Hypn.za.net | @hypn

Thoughts on Diablo 3 (beta) classes

These are some of my thoughts on the difference Diablo 3 classes. I’m not a serious gamer, and this isn’t an attempt at theory crafting or suggesting that any of the classes are imbalanced. Item drops are random, and can make a huge difference to the damage your character does as well as it’s survivability – in my playing I used what items dropped (that I could equip), so these comparisons aren’t entirely “fair” in that regard, but I still think my points are valid. It’s also worth mentioning that I didn’t try leveling up my characters as much as possible in each area, nor did I loot every chest I found etc, so my characters were (all) weaker and less equipped than I’d imagine most players to be… so do keep this in mind when reading my thoughts below, I just wanted to make sure my characters had to work for their kills, and see what the experience would be like.

1. Demon Hunter:
• best (least annoying) male voice so far, looks pretty cool, and who doesn’t like the idea of dual-wielding crossbows
• felt a bit weak at the start of the game, got a lot stronger/easier as the game progressed and I leveled up
• personally not fond of having to keep running away from enemies (so they can’t hit me) while shooting them
• Rapid Fire works best if you hold down the key/mouse-button to use it, rather than single casting it (silly me) – does a fairly good job of taking down big mobs or groups of them
• Skeleton King battle felt relatively easy – the Chakram took care of the skeletons he summoned, and being ranged kept me out of (most of) his attacks

Diablo Lore + Diablo 2 Postmortem

Diablo 3 is due out this year, possibly even next month, and I for one am looking forward to it! I play a lot of World of Warcraft, mainly working the Auction House and making gold, and Diablo 3 is going to have a “real money” Auction House. It probably wont make me rich, but it’s always nice if your hobby generates some income ;)

Back on topic, there’s a great Gamasutra article titled “Postmortem: Blizzard’s Diablo II” which gives you an inside look in to the development that went in to Diablo 2 and lessons learned from Diablo 1, etc – some interesting stuff.

Next up are three great YouTube videos by “Force Strategy Gaming“, covering the Diablo Lore leading up to Diablo 3, a great way to catchup before the releases:

Part 1 – Pre-Diablo:

Twitter Avatar Image Hackery

Twitter does something I consider to be poor security-wise… not renaming, or removing EXIF information from, uploaded avatar images. There are a few potential security issues around this, all of which I’ve personally come across:

1. The image might be named with the person’s first and last name – potentially disclosing more information than they intended to in their Twitter profile
2. Many people download their Facebook Profile picture to use on Twitter  – Facebook renames uploaded files to include the Facebook user ID, allowing you to easily find their Facebook profile (as opposed to trying to search on their first and last name)
3. If the original filename is unique enough you can often find other related pictures just by Goolging
4. You can use something like Jeffrey’s Exif viewer to extract EXIF information from the image – often telling you what type of camera/phone the user has

Sure, they’re small things, but for anyone wanting to Social Engineer the target it could certainly help. The frustrating part: it would take only few lines of code for Twitter to prevent this, and it really is (in my opinion) a “best practice” they’re simply not bothering to follow.