The Screaming Viking

I’ve gone a little ways further into D3.  I read some user comments on other sites about how this game sucked.  Most of their comments are related to how it doesn’t look cutting edge, there isn’t a whole lot of world to explore.  By far, the two loudest complaints are that there is lack of character development, and the DRM sucks.

The DRM for this game is that you have to be connected to battle.net to play.  Even if you are playing a single player game, you need to connect to battle.net.  That’s kind of a drag..but tbh, I don’t have a huge problem with it.  After the first couple of days…I haven’t had a problem connection to battle.net to play.  Initially there were server problems and time out issues…etc.  I don’t think they are all corrected completely yet, I have had some lag at times, but it’s definitely better.  I played lots of EQ, having to connect to the net isn’t an issue for me.

The character development “problem” is clearly a complaint from people that haven’t gotten into the game.  Initially, I thought it was going to be a drag too…but the “development” of the character comes in the player deciding what skills to use as you go in to battle.  You can’t switch on the fly…so you have to decide before you go in to an area what will benefit you most.  I didn’t realize how big a deal this was until I got into an isolated boss area last night.

I’ve only played the barbarian so far…I might go with something else later, but I’m having a good time with the hack and slash.  So I moved into an area of a dungeon, and suddenly it became clear I was going to go toe to toe with a minor boss.  Not one of the “special characters”, this was an actual “boss” type NPC.  To get to this point, I had the character set up to efficiently clear gobs and gobs of NPC’s at the same time.  I’d routinely take on 10 guys at once…so I have him setup to slash (hit multiple enemies), his “power” move is a ripple effect, that hits several NPC’s infront of you, and I had his passive weapon skill set to more critical hits (since I was swinging more).  Now I get to this boss….and I would have liked to have an entirely different setup.  I would have liked to have my “one hit” skill set, my “one hit” power move set and my defensive weapon skill setup.  I didn’t get an opportunity to set that up.  I made a choice and it affected the fight.  The other skills are available to me…I just could’t switch them out during battle.

I thought it was kind of interesting.  I leveled up a couple of times last night, and even more skills opened up.  It’s making it more and more of a decision which options to setup before a battle.  That’s the direction Diablo has moved with their character development…and I’m diggin on it.  Also, there is far more thought in what weapons you want to use in given places.  There is a lot more testing and switching to see what “feels” better.

The hours of something to do I’m going to get out of this game was well worth the 60 bucks I spent.

Blizzard has teased fans for years about the pending release of Diablo 3.  It was originally rumored to be released 18 months ago…then pushed back…and back…finally May 15th 2012…d3 has dropped.

I’ve been a fan of diablo for a very long time.  In 97 I first got a taste of Diablo.  I was in college and had nothing better to do that sit at my roommates computer and click away.  He got a bit pissed at me, and this resulted in me buying my own machine.  Diablo was also my first taste of pirating anything.  It was really what started the techno empire…quite an impactful game.  I pre-ordered my copy a few weeks before release.  I thought they would ship me a dvd set, but instead the installer was available for download.  It was over an 8gig download…which took me 16hrs on my crappy home connection.  After the download finished I tried to install it…no dice!  It wouldn’t even let me install the game until the Monday before launch.  Maybe I could have monkeyed with things and gotten it downloaded…but I wasn’t that edgy.

I’ve spent a couple of days now clicking away, maybe 6hrs or so total play time.  I’ve been following the story, not reading anything but not going off the map either…completing all the “quests” they give me.  My character has had probably an hour or so of just sitting there while I’m doing something else in the house…so reasonably I’m at 4-5hrs of play time all solo.  My character has reached level 14 now, so I don’t think that’s too bad.  I don’t know how much of the story I have left to complete.

One of the most interesting things to me is that they have taken out basically all character development.  Back in the day you had a certain amount of stat points and you could allocate them how you please with your character.  As you leveled up you gain points and spend them in various attributes.  This would allow you to add some sort of uniqueness to your character.  Blizzard decided this approach was more problem than it was worth.  They figured that people either screwed up their character during this process, or people followed a “cookie cutter” formula and everyone ended up with the same type of guy.  I can see that to some extent, but one of the more interesting parts of the original diablo was acquiring gear that would up certain attributes so you could either wear another piece of gear or read certain books to gain use of spells.  It seems like that part of the game has been removed.  So far it hasn’t detracted from my “click on everything over and over again” game play.  Gear I’m getting now is only level restricted, you don’t need to have say 20 strength and 12 dexterity to use an axe…you just need to be level 11 or something.

