I am Risen from the Dead! And so has Diablo!

Hi there Faceplanters, it’s me, Elrood.  NOT, as Tophat would want you to believe, Elrood 2.  I did miss last weeks article due to a combination of things, namely I’m about to move across the country and that the Prime Evil has unleashed demonic hordes upon the world of Sanctuary.  I can see arguments from both sides as to which of these events is more important to me personally.  As I’m still extremely busy I won’t going be going over Diablo 3 with a fine tooth comb here, but it’s a massive release from the biggest developer on the planet, so let’s hit some key points shall we?

Blizzcon 2013 coming soon….WAIT WWHHHHAAATT?!

As regular Faceplant readers know (any of you?  hello? internet?) Blizzcon is a big deal to me.  I’ve attended it for the past three years.  Two of those years, I became super annoying picture-taking guy for the sole reason of posting most of them on this very blog.  It has become a tradition, an excuse to jet out to sunny California and spend time with my friends and an even bigger bunch of like-minded folk who share my love of Blizzard games.  I was thus enormously surprised and kind of sad when Blizzard announced that in 2012, Blizzcon would not happen.  Actually, announced is a strong word for it.  It was basically a throwaway line in a small post, although I’m sure Blizzard was aware of the firestorm it would cause.  This is not a OMG BLIZZARD WHAT ARE YOU DOING post.  While having no Blizzcon to attend this year is indeed lame, Blizzard is not stupid.  I actually agree with them.  Overall, holding a Blizzcon this year was not a good idea.

Diablo 3 Beta Quick Hits

It’s been a long freaking time.  I played Diablo 3 the first time I attended Blizzcon in 2009.  I’ve never played the original.  I only dabbled in Diablo 2 for a short time, mostly because by the time I played it the game was pretty outdated compared to what else was out there.  However, the appeal was clear.  Dark fantasy setting, tons of different ways to play a character and LOOT.  Oh the loot.  There’s a shiny piece of awesome around the next corner if only you played for a few for minutes.  Diablo has mastered this concept.  After playing for the first time I was excited.  Then I played it for a second time….at Blizzcon 2010.  Then I played it for a THIRD time…..at Blizzcon 2011.  IT HAS TO BE SOON!  The beta is a very small dose of D3, but I can tell just from the very limited time I’ve spent playing that Blizzard will once again be the cause of tens of thousands of hours being lost across the world to this game.

Blizzcon 2011

Hello friends!  It was that time of year again, where I Elrood journeyed out to the far reaches of the west coast to attend Blizzcon.  It’s an annual celebration of all things Warcraft, Starcraft, and Diablo (no new IP yet…..as always the case with Blizzard, its ready when it’s ready).  This article will be much like last years (article detailing that right here) in that if you’re looking for news and the nitty-gritty of what we learned about the games from this years convention, I would go elsewhere.  I want to give an idea of what it was like to actually be there, which means lots pictures and less “Omg hunter dps will be buffed by 4.78 percent if you spec into these new talents that enable you to shoot small mammals out of crossbows ooommmggg”.  That would be freaking awesome though.  These aren’t organized, but they are (mostly) in the order I took them in, so it’s very much an as I walked the con, this is the stuff I came across, I hope you get a sense of how much fun it is to be there =) Let’s look at some pictures!

Torchlight

I needed a fix and it is Blizzard’s fault.  Diablo 3, with an original target date of sometime in 2011, was pushed back yet again.  “Early 2012″ is the word from Blizzard.  I’m excited for Diablo 3 and was really hoping it would appear soon.  Thus, after accepting the grim fate that I would not be playing the game until next year sometime, I finally decided to try a game that had been on my radar for a long time, but I had never given a chance.  That game would be Torchlight, developed by Runic Games.  Torchlight is unabashedly a Diablo clone.  Runic’s own description of the game says from the designers and leads of projects like Diablo and Diablo 2.  Torchlight is fun, comforting, and easy to play.  It is also infuriating.  For a game that came out in 2009, it is not just influenced by Diablo, it does it’s best to be exactly the same thing.

What I want for Christmas from video games

I’m angry.  I was never a Scrooge before.  Holiday time!  Trees! Presents! Santa!  But not anymore.  Oh no those magical childhood days of unicorns and guitar playing chimpanzees (my childhood was freaking great ok) are over.  How can I tell?  I don’t want new video games for Christmas.  Games worthy of our duckets come out every single month of the year now.  What I want heading in to the new year is some stuff to CHANGE.  Games are great, we write about them, you guys come here and read about them (that isn’t totally true, we definitely write about them but most of you come here to check out the pictures of hot chicks from Blizzcon, but whatever) and everybody is happy.  That doesn’t mean there aren’t  some fantastically stupid things going out in the land of interactive media though.  What do I want for Christmas?  I, much like our President, want CHANGE.  Not in a healthy country affirming way, I don’t have time to worry about that.  I want the experience of being a gamer, be it the games or how we play them, to change.  So let’s get on it developers.  Let’s make 2011, which looks like another enormous year for gaming, a step in the right direction.  Or, let’s at least stop being stupid.

Blizzcon 2010: A Journey in Pictures

(If your looking for the more recent article for Blizzcon 2011, it’s HERE)

I was lucky enough to attend Blizzcon 2010, Blizzards sort of yearly festival of nerding the f out.  I figure at this point if you’re a person who is all over every detail of every Blizzard games (such as ME) then you probably have all the newsy stuff digested already.  The aim of this article is not to summarize all the stuff Blizzard dropped on us (which there actually wasn’t a ton) but more give a point of view of what it was like to actually be at the con and walk the hallowed halls of the Anaheim Convention Center.  A quick note:  For some reason my camera imported all these pictures at freaking 4000×3000 pixels.  I’m way too lazy to go through and resize all of these right now, so I’m just posting them in smaller form in the article.  If you want to see a larger version (I KNOW YOU WILL BE CLICKING ON THE HOT NIGHT ELVES) go ahead and click, but I HIGHLY recommend you have the option of fitting pictures to your browser enabled or it gets HUGE.  Other than that, enjoy!

MY REAL NAME ON THE INTERNETZ OHNOES