Diablo III's Darkening of Tristram Event Back for More

This old man remembers playing the first Diablo back in high school (yes, this is literally old school for me), when choices were relatively simple and technology was relatively basic. You had 3 classes, 6 equipment slots, a small inventory, and your spells and gear came from manually distributed stats and tomes. And even then, during the age of folks playing together online over dial-up, Blizzard and Blizzard North put together a solid game that had Game of the Year awards and massive sales to its credit. Now Diablo III, the current iteration that has much more control, content, and character customization, is going old school once more by renewing their Darkening of Tristram event.

Those familiar with the game know that your base of operations is New Tristram, after the destruction of the originally named village after the events of the first game. The Darkening of Tristram is a short and fun add-on that lets players experience the quests and bosses of the first game, which was originally part of Blizzard's Diablo 30th anniversary party last year.

What makes this fun is that in addition to the old bosses and classic loot. Blizzard made the graphics of the levels delightfully retro the second you enter the portal, throwing it way back to how they looked in the original entry into the series. To give you some idea, back in the day on original release, the requirements were a Windows 95 box packing 8MB (yes, megabytes) of memory, a 2X CD-ROM drive (if you've ever seen one before), an SVGA video card, and a simply blazing 60MHz Pentium processor.

For those that have forgotten or have never experienced it, SVGA means 800x600 on a 14 inch monitor. And for online play over said dial-up modem (mine was 33.6k) you needed a full SIXTEEN MEGABYTES. So right now, I'm guessing you're either feeling pretty old or wondering what civilization must have been like on double digit MHz processors and dial-up internet service.

Well kids, respect your elders. Because all of us that lived through it when it was live thought it was simply glorious.

The gameplay stays identical to what you're used to in Diablo III, but quests like the Halls of the Blind, squaring off against Archbishop Lazarus, and standing toe to toe with the (original) Butcher will take you back to a simpler time. And let's not forget the original recipe highest level loot we all farmed and ground out for Lord knows how long - the Godly Plate of the Whale, King's Sword of Haste, and the Archangel's Staff of the Apocalypse - complete with classic Diablo icons. The same eerie music was there too, adding great ambiance while you fight your way to the Dark Lord. You can use any character you have to play through the event, but Blizzard's official recommendation is to start with a level 1 toon to get the full experience. I agree, because I went through it on my Torment IV barbarian and absolute facerolling was full effect.

Even with the original music, the graphics pared down and the throwback gear and in-jokes, the one thing I didn't get from this was the actual fear that came with the first game. It might be hard to believe, but the first Diablo did provide some frights - you won't get the stress we had running away from the Skeleton King when all we could do was walk, and you may not have that jump when you open a door and the Butcher rolls out by surprise screaming "Fresh meat." Damn kids and your GeForces and Radeons and whatnot.

At any rate, you have until the end of January to rack up the achievement rewards and a couple of transmogs, one of which may or may not be a very brutal red soulstone jammed right into your toon's dome.

Oh, and one more fun thing below before you all run out to Old Tristram. Have fun kids.

Diablo III's 3rd Birthday Party? Totally NOT the Cow Level

Happy Birthday Diablo III!

Blizzard’s latest installment in the demon-slaying action RPG series turned 3 this past weekend, and they decided to do something a little special for D3 players by addressing all things bovine and the secret cow level.

The cow level was mostly a running gag by Blizzard that began back in the first game in the Diablo series. If you clicked one of the cows in Tristram enough times, instead of the requisite “moo” the player’s character would break the fourth wall and talk to the player – telling us either “Yup that’s a cow alright!” and reminding us that “Hey, I am no milkmaid!”  As we clicked more, the game cycled through more of these quips from our character. This little easter egg was what prompted the rumor of a secret cow level, which as legend has it, stated a portal to it could be opened if a player clicked a cow enough times. It’s alright, I clicked the hell out of those cows too – it was such a ridiculous thing that I had to see for myself.

Of course while taking the official stance that there is no cow level, they fed the rumor machine by making “thereisnocowlevel” a cheat code in Starcraft.

Diablo II took that rumor and ran with it, creating a cow level that could be accessed combining a tome of town portal and Wirt’s leg in your Horadric cube. It eventually became a popular place for players to grind experience and culminated in a battle with the Cow King.

Diablo III, I suppose sort of in that vein, replaced some treasure goblins with treasure bovines instead. And much like the rainbow goblins open up a portal to Whimsyshire, these treasure cows open up a red portal described as the following:

"Leads to a place that does not exist. The Burning Hells are not responsible for events that transpire there. If you claim to have been to this place, you will be called a liar. Void where prohibited."

