So today in Paris Blizzard has just announced Diablo 3. Though no release date has yet been given, they have put out a bit of information. The splash screen for Blizzard.com has changed to show a small clip for Diablo 3. Along with that the Diablo 3 page gives you much more information, including two videos, one is a cinematic trailer and the other a game play video featuring the barbarian and a new class, the witch doctor. Blizzards FAQ has stated that there will be five classes. Something new to all classes is the ability to play as either sex.
Starting with classes, the barbarian (or barb for short) looks to be pretty much the same brute force tank everyone loves (and hates for PvP). There are new abilities and tactics that can be used but the most important is that whirlwind is back.
The second and new class is the witch doctor. It seems to be based almost 100% on the necromancer from Diablo 2, doing the same type of summoning spells with a little bit of casting spells. I am not sure why the name change but the new abilities are amazing none the less. A favorite from the video is the zombie wall, similar to the wall of fire or ice from Diablo 1 and 2 but made of intertwined zombie bodies in the ground which upon enemies approaching them, maul you opponents.
The old characters you know from Diablo 1 and 2 are also in there, including of course Deckard Cain to guide the heroes.
From a graphics and interaction perspective the game is amazing, the water is reactive and slashes when you move. The walls will crumble when you hit them, which can actually be used to kill enemies. The lighting is perfect and the sounds are amazing. What I think we will see is a much greater playing field and not a one directional game, something Diablo 2 did very well for its time.
But will we see the secret cow level?
Battle.net is going to get an overhaul and you will be able to match up with teams even easier. This is of course most likely going to be the same Battle.net as with Starcraft 3, we see this with all Blizzard games that use the Battle.net system. The question that I have, and I assume many others, is will Blizzard charge to use Battle.net much like it charges users to play World of Warcraft online now? I can see this two ways, yes they could charge and people would pay but at what point does it become too much? I believe W
Blizzard releases games but rarly it seems, once a year or once every two years but it’s OK because when they do come out, they don’t disappoint. I am truly amazed and can’t wait for the epic adventures to begin once again.
Well, I, and I assume many others, am pretty sadened to learn that the Crysis dedicated Linux server is no more. From the Crysis Monthly report;
We are sorry to say that the current development progress is not satisfying enough, as we have a hard time getting the code to a state where it is stable and playable.
Thus we made the decision to put the development on hold for now. We are definitely not happy with the current quality and stability of the server and we are far away from having a stable version which could be sent out to the community for alpha/beta testing.
We hope that you understand the current situation and that you can make adjustments to your plans if you wanted to host a Linux server for Crysis.
It seems to me that I will not be hosting a Crysis server anytime soon. The other problem is that to run a dedicated server on Windows, you need to have a full copy of the game, in essence you have to buy two games in order to have a dedicated server. In sharp contrast, and what I am used to, is the ability to download a dedicated server (like any Source dedicated server) and run that without purchasing another license. With a Source server I don’t even need to own a copy of any Source/Valve game to run a server.
That is one reason why there are perhaps 20-50 Crysis servers and well over 3000 CounterStrike Source/ Source engine dedicated servers.
I can only hope that the Crysis development team find their audience valuable enough to release a dedicated server before the second Crysis game comes out.
So I went onto the Apple store today and tried to put an iPhone into my shopping cart (just messing around) but couldn’t. There was no “Select” button as there are with all other products. I started a chat with an Apple sales assistant and asked her why I couldn’t purchase an iPhone, here is her response;
Hi Margorie, are you not able to buy the iPhone online?
Marjorie: The iPhone is currently unavailable. We do not have any information as to when it will be available again. The best thing to do is to watch Apple Hot News for updates.
That pretty much seals the deal, looks like I’m getting an iPhone on Monday after the announcement at WWDC.
Update: Apple did announce the 3G iPhone at WWDC, it will be released on July 11, 2008.
…is here. But I can’t play it because I get to work. amazing. I have really never seen so much voilence and softcore pornography in a video game. I’m not complainging by any means, I’m simply stating the truth, the game is one large softcore porn frest where in between lap dances, you go a shoot a lot of people, in the face.
The last GTA that I played was Vice City, a fantasic game that also captured my senses. But this isn’t Vice City, this is Liberty City and you are voilence.
According to an article in the Washington Post by Steven Levy, Time Warner Cable is considering ‘pay-per-gigabyte’ plans. This is basically you being charged for every gigabyte of bandwidth you use instead of a flat rate to an unlimited (or almost unreachable amount of bandwidth) per month. The problems with this are far and wide, imagine not being able to play video games because you ‘ran out of bandwidth’ or the cost of an iTunes movie being inflated to $20-40 because you have to pay per gigabyte of bandwidth. What really gets me is the amount of money we already pay for the little speed we currently get, look at Japan and Sweden! Now I do fully understand that both Japan and Sweden are much smaller then the United States and even some states in the United States but I do not expect them to low ball their customers.
