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Diablo II Beta Sign-Up Monday
MimEnkode writes "Blizzard has announced the beta test for Diablo II. Only 1,000 beta testers will be picked. You'll be able to sign up here."
This is not first-come-first-served; sign up at any time on Monday, and you'll have the same chance as everyone else.
I'm not talking about double entries. I'm talking about the sheer volume of Slashdot readers.
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon? :P)
(If you can't figure out how to E-Mail me, Don't.
They havn't posted a date for the playable demo, of course, but Blizzard has indicated that after the closed 1000 person beta there will be a larger, open beta, prior to release. I guess the concept is to (1) test the servers under load, and (2) get a few hundred thousand hooked, then yank the rug out from under then and make them buy it. Hey, it works for me...
Then we'll know for sure.
(unless you're the same troll, masqing your grits)
--
ba-bu-ba-ba-baaa, da-da-dum. Re-boot the ser-ver.
ba-bu-ba-ba-baaa, da-da-dum. Re-boot the ser-ver.
+&x
DiabloII.net is a pretty decent source of info for this game. They give daily updates and they seem to be able to filter out the real insider info from bs hype.
I don't read it religiously, but it's nice when I need a "how's Diablo II doing" fix.
If someone can't configure their email or call the tech guys at their ISP to baby-step them through it, are they going to be much use in a beta test?
Intolerant people should be shot.
Do you fail to see the contradiction there?
The cake is a pie
God I wish I could moderate you down. In case you've been asleep for the past umpteen years, ROB DOESNT SUBMIT THE ARTICLES
yeah, they're going to have you download a game that spans 4 CDs. I think I'm one of the few people on the planet who would actually deal with that download (if it was resumable).
/pub directory over a 56k connection.
There's a reason why they ask for your shipping address...
Esperandi
I swear I mirrored the entire ftp.etext.org
It doesn't say anywhere on Blizzards site that the selection will be random... it simply says you'll have a chance of getting in no matter how late... they may be doing it random, but I'd guess they're doing as you said and picking a good cross-section of machines and OS combinations and such and also looking for certain types of people to test it... like programmers and junk, they can help more in a test than just some guy who wants to play the game.
Esperandi
Well, most people chosen for beat tests are not chosen because they are Joe Q. User. Pointing out that you are a programmer and would be able to give comprehensive and detailed information about every fluke (for instance instead of trying to explain to them what it looked like when their collision test failed while you were up against a wall, you can tell them exactly that. even if its not right, its easier to decrypt than "I went up to this wall and then half the screen was a yellow-ish purple and somethin that looked like a rock was in the middle, my computer seems slower now, do you think it was a virus?!?!?").
Altho I think the real reason they want to do this is so that you can't signup a million times. I could have shipping addresses to a PO box, my home, all my relatives homes, my friends homes, my college box, my friends college boxes, etc, etc, etc and a free email address for every single one... but getting that many legit addresses is jus too much effort for most people to cheat to get in.
Plus, if you fuck with them like giving copies to all your friends, they can find out who you are.
Esperandi
The magic minute will be: 10:37 AM PST. Have fun /.ers!
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
From the release it looks like it will be Win95/98 or NT4.0 only. This is going to be a good thing. I can't wait.
Bah! Pretty pictures and stereo music! Today's gamers grow soft and reliant on their mice! Back in my day, we all played Angband. Er, wait, we still do.
John
I read your post and I must admit I am very jealous. I would have given anything for this type Of open sourse envoroment when I was a teen ager, which seeams like it was a billion years ago.
Being a first generation computer gamer I can honestly say that people aren't morons just because they game. It take years of ignorance, closed mindedness, and lazyness to make a moron.
No one is born a moron, there just trained that way.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Perhaps I will quell your fears about the future by saying that I love video games, and I also know C/C++. Imagine that! (And to make things worse, yes, I own a Voodoo3 3500). While I support the FreeSoftware community, I also realize (as an amatuer game programmer) that games support 70, if not 80% of the driving force behind the technology growth that we enjoy today. And it could not be possible without monetary input from said parties to the gaming industry and computer manufacturers. FreeSoftware should be used for things like OSs and Email clients, but the entertainment industry should remain within the capital market where it's so firmly seated. (Now, a price drop would be nice... but if you build it, they will come). If you want a discussion about the violence in video games and "it's ability to corrupt the minds of the innocent," see your pastor, rabbi, bishop, whatever. I don't care to become wrapped up in it.
Thank you for reading One Man's Opinion. No participation necessary. Offer void where deemed by law or PATRIOT Act.
There goes my only chance at getting into the Beta Test. I figured, as long as Slashdot doesn't find out I might get in. But with only a 1,000 slots, oh well. If you make it in instead of me - please don't email me just to flaunt it.
Joseph Elwell.
...But now since the story was submitted and posted on Slashdot, the actual CHANCES you will get picked have decreased by 800,000%.
Good Luck!
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon? :P)
(If you can't figure out how to E-Mail me, Don't.
(umm, you want LESS people to sign-up, duh!)