The cow level  NOT the cow level is filled with shrines that you will need because of the mad quantity of mad cows coming to get you.  I was playing on Master difficulty with a 40-something monk and those shrines and sweeping wind were my best friends for the next few minutes. Scattered around are farmers, no doubt slain by the new bovine masters, dropping tons of gold on top of the already ridiculous number of chests on the map. I had to make 2 trips to town for salvage to actually collect all the loot.

There are gags harkening back to Diablo II, like a quest from the ghost of the then-slain Cow King, who wryly quips that these cows must have some sort of beef with you on a quest called “Tipping Point.” And if you take a look at the pictures, that’s right, some health globes are actually steaks.

I will close by saying this – this place is difficult. On Master difficulty rare spawns showed up with multiple packs of elites (seriously always with fire chains) and my first time through while dealing with them I stumbled upon the map boss, the Cow Queen. She throws so much lightning that I would rank her as more difficult than many of the bosses in the game just based on the sheer damage output she hurls at you, and in my case my gear wasn’t exactly dripping with resistances. This is one of the rare times I died playing with this character so far – she takes very little damage, and there were times when both potions and breath of heaven were on cooldown, leaving my to my doom. But when you’re done with her you do get 4 radiant chests.

Unfortunately no, there were no bovine-themed legendaries, at least none that dropped for me.

The cow level was over on May 21st, but who knows? From the minds of those that came up with both the cow level and Whimsyshire, you never know what’s next in the realms of Sanctuary. Check out some more images below:

Warlords of Draenor - The Project Manager's Addiction

Every WoW expansion pack that has been released over the past few years was shipped with its own personality.  Over the classic “vanilla” build of the game, Burning Crusade was markedly more difficult but had a lot of good content on your way to level 70 (not to mention replacing your epics on the first quest reward).  Wrath of the Lich Kingcame about and it was a far less challenging than its predecessor, but had what I consider to be some of the best endgame content raids in Ulduar and Icecrown Citadel.  It also brought the story full circle for those of us that nerded out on Warcraft III before Blizzard’s MMO days.  Cataclysm brought back the pure grind-it-out progression and the fall of Deathwing.  Mists of Pandaria?  Well, they had pandas and an eastern flair but I never got into it too deeply.

Now we’re a few weeks into Warlords of Draenor, the most recent expansion pack to the wildly popular World of Warcraft MMO.  And I’ll say it briefly before I get into the meat of this – I like it.  And it’s not wholly because of the content or of the throwbacks that will let you nerd out on character origins (like seeing Akama as a full on badass Exarch instead of an ubroken roaming Outland). This expansion answered the call for player housing from a lot of the fanbase, and they did it with style by implementing the garrison system.  I probably spend more time tending to my garrison and doing garrison-related quests than I do much else.  My main toon has been a level 100 for a week or so and I think I’ve only run 2 dungeons.  And there’s a reason…

My garrison is a giant project.  And one of my real life off-specs is project management.

The whole campaign starts with bringing people in from the Capital and creating a central outpost under your command to run operations in Draenor for whichever faction you represent – be it the Alliance or the Horde – when you have to sign off on the plans from the first buildings.  And from that point of initial construction, 100% of the mechanics involve running things (albeit in a much more toned down way but you know) in any sort of project.  As you level up more things open up to you in terms of crafting, garrison resource generation, heroes from around the land that follow your lead and run missions for you, and how much time and money it’s going to take to get it all done and customize it to exactly what you want.

(In other words, I just listed timelines, stakeholders, project resources, personnel, production/manufacturing, and change controls).

The player picks what buildings they want to be constructed to produce items or unlock certain rewards.  And other buildings are there to provide resources to get there.  My tannery lets my leatherworking department make stuff for me as well as higher grade materials for crafting and selling high end moneymakers.  My inn is a recruiting place where I can interview potential followers.  Hell there’s even a shack for fishing.  Everything can be laid out (almost) exactly like you want it.  And there’s a panel to track all of it.

And then… there’s the garrison missions.

Every mission that’s run has a reward, but they all have a set resource cost and personnel cost.  When you see a slate of available missions it’s up to you to figure out which skillset goes where, how long it will take and whether the cost and time is worth the reward.  Because nobody wants to wait 8 hours for just a tiny handful of coin.  I mean it’s insulting really.

Take the mission “The Infernals’ Fury,” for instance.  To guarantee a win in 4 hours I need level 100 followers with skills to counter the following: Wild Aggression, Massive Strike and Deadly Minions.  As you can see my girl Qiana Moonshadow has wild aggression covered handily, but I’m short on the other two.  My Dwarven associates Delvar and Bruma are my go-to aces to deal with massive strike and deadly minions.  But here’s the problem – they’re on another mission that is taking forever.  And even while they’re spreading the word of badassery in my name, that doesn’t give me something as good as that armor enhancement token.  So I can’t do this one right now – and that’s called opportunity cost, kids.  When they get back they’ll be assigned here because it’s a more important reward.