One company that I admire for the work in pushing out a larger and more robust network is of course Verizon, who is rolling out fiber to the home to achieve speeds of 20Mbps up/down for roughly the same prices we pay for 6Mbps down and 386Kbps up! I would happily pay $100 a month for 20Mbps up/down without bandwidth caps.
Time Warner clams that “as little as” 5% of their customers use 50% of the bandwidth. I’m sorry but is that wrong that people are utilizing the service that was sold to them? Do you want all your customers to pay for higher bandwidth but then only utilize a (very) small fraction of it? It seems like they simply don’t want to spend the money to upgrade their portions of the network, instead pushing their customers to stop utilizing what they are paying for.
I wrote an email to Time Warner (seen below) simply saying that I as a customer will not accept this and will not hesitate to switch ISP’s.
To whom this may concern,
I am just writing to let you know that if Time Warner adopts a tiered
service I, and many others, will switch at once to another ISP. I find
this simply unacceptable that we should be charged for a limited amount
of bandwidth per month. Upgrade your network instead of reducing the
benefits to your customers. Look at Verizon, they are able to roll out
fiber to the home with speeds reaching 20Mbps up/down. I would happily
pay $100 a month for that (though they charge much less), but I
currently pay $35 a month (because of a promotion) for 6Mbps down and a
small 386Kbps up.
I would not like to leave Time Warner Cable but the simple math of
paying more money for getting less service does not add up. I look
forward to Time Warner reassuring all of their customers that they will
not adopt this tiered system.
A hopeful customer,
Ryan Klein
If you would also like to contact Time Warner Cable to let them know your thoughts, you can get the email for customer support (click here for link).
ps. It looks like Comcast is also mulling the idea but other large ISP’s (AT&T, Verizon) are not. Please take the time to write to Comcast and Time Warner Cable to let them know you will not let their limitations to services you pay for stand.
Today Futuremark, the developer of the popular synthetic PC benchmarking tool 3DMark06 (among others) announced that it would be joining the game development arena. Though they didn’t release any specific details on the types of games or even a first release, going off of their experience in 3d design work, they have the ability to create some of the most exotic and graphically intense games possible.
One question it raises for me is, will future benchmarking tools be playable? One example, though not specifically for benchmarking, would be Valve’s Lost Coast game which displayed the use of HDR in the Steam engine.
I was reading Ctrl+Alt+Del and saw a preview for Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, a new game by LucasArts. I haven’t always been into Star Wars games simply because there are so many and the character control felt lacking in those I decided to give a try.
This on the other hand looks to just be immersive in the way you can control the light saber, force powers, and force lightening. I cannot imagine the level of optimization that is going to be needed to run this on the Xbox 360 and PS3.
Just from the video the graphics, physics, and interaction look like they are going to push the hardware to new levels. With Havok, Euphoria, and Digital Molecular Matter (DMM) all working to enumerate the reactions of the AI, the explosions of buildings, the throwing of an object and how that object interacts with a non-playable character (an AI). Watch the video, I think you will be impressed…
I am extremely happy today, I got my beta invite to Joost (formally the Venice Project)! I have been waiting for 4 or 5 months to receive it after signing up and it was worth the wait!
First a little introduction. Joost is really the pinnacle of IPTV/P2PTV to date. It uses a network of P2P sharing (all done without any user intervention) to stream near-TV quaility video without the need for a TV set top box or a contract with the cable or satellite company. All you actually need is a Windows XP/Vista or Mac OS X computer and a broadband internet connection. No cable or satellite contract required and therefor no need to sell one of your kidneys to afford it!
One of the most prominent aspects of Joost is that there are actual TV channels that we, the general public, would want to watch. Such channels as Comedy Central, the National Geographic Channel, IndyCar TV, Saturday Morning TV, and about 40 or so other channels with more coming.
With the way Joost streams video, there are moments of lag as you being to stream and share as the video buffers. This was a huge headache when I started using it because for five minutes of TV, it paused and buffered about 5 times. That is annoying, even for a free service and nearly turned me away from it right then. However, I then turned on UPnP on my router and that seemed to help a significant amount, only buffering once or twice when I started watching and no buffering after that. The way Joost works is really neat to those who like the technical background, and I like the technical background. It works by a a number of clients streaming from the Joost servers, then those clients upload and share (legally) to other clients, essentially a beautiful sever/P2P network.
Advertising. It is what makes this all possible, it is what pays for it currently and I do not mind in the least. There is a large difference between paying $50 plus a month for cable or satellite and having to watch commercials (lots and lots of commercials) and getting a free service and having to watch a few commercials. I really do feel I am more likely to go and purchase a product when I feel they are contributing to something I am actively relaxed with. I actually noticed the commercial for Orbitz, thought about going on a vacation. I know I couldn’t afford it but I saw it, I listened to it instead of just hearing it as I hear traffic everyday.
So I really do hope Joost is here to stay, there has been millions of dollars put into it’s development so I really do think it is, but it really will bring a new age of TV to the consumer. Imagine it integrated with the Apple TV or something similar? One could only imagine the possibilities.
