Diablo 3 Announced!

So, I stayed up a bit late tonight playing video games, watching movies and television. Around 3 AM I was browsing online when I noticed that the Blizzard Entertainment Worldwide Invitational starts live broadcasting online at 3:45 AM (it's in Paris). This week there's been hype around some big announcement Blizzard is supposed to make at the event. I figured that if there's a big announcement it will likely come in the beginning, so I decided to stay up a bit longer and listen in.

4:00 am MST
Mike Morheim - President of Blizzard Entertainment
Opened up with a generic 'thank you for making this a great event' speech. Reminded us that last year they announced Starcraft 2 at the Worldwide Invitational. Proceeded to show us a cheesy video of last year's highlights in South Korea with reggae music, of all things, as the background soundtrack. With a little dramatic prelude, he then announced that Blizzard's newest game is, as many speculated, Diablo 3.



4:15 am MST
Diablo 3 Trailer shown.

4:30 am MST
Jay Wilson - Lead Designer on Diablo 3
Narrated Diablo 3 demo
Characters still say the cheesy lines when entering an area (Barbarian "The sun has never shown here"). The graphics look much improved. The general aerial view is maintained as it was in Diablo 2. Some previous characters from Diablo 2 show up in Diablo 3 (guess who). At least this time around your character is smart enough to tell him to just shut up.

Cain: "Stay awhile and ..." (interrupted)
You: "It is time for shedding our enemies blood, not time for idle talk."
Cain: "Oh, whatever"

During the demo he goes through different classes. One of the new ones is the witch doctor. One new skill (similar to fire wall or bone wall)...zombie wall. Also, classes can be either male or female.


Overall, it was a great presentation. The demo was awesome. This is probably the only game that will pull me away from console gaming for any significant period of time (only a few months or so). Sadly, no announcement was made regarding a release date. Considering that they had a working demo, I wouldn't be surprised if it was later this year.

Blizzard Entertainment Worldwide Invitational

So, I stayed up a bit late tonight playing video games, watching movies and television. Around 3 AM I was browsing online when I noticed that the Blizzard Entertainment Worldwide Invitational starts live broadcasting online at 3:45 AM (it's in Paris). This week there's been hype around some big announcement Blizzard is supposed to make at the event. I figured that if there's a big announcement it will likely come in the beginning, so I decided to stay up a bit longer and listen in.

Finally....

When Microsoft first released the Xbox 360, it was plagued with problems. Something to do with overheating and faulty hardware. Whatever the problem was, it resulted in a lot of people having to return their gaming console to get it replaced. This was good in that the user now had a new console to play their games on. It also created new problems, in that online purchases made and licensed on the old console were not able to be used on the new console without repurchasing the downloads.

Microsoft finally released today a DRM (Digital Rights Management) transfer tool on Xbox.com that allows users to transfer their licenses to another console. This means you won't have to repurchase all those Rock Band tunes you downloaded. Even though this new tool leaves a lot to be desired in usability, the functionality is there. Oh well, I guess Microsoft can't get everything right on the first round (or second, third, ...).

Camping Fundamentals

Many people wonder what it takes to enjoy the outdoors. Here are a few suggestions for making the most of your next camping trip.

Survey the area

Get to know the area you're going to be camping in. Learn the layout of the land. It's helpful to know landmarks and obstacles that can obstruct your view of the lovely scenery. Knowing the area you'll be camping in will make your outdoor adventure all that more enjoyable.

Pitch Your Tent

Pick a good location as you're going to be spending quite a bit of time there. Make sure to pick someplace on high ground, preferably with a view. After all, isn't that why you went camping? Don't pitch your tent too close to someone else's tent. Going camping is about enjoying the outdoors and getting away from other people.

Protect Your Site

There's nothing that ruins a camping trip more than an unwanted guest. Animals (and other annoyances) like to wander into your campsite. One option to keep them out is to put your food storage in a bear bag and raise it into a nearby tree. Personally, I'm much more a fan of just laying down a few claymore mines in your vicinity. Either way, it should keep the pests out and allow you to enjoy your camping experience.

Enjoy the Outdoors

Camping is all about spending time with nature and leaving civilization behind. Whatever you do, don't let civilization follow you. While camping you may witness other people trying to come and take your camping spot from you. Protect your little piece of nature with everything you have. I suggest either a Barret .50 caliber sniper rifle, a silenced M-4 Carbine, or maybe just a good old fashioned standard military issue KA-BAR.

