If you have played Diablo 2 you have probably more than once seen the annoying spambots screaming about the latest items available for sale, both ingame and in the battle.net channels and I was surprised to see that not only are they still around, but they seem to have evolved into a serious business!

I checked out 3 such sites earlier today and I must say that as a returning gamer with little time on my hands I do get tempted to take the easy way out and buy things rather than spend the hours grinding them up and I started to wonder what kind of business ideas we might see for Diablo 3 and if things will change that will make these kinds of businesses impossible or less likely?

We know that Blizzard will make Diablo 3 a game where trading will be a factor and it will be far easier to move object between characters and accounts. We also know that Battle.net will see many improvements, perhaps even introduce a marketplace, like we have seen on the old diabloii.net (now changed into diii.com) to allow people to make actual trading more controlled and easier?

As I look through the items on the three diablo 2 items websites I ponder for myself what Blizzard really think about this kind of behaviour and if they will take action to move things around to their own advantage soon. It would not be a big stretch to tap into this kind of cashflow by setting up a marketplace like e-bay where anyone can buy and sell their game related items and then a percentage goes back to Blizzard in terms of fees.

The advantages are many for such a setup, not just in terms of tapping into a new cashflow, but also to be able to control the market for in-game items to prevent sales of illegal and/or bugged items. It also would set a balance between seller and buyer if adding a reputation system, which is not very difficult to do really. In such a controlled environment people could make money from their efforts and Blizzard would still benefit from the money exchange without having to actually participate, like sellers paying a license fee or something like that.

For me as a webdesigner and hopeless ideamonger I could surely consider setting up a marketplace for Diablo items like e-bay. Its not very difficult to do as there are good scripts out there that could easily be modified and re-designed for that purpose, but the question is if its worth the time and cash investment?

While I ponder on that I’ll continue to look at all the items I want to have once again from these diablo 2 related webshops and ponder on the ethics of actually buying myself my old character back or not…

Today finally my ban was lifted and I have just registered my account on USWest again under the name Mortekai, which is also the name of my new Paladin. I will try to find some time to play it this week, but it will be sporadic at best.

I am pondering if I should assign a channel for diabloiiiblog.com or if that is just silly…what do you think?

This is the second part of the extensive article regarding the lore of Diablo 3. The first part is called “An Examination of Diablo 3 lore- Part 1 : Background“. Original source is StarCraft 2 armory.

Half the images which follow are cut off. Please just control click them and view them in a new window till I can make them smaller. I’ll also post links under them if I can.

So, now your caught up, we can start the article, I plan to cover the following subjects in no particular order.

1) What was the meteor in Tristram? What signifigance does it bear?
2) Is Tyrael corrupted or what?
3) Who are the real bad guys?
4) What are the ramifications of the destruction of the worldstone
5) What about the Nephalem, Lilith, and Inarius?
6) Where are the brothers?
7) What does Izuals speech mean (and other prophecies?)

(more…)

This is an extensive examination of the Diablo 3 lore, in fact its so long that I will break it down in several posts. The first will be about the background, which is my favorite part. The original post can be found on StarCraft 2 armory if you prefer to read it as a whole.

So, the sequel to the almighty RPG title Diablo 2 has finally been announced, Blizzard has been unusually mysterious about the plot giving us virtually nothing to go off of, except some remarkably provocative artwork and a cinematic trailer. Here’s what we got from them (Blizzard.)

-Set 20 yrs after Diablo 2
-There will be returning NPCs (Cain, Tyrael)
-Meteor’s are the harbringers of doom, one just crashed into the cathedral at Tristram where Diablo himself once stood.
-Tyrael is being punished (confirmed)
-Hell was expected to attack as soon as the worldstone was destroyed
-Hell has not
-Hell is just beginning to come up (from where the worldstone once stood)
-The Sin War trilogy of books is considered canon
-Most hero’s played in Diablo 2 have gone insane from the horrors of Hell.
-One new NPC we know is a young woman named Leah who has a direct relationship with Cain, probably apprentice or something. There’s artwork further in the article to confirm this.
-The destruction of the Worldstone will have massive ramifications.

(more…)

I have had busy days with having a birthday (yay, I am now even OLDER than before…), taking my son for a swim and generally enjoy the good weather and of course creating the new design, so I completely forgot about my IP ban and the result my contact with Blizzard had.

On Friday the 25th I got a letter from a Blizzard employee and then a letter from WoW account management regarding my letter that I sent to both and I got the usual stockreplies about how you can get banned from rapidly logging in and out of battle.net and joining and leaving games very often and so on.

Normally I get pissed when people send me stock replies that have no relation to my letter and as this kind of information really have no point since I wrote that I had just installed the game and was blocked before I could even create an account and in the case of my letter from WoW account manager where they told me they could not help me because there was no account with the email used to send in the letter (how could there be when I could not get online to register an account?) I just shook my head at the stupidity of the people sending out these useless letters, presumably without even reading the actual letter.

The letter from David at Blizzard was also a stockreply, but there was something about it…maybe  how the reply was written or if I was just in a good mood, but I did not get angry or resignated, but sent a reply about my situation again. David was kind enough to look into the matter and while he could not say why I had been banned he could tell me that my ban would last for another 5 days, which means that I’ll be cleared to go online again on thursday. This may seem like a small thing, but for me it means that I now know when the accursed ban will end and have something to look forward to, so thank you for that David.

I fully understand that people at support drown in questions and requests as I am myself spending much time in support for my business as webhost and webdesigner, but to send out a stockreply without reading a letter or at least modify it so it fit the question or worse yet questions so that all questions get answered! Failing that you should get yourself a new job as you will only make people angy as they think you ignore or disregard them.

Solivagant, a blizzard game blogger has posted an extensive post where he compare Diablo 3 with Fallout 3 and then go over how to make a proper sequel to a successful franchise. Its an interesting read indeed.

Diablo 3 looks just like it should. Stunning.

Everything I’ve seen today about D3 has got me interested. I’m a fan of D2, played it in battle.net a great number of times and it kept me consistently entertained, be it the loot grabbing rushes or the neverending hordes of demons getting their ass kicked by my party.

But it was never my favorite game. It lacked dialogue, it lacked branching paths. The story was nice, but it always took backstage to the mayhem. You’d get rewarded with gorgeous cinematics, and then you’d move on to the next chapter, finishing those quests any battle.net diehard knows by heart. It got repetitive, but the skill tree, the bosses, the hundreds of items and gems and socketed items made it interesting, and the random maps kept the experience from becoming dull.

(more…)

Today I checked my IP Ban status as usual and noticed that one battle.net IP on USEast and Asia no longer listed me as banned, so I tried to logon again. It took several tries before I was connected to the right IP, but there it finally was…the registration form! I am now registered again on USEast and can roam there for a while until my designated playground USWest is available for me.

I hope this is a sign that the IP ban is close to its end because its bugging the crap out of me not to be able to get online after all the trouble I had getting new discs for the game!

I still have not heard from Blizzard or my ISP AllTele that I contacted about changing my IP…

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