I can always put in my junior team in though.  They have the same skills, but since they’re not maxed out, my chance of getting that token would drop.  I mean you don’t take Peyton Manning out of the game unless he physically can’t play, know what I’m sayin?

So if Burning Crusade brought the gear, Lich King brought the break, Cataclysm brought the grind, and Pandaria brought the… well, the furries – Warlords brings the project.  And I am loving every second of it.

The e-Sports Boy’s Club: Hearthstone, the IeSF and Gender Segregation

I’m surprised at how long it takes for some companies to learn that the internet is a thing now, and that a good action should be executed before fan or customer backlash forces them to.  This is the case of the male-only championship policy of the International e-Sports Federation (IeSF), how it affected the actions of a Finnish qualifying tournament, and how the internet told them to knock that noise off.

Yesterday afternoon I read some disturbing details on the Hearthstone competition at the Finnish Assembly Summer 2014 eSports tournament coming up at the end of this month.

You had to have two things:

(1) Finnish citizenry

(2) A Y-chromosome

Yes you read that correctly – the Hearthstone tournament was classified as being for Finnish men only.  So all those ladies with their two X chromosomes were asked to hit the bricks.

The winner of this tournament would qualify for the IeSF World Championships later this fall, where they will be representing Finland in the contest.  So I get the part where you have to be a bona fide Finn to enter the digital ring here.  But why – why why why in seven hells weren’t women allowed to play?  It’s 2014, and for the life of me I couldn’t figure out why.

PC Gamer, who picked up and later confirmed this information from a member of the Reddit Hearthstone community named Karuta, seemed to be wondering the same thing.  So they asked Markus Koskivirta, the head admin for the Assembly Summer 2014 Hearthstone Qualifier:

"Your information is indeed correct, the tournament is open to Finnish male players only.  In accordance with the International e-Sports Federation’s (IeSF) tournament regulations, since the main tournament event is open to male players only. This is to avoid possible conflicts (e.g. a female player eliminating a male player during RO8) among other things."

Oh.  So that’s the issue.  The IeSF championships are men only.  So if a woman wins the Finnish tournament, then they wouldn’t be eligible to compete there.  Further, according to the IeSF’s site and Facebook event page, the IeSF even went as far as to have different games for different genders at the worlds.  Male competitors will be playing Hearthstone, Dota 2, Starcraft 2, and Ultra Street Fighter IV while the female competitors will be playing Starcraft 2 and Tekken Tag Tournament 2.  In this case, The organizers of Assembly Summer 2014 are doing it this way because of IeSF rules, and doing it under protest.

So to make it even worse, women were only to compete in 2 games at the championship level while the men’s division got 4.  And not only that, but while they will both be playing Starcraft 2, it won’t be together.

Naturally this caused some waves in the gaming community, as it damn well should. A number of users took the IeSF to task on their Facebook page, and received some answers explanations thinly sliced excuses for those asking questions.  Direct from their Facebook page:

"Let me elaborate a bit on the decision to create both male and female competitions. This decision serves two main goals of the IeSF: 

1 – promoting female players. We know that e-Sports is largely dominated by male players and females players are actually a portion of the overall player base. By hosting a female-only competition, we strive to promote female gaming on a global scale. 

2 – International standards. IeSF is very close to get e-Sports recognized as a true sports like it should be. Part of that efforts is to comply with the international sports regulations. For example, chess is also divided into male / female leagues.But, we want you to know that we listen to you, and appreciate your feedback! Our efforts does not clash with the community opinion – but on the contrary – we are here for the future of e-Sports and will do our best to promote it as best as we can.”

Ok.

As I tried to bend my head around it all I could come up with were different ways of saying WTF:

Why is an all-female gaming competition the only way one can come up with to highlight and promote female gaming on a global scale?  By making it a different thing, what’s being said is that it’s different than men’s gaming, and in this particular case, unequal as well.  If equality was a factor to the IeSF, then there wouldn’t be male and female brackets in their Starcraft 2 contests.  But there are, and that’s absolutely absurd.  The one and singular reason I was able to come up with was that maybe some female gamers would be more open to joining all-female tournaments due to the boy’s club that is e-sports as a whole and the very real sexual harassment that happens in the gaming community. A lot of these cases began coming to light (well, really coming into light publicly) a couple years ago.  We remember Aris Bakhtanians’ creepy-as-sin antics at CrossAssault and his defense that sexual harassment was “part of the culture.”  And we all remember the steady stream of misogyny and vitriol flowing Anna Sarkeesian’s way just by merely suggesting that the design of female video game characters fit lazy stereotypes and tropes.  Last year Starcraft 2 player Eve retired and deleted her social accounts due to sexual harassment.  So there may be a lot of points leading to a women’s division being a logical thing to make women feel more comfortable at events.  But it still feels wrong.

