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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:

Some Team Fortress 2 Fun

Looks like I’m getting better at playing Spy ;)

Prince of Persia – Source Code Notes

Here’s some retro geeky awesomeness… Prince of Persia source code notes!

Download (404kb)

WoW – “Market Watcher” addon

I found an addon yesterday, called “Market Watcher“, which monitors Auction House prices of items you set and then draws graphs so you can see how the prices have changed. From the site:

Market Watcher is an addon that scans the auction house and records data for specified items and assists in daily auction house shopping in general. When the addon is set to record, a price history can be displayed to assist in determining a value for items of interest.

What makes Market Watcher unique from other auction house addons is that it records multiple scans instead of just the most recent. This obviously uses a great deal of memory, so only scans of items specified by the user will be recorded. The saving of multiple scans allows for a more accurate determination of value, and allows the addon to deduce if some auctions were actually sold, so you can see which auctions are actually selling as opposed to basing a value off the prices of auctions that may not be selling at all.

While it’s a great addon, it does something I don’t like: it doesn’t let you open your trade skill windows while the Auction House window is open – the reason for this is because (normally) opening a trade skill window closes the Auction House window, but if you’re using the Auctioneer addon there’s an option to “protect auction house window” to allow you to have both open. To remove this “protection”/”feature” of Market Watcher, open “MarketWatcher.lua” in your “Interface\AddOns\MarketWatcher” folder, and find “UIParent:UnregisterEvent(“TRADE_SKILL_SHOW”);” (line 255 in the 5th Aug 2009 version) and put two minus signs (–) in front, to comment it out.

You’ll need to restart WoW, or do a “/reloadui” to apply these changes.

WoW Item Info desktop app

Just a quick post to tell you about a new app we’ve made, called “WoW Item Info” (we’ll probably re-name it), which lets you view a World of Warcraft item’s info anyway – it’s a program with runs in your system tray, and when you highlight text (the item name) and press Windows key and W (Win+W) if fetches the item info from WowHead.com and displays it. There may still be a lot of bugs, and there will be a new version released shortly.

Note: Might not work in Skype, depending on your “Pressing Ctrl+V will” settings (under “IM & SMS”, under “Show advanced options”)

UPDATE: Fixed an issue reading in the icon, preventing the program from working :| Will probably release a new version shortly with a better quality (larger) icon.

Credits:
AutoHotKey – http://www.autohotkey.com
WowHead’s API – http://www.wowhead.com
Titan’s “xpath” – http://www.autohotkey.net/~Titan/#xpath

Download: WowItemInfo1.1.zip (201kb)

Greets to:
Ultrazor, Kymeara and Durgath. Taera (various EU realms)
GameThreat (http://www.gamethreat.net)
“Pap en Vleis” on Twilight’s Hammer EU (http://www.papenvleis.za.net)
“Murder of Crows” on Bronzebeard EU (http://www.murderofcrows.ws)

TF2: de-rez: Team Fortress 2

I found this Team Fortress 2 video here, thanks to ubercharged.net:

TF2: “Your Performance As”

I found this on “Kovorka’z Gravel Pit” and like it, so here it is:

I’ve been trying to get back into playing as Spy, I think I’m in the middle of the graph at the moment ;)

TF2: Gogol Rush video

Another really good (funny) TF2 video, called “Gogol Rush” :)

Hypn’s QFG2VGA Beard Hack

I wrote a hack that lets you keep selling the Whirling Dervish’s beard to Keapon Laffin in the remake of Quest for Glory 2, like you could do in the original version of the game (it was a bug). It’s probably really buggy, and might crash your game and/or corrupt your save game(s) so use at your own risk – and what ever you do, please do NOT report bugs while using this hack on the AGDInteractive forums… this hack is not their doing/fault/problem/whatever.

That said, feel free to download: Hypn’s QFG2VGA Beard Hack v1.0.zip (3kb)

UPDATE: this hack only works on version 1.0 of QFG2VGA, and not on the latest version they’ve released.