For those of you that don't know, you must sign a NDA, remove Linux from your HD, and sign up for AOL to even *begin* to be considered for the beta. So it's not worth your while, move along please.
--
ba-bu-ba-ba-baaa, da-da-dum. Re-boot the ser-ver.
ba-bu-ba-ba-baaa, da-da-dum. Re-boot the ser-ver.
+&x
You mean there's people out there using computers who don't even know C!?!
Quick! Get 'em off Linux, that way they'll never learn...
Where exactly do you think the next generation of developers is going to come from? Where do you think real innovation is going to come from? How can a generation possibly learn the real value of the Free Software Movement if you want to demonize them for having a good time? How many of them still dual-boot because Linux gaming sucks?
Thanks to those mindless teenagers I can *use* Linux, (since I have a voodoo3) I thought all you ivory tower folks used BSD (we certainly know you don't like new, fast hardware)
And how exactly is market pressure forcing you to code, I thought it was just a fun thing to do. Like the occasional blast-fest.
--
ba-bu-ba-ba-baaa, da-da-dum. Re-boot the ser-ver.
ba-bu-ba-ba-baaa, da-da-dum. Re-boot the ser-ver.
+&x
Rearrange your stereotypes accordingly.
The cake is a pie
A copy of StarCraft ended up aboard the shuttle, orbiting earth 153 times. Now everyone Blizzard thanked for being a beta tester in their manual has had their name in space.
The same might happen with Diablo 2...Or (if StarCraft went to space), is there a more appropriate location to take a copy of Diablo 2 (think double hockey sticks)...
Go back into Torment and replay it. What's that? Everything is the same and its boring?
Replay value kicks a good games ass almost every single time.
Esperandi
Diablo's dungeons and all kinds of crap were randomly generated BTW in case you didn't know... personally I prefer real roguelikes, but Diablo was a good shot.
From the Diablo 2 beta signup page: "You must have a valid e-mail address" This sounds straight forward, but in reality this statement is a bit deceptive. When most websites with beta tests say this, what they really mean is that you must have a non-anonymous email account. This means that accounts on hotmail, yahoo, rocketmail etc. are not honored. I think for most of the people reading these comments, this will not be a problem. However, I know a lot of people who don't know how to configure their outlook express or whatever client their using to get the pop3 account their local ISP provides. Because of this lack of technical knowledge, many are forced to turn to services like hotmail. I know your all probably pretty tech savvy, but I think that you should still know this before you sign up for this beta, as well as beta tests in general. One solution to this is to get an email account online at a lesser known place. A great example of this is http://www.hushmail.com This will give a free email account with 128 bit encryption (hence the name). Well there are countless other places you can turn if you have this problem, but I just wanted to inform everyone so that you can all have the best chance of making it into the Diablo 2 beta!!!
You will have the same chance as everyone else, provided you live in the USA or Canada. The rest of the world will have to wait until the second phase beta.
Phobos - Greek word for fear or flight
I'm going to have to take serious issue with this, even though it's blatant flamebait. As an adolescent, and a game developer, I see a wide variety of things wrong with your post... sounds like you're just trying to attract attention and get yourself moderated down. Here's my rebuttal.
1) The attempt to popularize Free Software has not been an unmitigated disaster. The fact that we do have, as you put it, "ten million adolescent morons" is an indication that we have succeeded. The computer in today's society, at least in the home-desktop market, is rapidly moving towards being a tool for entertainment.
If it wasn't for that "ten million adolescent morons" busy increasing Linux's desktop share up to 4.9% or whatever it is, Linux wouldn't have many of the new and wonderful features that I'm sure that you, as a man who seems to consider Linux totally unsuitable for anything besides hardcore server use and mathematical calculation, simply because not as many companies would have jumped on the band wagon.
2) Not all adolescents are morons. I am sixteen years old, and do know C, as well as C++, Perl, Pascal and x86 ASM. I've worked on and with a wide variety of open source software, from SDL to Mesa, doing everything from ASM hacking to documentation. My best friend, 17, spends his weekends fixing GNOME. And we are both avid gamers, programming as well as playing.
3) The developer pool has increased. Just look at Freshmeat these days... and look at all the people that I'm converting. Just a month ago, I ran into a guy at a bookstore (Chapters) happily reading a book on Graphics Programming with Visual Basic. We started chatting, and I asked him why the hell he was doing graphics programming in Visual Basic. Turns out he was actually writing a game in Excel, since that was all that he could afford. He was completely blown away when I said that if he just switched to Linux, he could enjoy free compilers, free GUIs, free debuggers, free everything. Another
developer, just converted like that.
4) Not just game obsessed morons play games. As a measure of this, I doubt very many adolescent morons would play "Eric's Ultimate Solitare", which recently got a Loki Software port.
5) Linux video drivers are NOT bloated. Mesa and Utah-GLX are extremely tight. You want bloat, go look at DirectX.
In conclusion, may you get your fingers caught in your server while replacing the case, and may they be severed at the joints so that you may never again post this sort of drivel to Slashdot.
(sorry if I seem grumpy, I've had a bad day)
Nicholas
disclaimer: opinions contained therein are not neccessarily those of my employer.