Then Ben Kuchera over at Polygon actually summed up my thoughts on that far more eloquently than I could: “The onus is on YOU to make every player feel welcome, safe and invited.  Segregating the genders is evidence that you have failed at that job, or simply don’t feel you’re up to the task.”  I can’t really put it any better than that.  Now instead, IeSF had decided to lean into that image and strengthen it further.

Are they trying to do something like weight classes like there are in grappling sports? Is it to make eSports the “true sport” it deserves to be?  Well luckily I have some experience in grappling sports, so allow me some words on the matter.

Here’s the thing about e-sports and (hell I’ll say it, someone should) real sports.  They’re different.  I’m into martial arts and have been so competitively in the past, where we’re divided by gender and weight class in competition.  The last time I competed (many moons ago) I fought heavyweight, meaning everyone i was matched up with was like me - men above 219 lbs.  Why?  Because that’s fair, and a fair contest is what it’s all about.  Making me square off against a lightweight weighing in at 130 is crazy, because the odds would be ridiculously stacked in my favor on size and weight.  The thing with games on the other hand, especially one like Hearthstone, is that it’s purely a mental exercise in strategy.  Hearthstone is just about strategy and fun, where a player gets out the effort they put in.  There’s no muscles or weight involved.  It’s mind vs mind.  A match between two opponents of equal skill would not favor one or the other due to physical prowess or strength.  So why can’t everyone compete in an open contest? It’s another message that men and women aren’t on the same level.

Well, with all the posts on the IeSF’s Facebook page and all the backlash on Twitter and Reddit and most social media and the internet at large, As of this morning (Friday July 3, 2014), the IeSF has reversed their position on a men-only championship.  In a release on their site today they publicly changed their tune:

On 2^nd of July, 2014, the IeSF’s policy about gender division, which separates the female division and the male division, has been brought into question. The IeSF has listened to the gaming community and has carefully considered their opinions. Upon hearing these concerns, the IeSF convoked an emergency session of the IeSF Board to respond.As a result, IeSF shall have two event categories: “Open for All” events and events that are reserved for women. The events which were initially set aside as the male division will now be open to all genders, and the events which were initially set as the female division will remain as they were. 

The IeSF Board addressed its reason for maintaining events for women, citing the importance of providing female gamers with ample opportunities to compete in e-Sports—currently a male-dominated industry. Female gamers make up half of the world’s gaming population, but only a small percentage of e-Sports competitors are women. The IeSF’s female-only competitions aim to bring more diversity to competitive play by improving the representation of women at these events. Without efforts to improve representation, e-Sports can’t achieve true gender equality. 

Well damn.

Is it the ideal scenario?  No, not really.  I mean don’t get me wrong, I’m very pleased that the main championship is now open to all and that everyone has a chance to play for the title.  But it still classifies a women’s division as a separate entity from the main championship.  Arguments can be made for it along the same data I presented a little ways back up this page, but it’s a band-aid on a much deeper wound.

The problem is a culture that prevents everyone to feel safe and included as part of that culture.  While change – albeit very slow change – is happening, that culture has a long way to go for real intrinsic transformation into a self-policing community where everyone feels welcomed, and more importantly, safe.  And until that’s achieved, more and more of these band aids will have to be applied.  And while yes, they may stop the bleeding for a short time, the underlying cut will still remain.  I wish there were answers for an easy fix, but systemic change is anything but a speedy process.

While the IeSF made a change for the main championship, it took a great amount of internet backlash to do it.  The fact still remains that without input from the masses, they themselves thought a men only championship was a good idea.  So I’ll call this a good step in the right direction, but with a long way to go for the community.

PAX East 2014: In-Depth with Blizzard

PAX East had a lot of great things to see all over the huge show floor at the Boston Convention Center – enough to confuse a person about which booths to hit first and which games to demo.  Luckily for me, we’re spoiled with shiny media badges, which gave us an extra hour before general admission to roam peacefully and make that decision.  As a dude that has played Warcraft and Diablo games for over a decade, I decided to hit up Blizzard first. Last year’s PAX East being their launch platform for Hearthstone, I was excited to see what they had in store for us this year - and as far as I’m concerned, they didn’t disappoint.  While Blizzard crew was still setting up the last of the demo stations, I settled in to try out World of Warcraft’s upcoming expansion, Warlords of Draenor, and their upcoming free-to-play mashup barn burner of a title, Heroes of the Storm. 

