply being removed. They're being -replaced-. Yes, replaced by the Pandarens. http://www.battle.net/war3/pandaren/ (Yes, I know it's an april fools joke, but still...)

It amazes me that people can't think through why this is the case. Put yourself in Blizzard's shoes (ok, brrr). If you release a Beta that's a stand-alone game, why would the tester every buy the full product when it comes out? People are cheap, and that's why there's rampant copying of the Beta (hell, even I have a cracked copy).

The purpose of a beta program is to test the product (interface, network utilization, balance), test the market readyness, and expose any critical bugs that might hinder a good rollout. If you're players are on your network you can get a pretty good idea of a lot of these things (I wonder if the program does a callback if there's a crash/etc.). If it's standalone, not only would you have to have finished standalone missions (hint: they're probably still being produced/tested), but you'd lose out on any ability to monitor critical statistics. On the other hand, if you people do warez your Beta, and connect to your network, at least you have more useful stats from determined fans.

On the side of the BnetD v. Blizzard, I can see their point of view. They make great games, cater to the user even after the sale (battle.net, custom maps), they make sure that their games are reasonably compatible with older hardware (I can still play Starcraft with my 5 year old laptop)... and what happens? Major Anger because people want to steal their beta program and play it off their network? Of course, I understand the problems with Blizzard's position in this case, and I support the EFF. I've made my donations in the past, but I'm just a bit iffy on this case.

On a side note, I hope they fix the balance issues with the Undead. Undead are way overpowered.

It amazes me that people can't think through why this is the case. Put yourself in Blizzard's shoes (ok, brrr). If you release a Beta that's a stand-alone game, why would the tester every buy the full product when it comes out? People are cheap, and that's why there's rampant copying of the Beta (hell, even I have a cracked copy).

The purpose of a beta program is to test the product (interface, network utilization, balance), test the market readyness, and expose any critical bugs that might hinder a good rollout. If you're players are on your network you can get a pretty good idea of a lot of these things (I wonder if the program does a callback if there's a crash/etc.). If it's standalone, not only would you have to have finished standalone missions (hint: they're probably still being produced/tested), but you'd lose out on any ability to monitor critical statistics. On the other hand, if you people do warez your Beta, and connect to your network, at least you have more useful stats from determined fans.

On the side of the BnetD v. Blizzard, I can see their point of view. They make great games, cater to the user even after the sale (battle.net, custom maps), they make sure that their games are reasonably compatible with older hardware (I can still play Starcraft with my 5 year old laptop)... and what happens? Major Anger because people want to steal their beta program and play it off their network? Of course, I understand the problems with Blizzard's position in this case, and I support the EFF. I've made my donations in the past, but I'm just a bit iffy on this case.

On a side note, I hope they fix the balance issues with the Undead. Undead are way overpowered.

Hold a meeting or conference with the authors of Bnetd, then instead of suing the pants off them, hire them, have them help improve the original Battle.net services. It's kind of like ISP's and large companies hiring hackerz, sorry, Security Specialists to help develop stronger and more secure networks and communications, why not let this fall under that same umbrella? Win-Win situation. Battle.net can make a deal that gives these guys rad jobs, and they get improved service.

But, seeing as most companies would rather slam the cuffs on the little man rather than display gestures of good will, I doubt such a happy ending will even come into the minds of Blizzard. But, here's one for hoping.

. . . or if it is, its very subtly so and outside the range of your average player. The article makes a great statement as to the importance of balance, and this is exactly what turned me off StarCraft.

Every time I played on Battle.net, anyone with half a brain simply played the Zerg and rushed the hell out of everyone else. Usually, the Zerg won. In a war of 'resource command' it would seem that those who can expand the fastest would win.

Just to convince people I'm not blowing hot air, look at the StarCraft Season III Ladder Tournement results and count the occurances of Zerg versus occurances of other races. By my count, of the top players, there was 1 instance of Humans, 2 of Protoss, and 21 people playing the Zerg.

I sent an email to Blizzard this morning suggesting that using the DMCA in this case was counter-productive to the company's interests. I received this response (from a bot, I think) a few minutes ago:

On 2/22/02 2:14 PM, "Sales" wrote:

Certain programs have been developed that allow users to bypass Battle.net's CD-key-authentication process. Although these programs might have been made with good intentions, they directly promote software piracy by allowing users who have illegitimately obtained our games to play them as if they'd been legitimately purchased. Furthermore, because these programs allow access without a CD key, they render malicious users unaccountable, thereby eliminating Blizzard's ability to protect legitimate consumers. Therefore, Blizzard has taken an aggressive stance opposing the use of these programs.

Please take a moment to read through our FAQ regarding these issues at http://www.battle.net/support/emulationfaq.shtml if you have any questions or concerns about Blizzard's stance on software piracy.

{WR655}

This response seems to me (IANAL), to render any action they might want to take under the DMCA utterly futile. They themselves seem to admit that BnetD does not even clear the first hurdle for infringement. And its a pretty low hurdle.

I sincerly hope that the BnetD people can pony up the money to fight this, as it appears they stand an excellent chance of winning.

You can view the letter in its entirety here at Blizzard Takes Action to Protect.

"Although these programs might have been made with good intentions, they directly promote software piracy..."

"...thereby eliminating Blizzard's ability to protect legitimate consumers..."

"we are well within our legal rights to protect our products from software piracy"

"In order for us to keep our proprietary CD-key algorithms secure, we cannot allow outside servers to query for the validity of CD keys."

"Unfortunately, software pirates have spoiled this situation for hobbyists."

"We are constantly working to improve Battle.net, and we sincerely hope that one day, no one will see any reason to seek alternatives to Battle.net for playing Blizzard games.

I sent a letter to blizzard yesterday, and I'd post it here, but Lotus Notes (ew) seems to have eaten my saved copy.

Basically, I told them that I will never buy another Blizzard game again. We have legit copies of every Blizzard game for each machine(three). I had never heard of bnetd before yesterday, I most likely never would have. I play on battle.net. But my bitch is...Blizzard is screeching that bnetd violates the DMCA. Oh the horrors. They allow people to PLAY the game without being on battle.net. But is Blizzard doing ANYTHING to combat the dupes and hacks and cheats on their supposedly SECURE servers? No. Aren't those circumventing security measures?

As far as CD Keys, does anyone REALLY think this is about piracy? Did we forget this? (iv) that, if permitted by local law, Blizzard has the right to obtain "non-personal" data from your Internet browsing software in order to make certain demographic assumptions regarding the users of Battle.net without any further notice to you.
From their ToS .

I never thought I'd say this, but, I'd rather pay monthly for DAoC than ever play another blizzard game.

I fear everyone here is completely missing the mark!

It's all about the ad-revenues. You see, Blizzard sells ads on and if they allow people to run their own servers, then it eats into their advertizing cash cow.

Their talk of piracy and the DMCA is all just a white-wash to pacify the good little sheeple into thinking they might be justified in their actions.

As Frank Herbert said, "Wealth is a tool of freedom, but the pursuit of wealth is the way to slavery."