Fishing with Dynamite

Well, tonight I decided to play some Call of Duty 4 with some friends online. After a few games we managed to get a full party together and play some Team Deathmatch. Usually we play pretty well together, but tonight was something different. We played awesome together. By the time I finally had to call it quits to go get some sleep (and post this) my winning streak was up to 50 games (and Yelzan had it beat at 51). Maybe tomorrow night or Friday I'll try to extend it.

...for those wondering about the blog title, Call of Duty 4 is commonly shortened to CoD...and cod is a type of fish

The Ugly Side

Every society has an ugly side to it, whatever that may be. The sad truth of it though is that when forced to face it, most realize that the ugly part of their society isn't just some small minority, but usually tends to be the large majority. Today's modern communication systems allow for online gaming on a scale never before realized. When joining this online gaming community, it's like jumping head first into the deep end of the ugly side of society's pool.

The fact that there is absolutely no identification available to others beyond what information you choose to put up with your own gamer information, opens people up to the realized freedom to say whatever they want. This freedom (and sad reality that people choose to exercise it) is a clear window to the ugly side of our society, a side that will likely turn out to be more of a majority than we would like to admit. While most people who meet someone on the street, face to face, will act with some amount of mutual respect towards each other, the same cannot be said of online gamers. Often times the first words out of a gamers mouth in a new encounter are laced with profane, sexist, racist and homophobic remarks.

As G4's Adam Sessler comments in this video, there is no reason for this type of behavior. Just because someone on the other team chose to camp an area because that was their best strategy against you isn't reason enough to hate them for it. Since when did Run & Gun become the only strategy to use in shooters? There are no rules as to how to play FPS games..you just play them. Whoever has the most kills in the end is the winner, no matter how they got them (except by the obvious system manipulations which ruin the game for everyone). There's no need to whine and complain when you get beat. Just grow a pair and be man enough to say Good Game to the other guy and go your separate ways. Even after the Boston Celtics dismantled the LA Lakers in the NBA Finals last night, Kobe Bryant was man enough to go over and congratulate the other team. Kind of sad that most gamers today aren't man enough to even do that.

Firefox 3 Released

Today is the release date for Firefox 3. Starting at 10 AM PDT today, Mozilla is going to try and set a world record for the most software downloads in a single 24 hour period. For those who don't know what Firefox is, it's basically your run of the mill web browser with a lot of enhancements to make it by far the best one on the market. If you're still using Microsoft's Internet Explorer...I'm sorry.

Firefox doesn't present the security flaws that are built into Microsoft IE. Maybe it's just me, but I don't like my web browser so tightly intertwined with my operating system. Firefox also renders web pages (converts the HTML code to the stuff you see on your screen) a lot better and more accurate than almost any web browser out there.

For those wanting to see the new cool features of Firefox 3, here's a great screencast that demonstrates them.

Cognitive Surplus

This is a great video of a presentation given at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco earlier this year. Clay Shirky gives a great explanation (plausible) as to the reasons behind the explosion of user created content on the web and the immersion everyone is experiencing with social networking sites. Enjoy.

The Machines Are Alive

I swear the more processors and memory we put into our computers, the more likely the are to come to life, if they haven't already. Processing power has grown so fast that most PC's can handle workloads that weren't even imaginable ten years ago. Just the other day I had my computer at home ripping a DVD, converting videos to another format, uploading a data backup file, recording live TV, using VoIP, streaming video my Xbox 360, and playing a video game -- all at the same time, without even so much as a hiccup.

With all this new computing power at our fingertips, I'm amazing our computers haven't started talking back to us yet. Then again, that's likely a software issue. But I am willing to say that I've seen some technology start to take on personal attitudes, if only at a base level. Where I work, the developers all share a common network enabled printer. It gets used fairly regularly by all of us. After a few weeks we've all started to notice that our printer seems to have something against one of the developers, and against him only. In the year or so that I've been there, I've yet to have a problem with that printer. Every time I use it, it works flawlessly. The same goes for almost all the developers, except this one guy. For him, the printer likes to give a 'Paper Jam' error message on a large percentage of his printouts. When you check the printer, there is no paper jam. You just open one of the trays and close it again and all is fine.

The last few weeks we've tracked how often this happens. For all the other developers we get that error about one in fifty. For the unfortunate guy, he gets it about four in five printouts. It doesn't matter what time of day, how many pages, what tray he prints from, or from what PC he initializes his printouts, it always seems to give that bogus error message for him and him alone. Every time it happens we can all hear his verbal frustrations and almost on cue, the entire development team bursts out laughing. If the printer doesn't learn it's place, it may find itself in the same position that unfortunate printer did in the movie Office Space.