Warlords of Draenor @ PAX East 2014

World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor

Let me be straight here – what I played was definitely not a complete representation of the game.  The demo was limited, but I’m not going to hold that against them – they had an alpha build, and for those of you that have never worked in software or game testing, an alpha build is early earrrlllyy goins on.  So naturally I wasn’t expecting everything to be in final form.  That’s just how alphas go.  At least they were giving us what they got. The demo allowed players to see all the skins for all of the genders and races (including the updated Alliance models), but restricted player selection to Horde characters only.  It made sense to me really, since the first quest is literally speaking with Durotan in this tweaked timeline, and it wouldn’t exactly be a Gnome carrying that out now would it?  So I made a Blood Elf hunter (deviating from my Night Elven lineage), cranked him as brown as a Blood Elf can get and away I run.  The problem was that whenever I summoned a pet, debug windows came up instead of said pet, and I got good and killed in a sea of mobs despite my best efforts trying to close windows.  That’s ok though. The gameplay (at least as far as I can tell for hunters) is not drastically different at level 90 when you just start out.  BUT if big numbers jumping all over your screen is the life you're about then prepare to make an adjustment. We were equipped in character level 90 greens comparable to Mists of Pandaria endgame gear, but the numbers and damage I was doing was tremendously downsized.  With this expansion they've gotten away from the crazy exponential increase in stat values and damage, meaning I wasn't throwing out six-figure damage with my critical strikes like I'm used to seeing.  It doesn't mean that it takes that much longer to down enemies though - their HP is scaled to match your decreased stats.

Alliance Garrison

Thank the lords of Azeroth for that too.  Right now my hunter is walking around with half a million HP unbuffed, and I get 1000+ agility from just my bow.  My endgame bow in Wrath of the Lich King didn't even break 200.  The numbers now are just getting out of control and more or less have lost all meaning when my 140k DPS is the low number on Recount charts. The big change with Warlords  that everyone’s excited about (and with good reason) is the concept of the garrison – it’s like having your own little Warcraft III style homebase with peasants running back and forth gathering materials for you.  I wasn't allowed to take game footage pictures, but I got some screenshots from the press kit, and as more data is available I'll make sure to get that out to you kids.  I got in on the closed beta, so when I kick that off I'll have some real goods for you.

Heroes of the Storm Alpha Character Select

Heroes of the Storm 

Is there anyone that doesn’t love a good crossover?  How much fun did we have with Super Smash Brothers?  Kingdom Hearts saw Disney and Square-Enix collide.  The Marvel universe squared off against Capcom a number of times behind the controller, and even went head to head with DC Comics on the page before that.  And we love it.  There’s something about different universes coming together that is just pure meta appeal for the geek inside all of us. So what happens then when one company has enough isolated universes to do it within itself?  The answer is Heroes of the Storm – a crossover that pits the heroes (and villains) of the Warcraft, Starcraft, and Diablo universes against each other in a good old-fashioned melee. Now you see the thing is this - upon first glance this looks like the MOBA style (multiplayer online battle arena) we’re used to seeing in League of Legends and DOTA.  Do not be fooled though, it’s not.  Well not completely.  I mean it does have the concept of lanes, and you have to take said lanes to crush your foes.  But you don’t have to do a million things to be successful or have fun.  It’s like they stripped out all the annoying parts of the MOBA genre (sorry MOBA fans) and… the only way I can put it really is that it combines that with some old Warcraft III charm, down to unit jokes.

Hero - Baby Murloc Murky

The heroes are split into different types - Warrior, Assassin, Support and Specialist, each bringing a different type of play style into the game.  One of the interesting new heroes they revealed under the Support style was Brightwing the Faerie Dragon.  She has the ability to not only heal but to blink from ally to ally throwing heals anywhere on the map.  With her other skills she can be a pretty complex hero to play.  Tyrael on the other hand is a Warrior class, primarily dealing damage with high defense, having a less complex play style.

... and then there's Murky.  Yes Murky the Murloc is a hero because as the developers put it, "we decided to make a hero that was awful" and one to consider the "Wile E Coyote" of the game.  Murky has almost no health and no attack, but lays an egg before charging in.  When he dies, in a few seconds he will just respawn from the egg - over and over again.  It was absolutely hilarious to see Murky use this method against Diablo and ultimately run him off with a Murloc army.  So how's that for varied play style?  Each hero has his or her own signature attacks to customize it that much further.

Arthas calling in an air strike from Sapphiron

As far as skins and upgrades are concerned, yes there are some for purchase, but there are also some that can be unlocked just by playing a particular hero a lot without a fee, including what they call "ultimate skins."  There's some humor in these too, like having the abomination Stitches in a bikini. I'll let that one sink in for a bit. I'll be looking forward to when I can get my hands on HotS for real.

User Agreements are Long and Boring, but Sometimes EULA Get Rewarded

You guys know I always try to have your back on the technical front.  Whether it's just some advice on new tech that's coming out, game previews, tech law or tips on keeping your digital life safeguarded, I like helping you out.  And today what I want to talk about a bit is a little thing you all know and love (ok maybe loathe) called the end user license agreement, or EULA for short.

