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:

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.

Diablo III and "Always On" DRM

[Article first published as Diablo III and "Always On" DRM on Blogcritics.]

Over time, publishers have resorted to multiple methods of enforcing digital rights management (DRM) on many forms of media, but it started with games.  Of course this had its humble beginnings in software keys, but some games had some fun with it.  The very old Monty Python’s Flying Circus game for example (yeah, it existed) was DRM equipped way back in 1990, where to begin my quest I had to correctly identify a brick of cheese based on a list provided with the game.  LucasArts had a similar system with the Monkey Island series of games in the 1990’s, having the user match up three sections of the included “dial-a-pirate” and enter the corresponding code  (earlier titles also featured DRM).  But of course soon a bunch of companies dropped the gamification of DRM methods (for lack of a better term) and started going the more straightforward route.  More recently Ubisoft led the charge with their hated “always on” DRM system – meaning that even if you wanted to play one of their single player games, the game still had to check in with Ubisoft servers to make sure your copy was legit.  Internet not working?  Well that sucks for you, Chuckles, because neither is your game.

The reason I bring this up is due to the number of users having always on issues with the still-fresh-out-of-the-oven release of Diablo III – including myself.  Last night I joined a game with a few friends and we started chugging along the first questline for the Skeleton King.  As we were just getting to the final dungeon for that quest, my friends started dropping out of the game one by one, until, while exploring the dungeons, enemies stopped chasing me and I realized something was wrong before I got the boot.  Trying to log in several times after this I was greeted with multiple errors that all pointed to the Diablo servers being down, from authentication issues to being unable to connect to the servers to a message that flat out told me the server was unavailable.  So now what?  With the servers being down, logic would dictate that I could no longer play a group game with my friends.  Sure, makes sense.  But the real issue to me was that I couldn’t even play alone.  Without being able to connect to Blizzard servers, I couldn’t even see my character list.  This happens in Blizzard’s MMO World of Warcraft as well when I can’t connect, but I have no problem with that.  The point of an MMO is that the game is based online.  So what the hell is this MMO feature doing in my single-player game?

 This was never an issue with Diablo II.  My copy was registered to me and if anyone else that wasn’t me tried to get onto battle.net they simply wouldn’t be allowed.  I had the freedom to play the single player campaign which gave me randomly generated maps every time through, let me pause the game if I had to step away from the computer, and most importantly, play it whenever the hell I wanted.  And if I had the desire to play with friends, which I did frequently, we would simply start a LAN game or get on open battle.net and go to town.  Or play my separate battle.net characters.  So why on earth would they change stuff up now?

Last August, Blizzard’s VP of Online Technologies Robert Bridenbecker sat down with MTV to discuss the always on issue and said the following: "Internally I don't think [DRM] ever actually came up when we talked about how we want connections to operate. Things that came up were always around the feature-set, the sanctity of the actual game systems like your characters. You're guaranteeing that there are no hacks, no dupes. All of these things were points of discussion, but the whole copy protection, piracy thing, that's not really entering into why we want to do it. I'm a huge purveyor of online sites and from my standpoint, I don't look at DRM solutions and go, 'Wow, those are awesome.' I look at those and say, 'Wow, those kind of suck.' But if there's a compelling reason for you to have that online connectivity that enhances the gameplay, that doesn't suck. That's awesome."

Diablo III Senior Producer Alex Mayberry also cited World of Warcraft as evidence of this being the direction gaming is going, but as I mentioned I don’t see how comparing a game with single player component to an MMO that has no single player components is valid.  I still think the shortcomings outweigh the benefits.  Sure, I understand that in Diablo II, since the characters were stored on my computer, I could lose my character in a computer crash or alter and create characters and equipment out of game.  But I could still play whenever the hell I wanted.  And Diablo III now has a battletag system for communication and stores characters safe and sound on their servers.  But I still can’t play whenever the hell I want.  Worthless account-wide achievements so players can show off?  Sweet!  But I still can’t play whenever the hell I want.

You sensing a theme yet?

In addition to that glaring shortcoming, what happens to “hardcore” mode characters?  When a disconnect happens or you log off or even if you join someone else’s game, you still take 10 seconds worth of damage from anything you happen to be around.  In regular mode that may not be too big of an issue but if your internet drops in hardcore mode, you could in theory be waving bye bye to that character forever.

Even if, as Mr. Bridenbecker says, that the always connected systems were built around features and not with DRM in mind, I’m sure other publishers who are watching this topic will be taking it the other direction.  They’ll look at Diablo III, which is still going to be wildly successful and sell nothing less than a ridiculous amount of copies, and more importantly how they did it all with an always on DRM methodology.  It’s what makes publishers drool dollar signs and lawyers thankful that they’re on retainer.  It may inspire other publishers to make this the standard, locking out single player modes and ultimately turn gaming into a type of enterprise-grade software as a service that my colleagues and I have to deal with in IT.  This in turn would act as a deterrent to piracy, sure, but could also end up actively working against consumers.  Some people travel a lot.  Some people don't have access to super high speed internet connections.  And with rumored methods of blocking used games in next-gen consoles, I shudder to think what the combination of both would be, as well as the eventual spread to other forms of media like movies and television.  It could set a horrifying anti-consumer precedent.

Bottom line – with the exception of MMOs, players shouldn’t be locked out of single-player content.  Period.  Ever.  It is sad because Diablo III is otherwise a very well put-together game with far more polished mechanics than its predecessors.  But unfortunately, its “always on” methodology strikes me something ill, and it’s still a single player game I can’t play whenever the hell I want.