Diablo III Auction House - Killer of Fun or Shrewd Business?

So the past week or so, I've been playing the heck out of Diablo III (or at least as much as my free time would allow), and wondering what sort of blog to write about it.  After all - I have a gaming blog - Diablo III has already become the fastest selling PC game in existence - seems like I should put something up about it.  Unfortunately, "ZOMG I LURVES TEH DIABLO TREE!" doesn't make for that exciting of a blog.

But as I played through the week, humming along quite nicely with incredibly few deaths (far fewer than I dimly recalled from my old Diablo II days), quite enjoying myself, someone mentioned in passing they doubled their DPS at the auction house for surprisingly little money.  And I thought - Hey.. I'd like more DPS.. Hmm.. maybe I should look at the auction house!  And let me tell you - I can't say how sorry I was.

Grim Christmas

I woke up this morning at 5:30 am.  Not intentionally.  It's spring - allergy season - and I suffer as a result.  So my allergies had me up, but my normal wake up time is 6:00 am, so this wasn't too much different than that.  As I lay there, wondering if I should try to go back to sleep or not, I suddenly remembered - Diablo III is ready!  And I sat up, crept downstairs without turning on a light, and logged in.

Two of my friends were already on, and one waved a cheery hello!  "It's like Christmas Morning!" he said.  And he was exactly right.  It really was like Christmas morning as a kid.

Hunting for Heroes - A Guild to Skill Capturing in Guild Wars

So the first open beta weekend of Guild Wars 2 has come and gone, and it's left a quite a few of us eyeing our Hall of Monuments, and thinking You know.. maybe Guild Wars 1 wasn't so bad.  Maybe I should give it a try one more time, and see if I can get a few of those HoM points.  If anything, it's testimony to just how good that darn Guild Wars 2 was, that it has many people whom have by far and large moved on from the original game coming back, and poking around in it.

Guild Wars 2: This is the MMO you're looking for

I must have started this post three different times, trying to decide exactly what I wanted to say about Guild Wars 2, based on my experiences from the beta weekend.  At first, I was going to do a very thorough sort of bug and playtest feedback kind of thing.  But I started going through the forums, and saw a huge amount of the same kind of feedback I had to give already stated there.  I think the developers are getting good and valuable feed from the beta test.

An Embarrassment of Riches

If you're an MMO fan, (and what are you doing here if you're not) then April is shaping up to be a heady month!  And yes, that is perhaps a thinly veiled 420 reference.  Let's take a brief look at the many dishes that are currently - or have recently been - available for you to dine upon!

Dear Tera - it's not you, it's me.

So I spent the weekend, as many of my peers did, roaming the picturesque hills and forests of Tera.  And for the most part, I had quite an enjoyable time.  In this open beta, the game was very solid.  No crashes, and no graphical glitches at all.  Had I already purchased or pre-ordered Tera, I don't think I'd be disappointed at all.  But not having done so, I didn't find that much to really compel me to return to the world either, especially when compared against the numerous other offerings that are either available now, or will be available soon.  But there is quite a bit to like about the game, so why am I not ordering?

City of Heroes Peculiar Leveling

So surprisingly enough, lately I've found myself back in City of Heroes quite a bit.  I blame my in-laws.  They came up for a weekend recently, and we had all played City of Heroes back in the day.  Now that the game is free-to-play, it didn't take long for them to re-activate their accounts, and after an hour or so patching up my computers, we had a nice six-man group running around completing missions and task forces - all of us playing in the same room, which makes for tons of hilarity and hijinks.

So I found myself logging in to play some more this past weekend.  The game is fairly bustling with activity - the zones feel alive with people in them, the help channel is constantly busy with chatter, and after spending so much time in the vast emptiness of the upper level SWTOR zones (Voss and Correlia I'm looking at you), it felt good to play with people again.  The only real caveats, of course, is that it is City of Heroes.  You have to like the fundamental gameplay, which for many people feels staid and dated.  And you have to be okay with, or at least be aware of, some of this game's own peculiar design quirks.  And it's one of those that I wanted to talk about.