Sometimes it comes titled as a basic user agreement or terms of use, but whatever it's called it usually follows the same format - a monstrosity of a document drafted in some strange melange of english and legalese filling anywhere between 3 and 30 screens for the user to scrutinize, read through and process in their impatient brainspaces.  You've all been there - for gamers there's a healthy sized EULA in a lot of games before you're allowed to play, especially in MMO's.  For the IT crowd there are all sorts of licensing agreements with operating systems and most off the shelf software, requiring you to agree before you can install them on your machine to use.

Of course you could always say you don't agree to the terms, but then that would hinder your gameplay or studious productivity.  But you don't say no, do you?  You've never said no.  You've never done anything but scroll alllll the way to the bottom, check "I agree" and hit OK to move on.  Trust me, you are not alone.  TONS of people go through the same motions.  The issue is that by doing so you miss all the rules and all the meat of the agreement between you and the publisher and probably don't even know what you agreed to.  It could be a rule you don't want to agree to but just did.  Or something that wouldn't normally strike you as obvious.  If you have certain Apple software they make you agree not to use their stuff for developing nuclear weapons.  A while back if you ran Safari for Windows, you may not be allowed to install it on Windows.  If you play Diablo III for example then what you agreed to was that you owed taxes to the IRS for any profits made on the real auction house.  OR - it'll make you feel like an idiot when you post ridiculous things to Facebook.  Yeah, seriously.  It's like signing a document without reading it.

I once didn't play World of Warcraft for a two days after install because of a EULA.  I read the whole thing roughly 4 times because I swore there was a clause in there that could be interpreted as not being allowed to play in a hotel room while I'm traveling. It worked out ok, but I still had to know.

So it made me super happy to see a little experiment that was being run on the forums over at Technical Illusions.  In case you're not aware about what TI is all about, they have an extremely cool device called the CastAR under development - a set of glasses that effectively and awesomely delivers an augmented reality environment to the wearer, complete with a wide array of controls and slick head tracking.  Their forums, much like many forums you can sign up for to use, includes a terms of use/EULA that all users have to agree to before they let you on and take part in forum discussions.  And to make it a little fun, they included the opportunity for reward if you actually had the patience to read all the way through.  The final text? Here it is:

"Any information you provide on these forums will not be disclosed to any third party without your complete consent, although the staff cannot be held liable for any hacking attempt in which your data is compromised. Congratulations you read this far, send the word Toby to jenesee at technical illusions dot com to be entered for a drawing By continuing with the sign up process you agree to the above rules by Technical Illusions"

I'll give you a second to read that last little section.  Even being at the very end of the agreement, how many people do you think would have sent "Toby" over to Jenesee out of the first 100 users?  Three.  That's right, three.  So as she mentions in her experiment data, the same percentage of users that caught the clause are the same as the percentage of people in America that still use dial-up.  Yikes.  In this case the consequences were a little more friendly - sometimes reading the EULA gave a user a chance for a fun reward rather than agreeing to something accidentally.  Congratulations to those three Technical Illusions forum users.

And I guess a kudos to the 3% of you that seemingly read your EULA's.

Gear and the Value of Time in World of Warcraft [tf charts]

I've got part III of my Windows 8 series pretty much buttoned up, but figured I'd get this in before I get to my final thoughts on the OS.

Today I logged into World of Warcraft after a long while, and had to download all of the updated tools and the pre-patch for the upcoming Mists of Pandaria expansion set to drop in just a couple weeks.  Having played since WoW original recipe, I've spent a sick number of hours in the realms of Azeroth - enough that I'm a little frightened to see the "/played" stat that the game provides for all of its players.  Through that time there was one very real statistic that all players would agree to - and that's the gear grind.  It takes countless hours to level up a character to max and at that point go through the motions to get the gear to allow seeing end-game content.  Cataclysm made that a little easier in one of its later patches with the Raid Finder feature, but the main idea stays the same:

With all the time it takes to equip those delicious epic items, which may add up to days, at least a couple of them can be replaced after 5-10 quests in the next expansion's starting zone.  And the trend looks like it's going to hold - straight through level 100 when the time comes.

Welcome to Pandaria, kids.

Death, Taxes, and Diablo III

As I have spent the majority of my 30 years in the Philadelphia area, it’s only appropriate that I start with some words from the greatest Philadelphian in history, Benjamin Franklin.  He did a lot of great things, mainly illustrating his well-versedness in badassery, but it was something he said that was relevant to today’s topic.  While speaking of the Constitution in a letter to Jean-Baptiste Leroy (not of Jenkins lineage), he said: “in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.”  It became a commonly used phrase over the next 200+ years, as the validity of the statement really has withstood the test of time.  And now, in 2012, it can also be applied in our digital age. Surprisingly not even Blizzard’s Diablo universe can escape.

