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I've mentioned previously that I signed up for the World of Warcraft Annual Pass, wherein I agree to pay for a year of WoW game time, and I get some stuff for it. If interested, here's the full official legalize Terms of Use, detailing what I have to do, and what they'll give to me in return.
A couple days ago I paid for my second six-month subscription, making it 12 months paid for. Hooray, I fulfilled my obligation! I went to go cancel the subscription, and it won't let me. I've contacted support about it, and so far they say that I can't - I have to keep having my credit card on file, and agree to be charged the second I run out of in game time.
They did helpfully say that, since I had some game time on my account already when I agreed to it, that I do have a window of 10 days, six months from now, that I can then go in and the automatic system will let me cancel it. If I miss that, woops, I'll have to be charged again. Nope, can't just cancel it now, I have to wait and do it myself.
I've talked to three different customer service people, through their ticket system. I'll see if there's a fourth this time. I'm not going to let this go.
I was going to post something deep and philosophical but I forgot it and have been unable to stop watching this epic thing.
Something just happened that took me from "ambivalent about the game, just disliking the policies" to "oh fucking damnit, what a piece of shit".
Looks like, every Tuesday morning, like WoW, they're going to take Diablo down for maintenance just before I get home, and not going to bring it up and make it available for play until a couple hours after I go to bed.
No, I can't play single-player. The option's not there.
I'm on the fence whether I'm mad enough to email them angrily and telling them to take the game off my account, and not count it as a sale. I know they say vote with your wallet, but I got the game for free, so that would be the only reasonable way I could "return" it.
I've heard really good things about this other game called Torchlight, which I've heard is exactly the opposite of all the frustrations I've had with D3.
Supposedly, were I a normal person, the concept of a glass being half full,
and a glass being half empty, would conjure up different interpretations.
This is one of those nonsensical things I was baffled by as a child, and
the only way I eventually learned one from the other was the same way I
learned right from left: one was optimism, one was pessimism, and that's
that. All attempts to explain the supposed logic behind why has fallen flat
to me, since I can come up with equally plausible arguments why they should
be the opposite.
So, as part of agreeing to play WoW for a year, which I was going to do
anyway, I got this game called Diablo 3 for free. And it's been somewhat of
a disappointment. If I hadn't gotten it for free, I certainly wouldn't pay
money for it.
Hear me out. It's less what the game itself is, and more my expectations
and preferred playstyle.
First, let's start with expectations. It's an online-only game that is tied
to an account. Online-only means that if your Internet connection goes
down, you can't play; if the company decides they don't like you, you can't
play; if your playstyle is too unconventional, they can ban you; when they
decide to stop supporting it, you can't play. Tied to an account means you
can't resell it like a used game, or give it away, or even let your friends
play (since it requires the same user name, password, and authentication
token as my WoW account). So it's a much more disposable product, in that
there's all kinds of restrictions on it, and they've disabled alternative
uses.
Playstyle, I enjoy cheating and godmode and all that other stuff in a
single player game. Especially RPGs, where there may be a really cool
story, but most of the gameplay ends up being just running around farming
for xp or drops. Cheating, via insane xp multiplication, powerful items,
or just plain being invincible is merely a fast forward past boring
content, in much the same way I can skip around in a book or home movie.
And even modern games have have the exact same enemies you were fighting at
level 1 but they're a different color. Diablo 3 does not allow me to cheat
like this. Some gamers may enjoy the hours of mindless grinding, but I
don't.
The actual gameplay itself isn't that bad, for an action rpg. So far it's
2D, with 3D rendering and isometric view, so I don't have to waste time
fighting the camera controls. It's a little repetitive in that all you
really do between story tidbits is slaughter endless waves of simple
enemies. It does have some neat in-the-field lore moments, where you get a
notification and can play a voice clip telling you about a newly
encountered enemy. Unfortunately, most of the time for me this voiceover is
drowned out by the next wave of enemies, so I can't fully enjoy it.
Multiplayer is an option, and can be fun, but some of the inherent
"features" are a big turn off for me. In order to play with a friend, you
have to also give them permission to view when you log on to any Blizzard
game, not just Diablo, and it also tells them extra information, such as
which character you're playing, what level they are, and their in-game
location. This feature cannot be temporarily disabled. The only way to
disable it is to unfriend them, at which point you can no longer play
together, and requires you to re-ask and them to approve another friend
request.