One of the new pieces of information on gear is that it tells you how it is going to affect your overall character.  I’m still not sure what the numbers mean though.  If I gain 1.0% damage output…what does that actually mean when I use the weapon?  I understand the hit points…but I don’t know what the relationship between hit points and armor class is.  If I gain 15AC is that the same as 5HP?  Is there a cap for AC where it doesn’t make an difference or there is a diminished return?  Also, when you mouse over a piece of gear in your inventory it shows the stats for that piece then it also shows you the stats for what you currently have on.  My confusion is that if I have a 1 handed axe and a shield…then I mouse over a 2 handed weapon, it shows me that 2 handed weapon compared to the 1 handed sword.  The 2 handed weapon might say +.3% damage, -.5%defense.  Does that take in to account that I can’t use a shield with it?  Or is it just compared to the stats on the 1 handed weapon?  Right now those questions don’t matter too much, I put on a new piece of gear and use it a bit…then compare that to the other piece…and see which “feels” better.  I assume that’s the general idea of what they want you to do…but I’d like to know the actual numbers behind the game.

There also isn’t really a way to build in uniqueness in skills.  You just get skills at different levels.  In the past, you could pick a path you wanted your character to go down…maybe I want a barbarian that is more heavy on defense compared to someone else’s that wants to put out more damage.  You don’t really have an option to lock that in anymore.  The difference in the characters is going to come in the way you use the guy in battle.  The skills have a “cool down” period after you select them.  Basically this keeps you from switching to different skills during a fight.  I’ve found that to be a bit daunting, but over all irrelevant at my current level.  In a given area there is generally several “minor” NPC’s to kill and a “mini-boss”.  I have a skill where I can swing my weapon and hit multiple targets, and another skill that seems to deal more damage to a single target.  It would be nice if I could use the group slash to clear out the trash and switch to a single target skill for the boss.  Given the cool down time you can’t really do that.  There is probably a point to this, but it seems really lame to me.  But at my stage it’s not going to matter all that much.

This is my first gaming experience on a mac and a laptop.  I had to turn the graphics down a bit, which is fine…they still look pretty good.  I thought maybe the 13″ screen was going to be a problem but it hasn’t been at all.  I dig on being able to move around with the machine instead of being glued to a desk.  It does get warm though.  I sat with it in my lap for a little bit…but it got pretty warm in a hurry.  It also gobbles battery.  I burnt more than 1/2 of the battery for an hour session.    I also used an external mouse.  I wanted 2 buttons…but I also wanted to not beat down the track pad.

Overall, the game is pretty good.  I’m not going to be able to put in long hours like I used to, so I think it will be a decent hack and slash for the hour or so I can screw around.

It’s year end for the school, and with that comes the onslaught of ordering.  I like this time of year because I get a chance to play with a few new things.  It also gives me the opportunity to set things up the way I’d like them setup.  Like I’ve said before, there is nothing wrong with the way the previous guy configured things…I just have a different idea of how I want it to work.  I want to move towards a more “enterprisy” environment.  I want to be able to manage all the machines from one central point, and I want to do it as cheaply as possible.

So far we have received approval to build out 2 business computer labs.  I’m going to use iMacs for these labs running both lion and win7.  They are going to be setup to dual boot.  I think this gives us maximum flexibility.  For one of these labs they are looking at teaching multimedia applications and some web design.  We’re looking at dual monitor setups and all that.  I think it will be pretty decent by the time we are done.  The only real concern I have is getting enough data pipe to these machines.  I don’t think the network drops in that room was ever really designed to push as much traffic as these machines will potentially push/pull.  What I’m going to do is build out the room the way I want, then I’ll look at going back and attacking the networking situation later.  The way the building is segmented there is no real main switch closet.  There are a couple of locations that have auxiliary switches.  In the next few years I would like to run fiber…but I’m not sure how much that is going to cost.

Something else I want to do is replace all the ancient macs we have here.  There are 90 or more emacs, which at this point are long past their usefulness.  I wonder how much we’d save on power alone if these were replaced…  My thoughts are instead of replacing X amount each year, we finance it…replace them all at once and pay it off over a few years.  This is going to be quite a bit of work for me, but I think this would jump start us on to a regular replacement schedule.  Also, in five years maybe we would be looking at some kind of 1 to 1 initiative where we can downsize the desktop machines.  Right now I don’t know how that would work…but we’ll see.

If all this replacement action gets approved, it will keep me fairly busy over the summer.  Physically setting them up and moving things around will take a little bit of time, but the big time sink will be putting images on the machines.  With deep freeze it has to copy the size of the frozen disk with each image…that’s what takes all the time.

We’re also ordering a few iPads.  Not a whole bunch, I will probably have around 20 to mess with and get ready for the school year.  The management of the ipads is something that is a bit tricky.  I’ve decided to quite expecting that people won’t use them for personal stuff.  As long as they are ready for school and they have them for that…I don’t care what they are used for.

Gonna be a busy summer.

Dead at 56

“When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: “If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.” It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

“Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure — these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.” [Stanford commencement speech, June 2005]