Anyone who plays Diablo III, or actually any player that has played any game in the Diablo series can attest to the first half of ol’ Ben’s epithet.  Death is certain.  That’s become more true with every iteration of the game.  With always-on single player mode, even more so.  In Hardcore mode, even more.  But what they may not realize is that the other half of the saying also holds in the realm of Sanctuary.  Yes that’s right, taxes.

Let me jump back to World of Warcraft for a second before I continue for those of you that aren’t familiar.  In that game, Blizzard had implemented an auction house system to buy and sell items in game between users on the same server.  Someone selling an item could do so by holding an auction or setting an outright buyout price.  This concept spilled over into the world of Diablo III, where the same kind of auction house has been put in place.  The difference is that in WoW all of the transactions (well, legal ones) were strictly based on gold, the in-game currency.  Diablo 3 has a somewhat evolved version of that concept with two auction houses – one for in-game gold transactions, and one for real money.  Yes that’s right, you can buy and sell in-game items with other players for real cash monies – cold hard American greenbacks.   And it’s really changed how the game works.

So this may be a method to cut illegal real money trade for digital goods, but let’s be real, there’s plenty of money to be made in making illegal trade both legal and regulated.  It works as a continuous revenue stream for Blizzard too, since Diablo III’s not subscription based like WoW. Oh yes, they get their cut.

The real money auction house wasn’t available to players until June 12^th, but when it did launch it kind of got my gears turning.  The cost structure is pretty basic – the seller sells, the buyer buys, and Blizzard gets up to 15% of the transaction fee for brokering the deal.  So if one was so inclined, they could turn the game into a personal revenue stream to make a little extra money on the side, after Blizzard takes their fee.  Doing it enough and doing it well could in theory fetch a player some good dough, as players with disposable income clamor for shortcuts to legendary loots.  So once you get to that place, where you’re making some profit from the game, you might have to start thinking about taxes.  No, not the 15% Blizzard cut or the 6% most of you paid when you purchased the game.  I’m talking about income tax that you could owe to the IRS off of your Diablo III profits.

Taxes are a tricky thing, especially in the digital age.  What you owe doesn’t just come from a W-2 or a 1099 anymore.  A lot of stuff people buy is online, untaxed, meaning in most places you have to declare those purchases on your tax returns and pay what’s called a “use tax.”  And sometimes people make money off of other things like hobbies and side businesses.  There have been a lot of arguments on the battle.net and Blizzard forums about this exact topic with respect to the real money auction house – so  yes or no, are your real money auction house earnings taxable?

Tushar’s short answer: YES.

Tushar’s long answer: Anecdotally, yes.  I’m not a tax professional and for any concerns you should contact one should you be living real money auction house fabulous.  Then again I don’t think I really need to be a tax pro for this, because as it turns out, I can read English.

You see unfortunately, reading the terms of use and other end-user agreements isn’t something the average user feels it’s necessary to do, even when there’s money concerned.  So first some advice – if you are one of those people, start reading these things.  Second, it’s laid out plain as day in section 10 of the Diablo III Auction House Terms of Use (that all of you have already agreed to if you’re using it):

10. TAXES. You are responsible for taxes incurred when you use the Auction Houses. All auctions are deemed to occur in the United States of America and are subject to all applicable state and federal tax laws and regulations. Proceeds from auction sales may be considered income for tax purposes. You should consult with a tax specialist to determine your tax liability for these transactions.

There you go kids.  “Proceeds from auction sales may be considered income for tax purposes.”  But now here’s the fun part – you’re the one that has to report it, as folks that make money off of services like eBay do.  Blizzard's not your employer in this scenario.  You made money selling your digital wares to another player, and they were just the agent.  I’m pretty sure you’re not going to be getting a W-2 in the mail from them before tax time.  Chances are if you’re not the type of person that reports online purchases for use tax, you’re not going to be reporting this either, and you’ll probably be ok because you don’t make a lot of money from it.  If you are in fact making a few grand on it, kudos to you and your keen understanding of game economics.

But it gets even more interesting.  Let's consider for a second the stock market.  I buy a $100 issue and tomorrow it increases in value to $110.  Technically I made $10, but I never realized the profit.  It's not real cash in my pocket.  So I don't pay tax on that $10 I made until I sell the stock to realize the profit, and it becomes real cash in my pocket.  Blizzard has a digital wallet system that seems to kind of work the same way and in my opinion a parallel could be drawn.  Technically what's in your Blizzard wallet isn't "real" cash, and may be exempt from taxation.  If you're working through PayPal on the other hand, I believe they're now required by the IRS to report your PayPal income as a third party settlement organization. 