I give it a 2/5, because it's probably a pretty fun game, but extremely
restrictive and a privacy nightmare. I'll be on the lookout for a pirate
copy that fixes some of these defective-by-design policy flaws.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wardencl
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/PvPG
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratagu
http://www.scummbar.com/games/monkey1/s
Need to reboot my phone, so here's some links I was looking at.
The last few days have been interesting. I had two days off, one easy day of work during which Diablo 3 launched, and then two more days off. Most of the time spent since the middle part has been playing the aforementioned game, or talking to friends I would be playing with if the game had been up.
I'm still frustrated that, even if I wanted to play only the single-player aspect of the game, I still have to connect and log into an online service. If they have server problems, I can't play, which was what was happening for half the time that I had set aside to mess around with the game.
I also had a call from a client, back when I was trying to do the independent computer contractor thing that only ever got to one extended neighbor-friend list, who remembered me and was having some problems. He got a little careless with his laptop, and visited some sites he shouldn't, and popup advertisements started showing up. Whole computer slowed down, and eventually got to the point where it crashed with a STOP message. He didn't have any important data on there, so it seemed pretty clear, just wipe the thing and reload Windows, which I could do at my place overnight, and bring him back his laptop the next day.
So I took it home with me, set it in a corner, and proceeded to play Diablo 3 for 12 hours straight. Then realized I didn't have my trusty Windows reinstaller, so I had to wait a few hours to download it again, so I could match his version and product key. In the meantime, I did the usual hard drive scan to make sure it was ok, and memory scan to make sure that was ok.
Did my usual weekly breakfast with a friend thing, then when that was done, burned the boot disc I needed and finally got started, 16 hours after I picked up the laptop. I had forgotten how long it takes to go through 17 rounds of updates and installing basic software and all that - by the time I was done I had been up 25 hours straight. I didn't want to go to bed then, because it'd screw up my third shift sleeping schedule, and besides, I had already committed to a raid in WoW that night.
I deliver the laptop to a very happy customer who loved the fresh speed of it, collected some cash, came on home, and settled down to power through lack of sleep with sheer willpower and plenty of coffee.
I remember we were raiding Icecrown Citadel on heroic 25-person difficulty, with about 12 people, I forget which boss we were at exactly, but I suddenly woke up with my face on the keyboard and the contents of the right third of my desk, including my second monitor, on the floor. I was barely lucid enough to recognize this was probably a bad thing, and just crawled to bed.
Woke up briefly to use the restroom (yaaay lots of coffee) and realized if I kept sleeping I'd do the sleep schedule ruining thing I was worried about. So here I am with some real rest in me, going to plow through a bit longer, with the aid of MOAR COFFEE, until a respectable time to sleep.
The episode didn't come without its hardware consequences. Got a crack in the casing of my big box fan where the monitor hit it. LCD initially looked like it had some bruising, but has actually faded a lot since I put it back into place. USB wifi adapter cracked open, luckily seems to still work after I duct taped it back together. Keyboard had water knocked onto it, and is pushing nearby keys when I type in the iopkl;',./ area. I pulled it out for cleaning later, and plugged in my clanky old IBM Model M after getting nostalgic for it in one of ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=92.1){kind=small}
zorinlynx's recent posts.
I hadn't realized how loud this keyboard was before. I'll probably have to pull it and put on another quieter one, sadly. If I had the space to devote to a private office-like area in my own house, you bet I'd have this thing on there, but it's probably not at its best when I mainly use it while someone is trying to sleep on the other side of a thin wall.
So, next time I have the bright idea that, when I accidentally stay up too late, the solution really is not to stay up half again as long.
So, this really large game retailer in Australia apparently just folded,
taking with them the money that people paid to pre-order Diablo 3.
Blizzard felt sorry for them, and, even though they're under no obligation
to do so, is going to cut them a deal: order the digital copy, send in the
retail receipt, and they'll give a refund.
This is one of the ways Blizzard sets itself apart from other publishers,
whose ideas of customer relations is to punch customers in the balls then
kick them in the teeth.
http://i.wow.joystiq.com/2012/05/14/bli
So this game called Diablo 3 has been released, and I have a copy. Who
wants to play with me and be my dia-bro?
Crofty#1482 is my tag
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