So, I’m watching the Diablo 3 gameplay video, right now. I can honestly say I wasn’t super excited about Diablo 3. I haven’t been eagerly anticipating it since I pretty much had played out Diablo 2 for a couple years after it was released. Good times…

Very much like Starcraft 2, it looks like Blizzard is staying fairly true to the previous chapters of Diablo in terms of gameplay, at least. This was definitely a criticism of mine in regards to Starcraft 2. However, with Diablo 3, I think this is actually going to be a good thing.

One of the main reasons I liked Hellgate: London (despite the game’s flaws and a poorly executed business model) was that I really felt like HGL captured the essence of playing Diablo 2. And I liked the gameplay in Diablo 2. In fact, after watching this (ZOMG WALL OF ZOMBIES! AWESOME!) I’m going to have to go dig out my Diablo 2 copies (if I can find them) and roll a couple new characters. (HOLY CRAP THAT BRUMAK LOOKING THING JUST RIPPED A GUY IN HALF!)

I am seriously annoyed right now that I have to wait for Blizzard to release a WoW expansion and Starcraft 2 before I’ll even be CLOSE to playing this. It also bothers me when they release these gameplay videos, because just like Starcraft 2, it makes me think that the game is playable to the point of releasing soon.

COME ON BLIZZARD! HURRY UP!

“Could you please leave us alone? We’re trying to have a LARP rehearsal, here!”

I’ve been playing a lot of WoW lately, and I noticed some interesting statistics, courtesy of Xfire.

First off, World of Warcraft has been the #1 game played by Xfire users for 1002 days. (I’m sure today will make 1003.)

It appears that an average of 88,926 users have been playing an average of 19,188,204 minutes per day. That comes out to an average of 3.596 hours per day for each user, or about 25 hours per week.

My own gaming habits currently consist of almost all WoW. Whenever I get spare time for gaming, I’m playing WoW. I haven’t played any Halo 3 for a while now, and I’ve even got a backlog of 360 titles I need to get to including Ninja Gaiden II, Lego Indiana Jones, and the Penny Arcade game.

But why is WoW taking up so much time all of a sudden? It has mainly to do with the content. Immediately after the WoW expansion, The Burning Crusade, was released, there was a lot of end-game content, but subscribers started dropping off. A lot of servers ended up with very low populations. However, since then, Blizzard has been very carefully adjusting the end-game content and balancing to help improve classes like warrior become less stressful and boring, while also beefing up some of the mid-game content. That means more quests and more content for leveling up as well as a higher quality gameplay experience when you reach the level cap.

No doubt, there is much work that needs to be done by Blizzard, but I am once again in the unenviable position of being excited for the upcoming WoW expansion, Wrath of the Lich King.

You are in a mall when the zombies attack. You have:

1. one weapon.
2. one song blasting on the speakers.
3. one famous person to fight alongside you

This is so easy.

1. The trusty Halberd. Corvus’s shovel is definitely a good choice, but I think I want something a little longer, and a little sharper.

2. “Doomsday Clock” by Smashing Pumpkins.

3. The Rock. Seems like a nice guy, and I think he could be trusted to watch my back and hold his own against the zombies.

(I admit that this is kind of cheating for me. I’ve read World War Z.)

The simplest way to do this for me was to set Session.start to false in core.php. Then, I added a $this->Session->activate(’/'); to my app_controller.php in a beforeFilter() function. Now, the Cake app is using ‘/’ for it’s session.cookie_path.

h/t AD7six in #cakephp for showing me this.

After, listened to a presentation on using memcached with MySQL. Very interesting. I’ve never really even thought about memcached before, and I really learned a lot about it.

Then, listened to a presentation on LAMP and how it’s good for a lot of things, and how virtualization can allow you to run any stack you want on top of LAMP. Compared it to the history of the screw. The presenter seemed like a Ruby guy, but it was still very interesting and free of evangelism.

Now getting ready to listen to a panel on state of tech in MN with a bunch of tech guys, including a Microsoft rep.

Since, this is my first time attending MinneBar (or any barcamp, for that matter) I’ll be putting together a presentation on building a simple CMS for CakePHP.

I’m kinda nervous, but it should be a lot of fun.

I’m still writing over at Aeropause.com for those that are wondering. I also co-host a podcast over at talkingaboutgames.com. It’s called the Post Game Report and is a podcast that reports on community goings-ons over at talkingaboutgames.com

Been pretty busy, I guess.

Patch whining.

It happens almost every day for every single patch release for every single game that has a message board. The latest, and personally most annoying, episode seems to be surrounding today’s pre-map-pack Gears of War update. Epic’s list of fixes is pretty extensive. The one that seems to be causing the most controversy is this one:

• Removed host name from Ranked match server browser

It’s amazing really. The xbox.com Gears of War forums and Epic’s official Gears forums have been inundated with protests regarding this single feature of today’s patch. Read some samples:

“I promise you this… If they remove the Host Name and I have no way to play Gears in Ranked TEAM Matches with [my wife]… The game goes in the trash. I enjoy completing games… Completion Percentage means a good bit to me, especially if I love the games. But if I can’t play the game with in Ranked Matches with my Friends (and Wife) then I am done with the game and all achievements that I haven’t yet earned.”

“Getting rid of host name in the server browser????????!?!!?!?!?!? WTF is that about?!!!”

“I will go out of my way to make sure that I stack every game I create from now on. . . . I will drop the room and keep recreating until I get what I want. I don’t care how much bad feedback I get.”

“Oh come on…’stack teams,’ get a bunch of your friends together and do the same thing… without a party system, ranked matches just will dissappear…you will refresh your list and see like 5 matches going on now…great move Epic…”

And it goes on… and on… and on.

Whining without end. I haven’t seen this much whining since the Half-Life 1.1 update (the one that changed the netcode to support client-side hit detection.) The problem is, so many people are being vocal about this that the people that support this change are getting drowned out in a fit of internet cacophony.

But let’s face it. Team stacking happens. And recently, it’s been happening in Gears of War a lot. Unfortunately, merely switching to a party system like Halo 2 won’t fix things either. Halo 2 had been inundated with people who when split between teams, sabotage one team to pad the stats of other members of the party. So, I think Epic’s choice really is the best solution. As long as there are lots and lots of matches to choose from, it will be almost impossible to stack teams in your favor. This is a good thing, as it helps keep the integrity of the rank system intact, which in turn allows more tournaments to happen like on Emergence Day. If the integrity of the ranking system is destroyed, then you can forget about any sponsors providing prizes.

So, your desire to stack teams pretty much hurts the community as a whole. Thanks a lot, whiners.