Bottom Line?  If you make income - any income, it's reportable to the IRS.  Not always taxable, but reportable.  There's no explicitly listed  minimum value that makes income reportable.  In this particular case, in my opinion, I would say anything below the cost of the game wouldn't be considered income.  So if you made a few bucks on the real money auction house, just report it.  It'll make your head hurt far less, minimize your tax risk, however little it may be, and you still come out in the black.

Just keep your receipts, kids.

36. blizzard says it's not cool to cheat

and i'm sure a large majority of the population would agree with that.  it's why tiger woods can't shill gatorade anymore.  why bernie madoff went to jail.  why everyone is suspicious of the banker in monopoly.  and it is, of course, why everyone hates rogues in world of warcraft.

damn rogues...  dirty, cowardly, cheap bastard rogues...

but i digress.

for those who don't know, blizzard entertainment is the brainchild behind three great franchises - adventure series diablo, as well as real time strategy games warcraft and starcraft.  traditionally it can be said that they know how to make a game.  today's mayhem concerns the latter franchise, starcraft, which saw the highly popular starcraft II launch earlier this year.  it opens up questions on fairness and to what extent a player actually owns the game they purchase.

naturally cheating in an online realm would have its consequences, making one's opponents not stand a chance against you, regardless in skill or strategy (ugh stupid rogues).  in addition, it also brings risk of a ban.  which is precisely what happened in starcraft II.  5000 players who were using cheat hacks were banned from the game for, well, obvious reasons - they cheat.  so normal circumstances considered, i guess blizzard is acting on part of the good and on behalf of other players - the playing field has to be level for any real online competition and fair play to exist, and encountering cheating players makes others just want to turn the game off.  i've been in a number rounds of counter strike, quake, and other first person shooters for example where it was clear as day that one of the opposing players was using an aim-bot.  i immediately dropped game to find other ones.  playing on the wrong end of those conditions makes it impossible to achieve the end goal of playing most games in the first place - to have fun.

but there's a slight anomaly in the story here - the cheating players (those infamous 5000) that blizzard has chosen to ban are using cheats in single player missions.  not against other people.  single player. against the starcraft AI., i.e. "the computer."  anyone who is familiar with blizzard's past releases would probably agree that this seems extremely strange, given blizzard's practices on single player cheating in the past.  they actually included cheat codes as part of the software in their real time strategy games, starting with the original warcraft onward.  for instance, typing WHOSYOURDADDY in the console would activate god mode in warcraft 3, meaning your units took no damage and basically destroyed everything they touched in one hit.  but do it now, and blizzard will bring the hammer down upon you.

and who can forget the level skip code from the first starcraft? THEREISNOCOWLEVEL.  a classic.

and why?  achievements.  at least that's one of their reasons.

some of my own achievements, from world of warcraft

that's right, achievements.  little digital awards that often provide no real value aside from being able to brag to cohorts in your online community about all the things you've done.  blizzard added an achievement system similar to PS3's trophies and xbox 360 achievements to their blockbuster MMO world of warcraft in october 2009.  which for that particular game works well - earning certain achievements for great feats actually granted you in-game benefits and perks that are otherwise unavailable.  but this stock achievement concept has since expanded into blizzard's online community, batle.net, which bridges a player's feats in all three of their franchises - warcraft, starcraft, and diablo - into a single player account and public identity.  blizzard's argument now is that if cheats are overlooked in single player missions, then achievements in starcraft II would be rendered meaningless - as the degree of difficulty would be outright nullified.  which i can understand, BUT...

what does that mean as far as a user using the software they paid for as the see fit in a single player setting?  it's a weird line that's been completely blurred between single player and multiplayer in this case - players can play by themselves running single player campaign missions, not caring about achievements or online play, but the publisher can still see them because they have to log on to battle.net first to play at all.  and what's the big deal?  no one gets hurt, and someone who wants to play alone can play alone.  cheating against the computer doesn't affect anyone but that player.  and they paid for that right, damn it.  these days online components of games are getting far more common.  can't i just play on my own and obliterate everything to please my own twisted whims?


what makes no sense is that there is a way around this.  what's even more odd is that blizzard has done it before.  back in the days of the first diablo, two versions of battle.net existed - battle.net and open battle.net.  why is it so hard for blizzard to have a line of demarcation letting the system know whether a player is playing open against the computer or "for achievement" against the user and act accordingly?  i mean there is a "guest" mode, but that removes all social interaction with your friends list and other social functions.

i absolutely cannot be the first one to think of this.  does this solution seem over-simplified?  i don't think so - it feels like a pretty practical application of occam's razor to me.

jason schreier in wired magazine's game|life blog did a piece on an anonymous gamer affected by this going by the moniker gm0ney.  you can read it here for some more detailed information on what happened.  cheatshappen.com, the site where the starcraft hack was downloaded from, also address this on their site.