Slashdot Mirror
Diablo II Beta Sign-Up Monday
GeekLife.com writes: "Blizzard announced their public beta test. This time there are 100,000 lucky winners. The sign-up is over at ZDNet's Gamespot. " Following up on the first round of beta testing in which only a lucky few got selected, this test round is for stress testing the Battle.Net servers in preparation for release. I (and almost everyone I know) couldn't get in on the last one, so I'm hoping my luck is better this time around.
I'd love to help them beta test their game, and I'd love to buy it once they finally release it. I've wanted to play this game since I saw the preview on the StarCraft CD.
The problem is that Blizzard won't let me participate in the beta, and once they release the final, they won't let me run the game, even if I buy it.
You see, they're releasing the game for Win32 Only - and they know I don't have Win32.
There's no good technical reason why the game shouldn't be able to run on my computer. It's got a K6-2/350 processor and 128 megs of RAM, it's video hardware can run at a sufficient resolution and color depth, I've even got a sound system.
My computer even runs other games fine. It runs Civilization: Call to Power, Quake II, and I've even heard of people with nearly identical systems running previous Blizzard games such as WarCraft: Orcs and Humans.
Blizzard.... Why won't you take my Money?
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
One thing I am really astonished about is that no game company so far came to the idea to actually produce the game on a bootable CDROM with Linux as OS behind the game?
:)
:)
I mean that would make it way easier for most people who don't have a clue about computers to get their games run. No installation, just pop and play
I remember back in '94 while selling computers when people got rid of their Amigas to buy PCs to play and they where astonished that they couldn't simply put in the floppy and start playing
Okay, windows got easier in that regards (with Autostart etc.) but I wonder why the game industry is not jumping on this (yet)?
If you want to e-mail me, use my PGP Key.
Hear, hear! When I saw this headline, I thought: "Bah! They've got a Linux port of Diablo and are testing it! I want it! Or otherwise, why it is on /.? /. isn't Gamer's Daily, is it?". Then I read it and... Duh. I'm out. We're out. All Linux users are out. OK, it's hard to port Diablo to Linux, it's not worth to port Diablo to Linux. I'm not worth having Diablo for Linux because I was a bad boy. Whatever. Why I want to hear about new Diablo then? If I wanted, I'd subscribe to some Gamer's News, which reports all such things instantly and gives much more info, reviews, etc.
I do not want to disable the "Games" topic. But if most of the games topics will be "for whit^H^H^H^HWindows only" that'd be the only choice to save my nerves.
-- Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes.
I'd do the same if this topic had a sign "Windows only". Then I'd turn it off as I did for Amiga stuff, etc. But presently I can't - I want to hear about Linux and all-platform games, but not about Windows-only games, or at least I want Windows-only games to bear bold "Windows only" sign (and Linux-only games to bear Linux-only sign, that's OK).
-- Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes.
I realize that this isn't LinuxDot, that Diablo II is relevant new for a large portion of readers, etc., etc. These are all perfectly relevant reasons to post the story. Problem is that the original post didn't say "don't post it." It said (to paraphrase): "give me a means to filter it out, because it is irrelevant to me." This is a perfectly reasonable request. Game stories like this one are usually a waste of time if you are a Linux user- the only reason to read it is to bitch that there is no port. And that doesn't do anyone any good. So let us have a way to filter them out. That's not too big a deal, is it?
IAAL,BIANLY
An OS isn't a religion. It is a tool. Blizzard says you have to user a poorer tool to use their game. So that's what I'll do.
People should stop worshiping hammers.
The cake is a pie
I'm like a alot of people that read slasdhot. We don't run Windows, or care about Windows-only games. This isn't a flame saying that "blah Windows sucks", but myself, and alot of other readers don't run it. We also don't care about games that are Windows-only, and will never see linux versions.
I think it's time for a new icon for Windows-only games. Maybe Gates holding a sidewinder or something. I would LIKE to filter out Windows-only game articles, but it just falls under "games", and I'd miss stuff I'd want to read.
It's also another opinion of mine, that Slashdot shouldn't be giving free good publicity to a company like Blizzard, that has pretty much given free-software and the whole linux community the finger. Does that mean not reporting on certain things Blizzard does, or only the bad? No, but you also don't have to treat Diablo 2 like it's the second comming of Jesus either.
I'll step off my Blizzard bashing soapbox, but this opionion of "WIndows sucks, but it's ok when Diabalo 2 comes out, and I don't care if it only runs on Windows" is so hypocritical, it's not funny. That very idea is why you don't see more games in linux. Why go though the trouble of making a linux version if the vast majority of linux users are willing to keep Windows around and buy Windows versions of games?
Oh, i was just being selfish. I only use linux. Doesn't make me a hypocrite, just makes me greedy. You go root for your own OS :)
Mike Roberto (roberto@soul.apk.net) -GAIM: MicroBerto
Berto
Yes, they have released games for Mac OS in the past, although a bit later, as is usual in the industry. I do not know about Diablo II though, you can find out here though!
Mike Roberto (roberto@soul.apk.net) -GAIM: MicroBerto
Berto
A lot of software houses would be thrilled to see that many total users of their products...
On the other hand, I guess it serves as a good promo for those people who normally wouldn't care too much about the games ancient (in the gaming world at least) engine. If this is another 640X480 16-bit three-quarter-view masterpiece, they're gonna have a teensy bit harder time selling to those people with shiny new GeForce2s or Voodoo5s.
Now, I can see them trying to test the Diablo II code for stability with that many users, but I'd say it's been long enought that they should already have some statistics about whether or not Battle.net is stable. They've been supporting thousands of simultaneous connects with Starcraft, etc, for a long, long time. Anybody know why they'd do this?
Free music from Jack Merlot.
to some screenshots for Act II and Act III. They look pretty good to me.
--
But I never really had that much fun with diablo...it seemed like just an rpg without the story/puzzles...or gauntlet without the action.
I didn't know it was a "we won't post anything about you unless you do what we want" site. Thanks for enlightening me.
Blizzard hasn't given anybody the finger, they've said "we can't afford to port a game to a system that won't be able to generate the sales to pay for the port."
Last I checked, that was good business sense. I know that business sense is all but lost in this day and age of profitless companies, but to anyone who actually went into business to make money using a method other then an IPO, this is pretty smart.
All Blizzard said was "show us the sales", not "go fuck yourselves." If Linux gamers buy Linux versions of games in enough volume to make it feasable for blizzard to make a profit, you can bet they'll port it in a heartbeat.
But you can't expect a company to deliberately loose money just so you can have a game. In short, you don't matter that much.
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
Personally, I think it's cruel and inhumane for Blizzard to do something like this during my finals week.
In Diablo/Starcraft/War2BNE, Battle.net basically acts like a big chat network. It lets you talk to people, get stats, and *find* games. The games themselves all play as Peer-To-Peer systems, battle.net itself isn't really involved at all once the game starts.
Diablo II introduces something called a "closed" character. While a normal character resides on a players system like in Diablo and you can play it in any form of multiplayer game, closed characters are stored on the server and can *only* be played on Battle.net with other closed characters. During those games, they use a Client/Server setup, with Battle.net taking a more direct role in how the game is played. The idea being to try and prevent some of more flagrant hacks that plagued Diablo.
Now if you play an Open Character (as I intend to, since I also want to play with the same character over LAN's and the like), it doesn't work this way. But because the battle.net population is paranoid, you will see a *lot* of closed characters being played, hence the test. They want to make sure the system won't die before they release the game.
hth
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates