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Hence the Boycotts

That apology was half assed nothing corporate speak. If that convinced you of anything it was just because you can't stay mad at Blizzard. That's just untrue. It will certainly be different and evolve but their overriding message at the panel seemed to be going back to the old gothic horror style and having a skill tree. Basically, the message was we're merging ideas from D2 and D3 which I think is great honestly. There are a lot of things that are actually BETTER in D3. In fact, I'd say gear and drops since the expansion are significantly better than D2. It's just that D2 was much much deeper and the style is a lot better. The fact that they specifically call this kind of stuff out make me happy. The specifics though are, of course, going to change but that's fine.

I haven't touched it since the patch for a couple reasons, but I've heard nothing but awful things about it.

The apology was the bare minimum they had to do.

There are definitely a lot of people that think D2 is perfect and never needs changing. I put a number of hours into that game as well and I thought some aspects of D3 were better and some aspects of D2 were better. Honestly, I ended up having more fun with builds and loot after many many patches to D3 than I had with D2 in a certain sense (more drops, easier to switch builds etc). D2 has a great atmosphere though and a much deeper system for stats and such. What I don't want though is an overcomplicated mess just for the sake of saying it's complicated and "deep" like say...PoE. I tried that game out briefly and hated it.

In my defense, i'm going half off memory and half off shit i've read Regardless, it seems strange for Brack to act like freedom of speech is Blizzard policy when it obviously isn't. IF (and it's a big if) IF they have changed their stance than there is nothing to prove that currently except them not firing the presenter who said "sounds good to me" which amounts to very little. Frankly, if they were changing their approach they'd condemn the posts by netease on the official chinese Hearthstone twitter instead of acting like it didn't happen and unfire those two innocent presenters instead of making bullshit excuses. If this is supposed to be Blizzard "doing better going forward" there is a lot left to be desired, that's for sure. It's sad really that a paltry 4.9% of investor stock can swing a company from being all about freedom and unity to pandering to the likes of an authoritarian communist dictatorship or at the very least, a company that stands by those positions. Either way, their words will forever be empty to me til I see a real example of them standing by their community and the values they've claimed to stand by for years. As it is, it's just sad to see a developer I previously held in such high regard sell out so obviously while making bullshit excuses all the way to the bank. Sad and pathetic. Somehow that interview and the forced takedown of a social media post flew under the radar for the most part so I figured i'd share while the topic was still relevant. I mainly quoted you not to direct that comment at you but because it's a sentiment ive seen many share without knowing about the other stuff. Personally i'm not taking their word anymore. --- As for Diablo 4, what i'd love to see is them bring back all the old classes from 1 and 2 complete with skill trees. It rubbed me the wrong way at first when Diablo 3 broke tradition and just mix and matched/recycled rather than making new classes like 2 did after 1. It grew on me eventually but the Necromancer was way less good. I'd like to see a return to form at least partially mechanics-wise for re-used character classes and if they are going to bring classes back, bring them all back. Variety is always a good thing and the roadmap is already there in Diablo 1 and 2. It'd be nice to have a Warrior, Rogue, Barbarian, Paladin, Sorceror, Sorceress, Assassin, Druid, Necromancer, Amazon, Monk, Witch Doctor, Demon Hunter, and Crusader to choose from and after they overcharged for the Necromancer DLC, they could really make the effort for some fan service because that was pretty damn cheap of them. I'd also love to see some lesser evils come back, like Duriel and such. Maybe bring back Mephisto so he isn't nearly as much of a complete joke

They're doing an actual open beta (as opposed to this one which is the "early access" pre-order beta) next weekend. I plan on trying it then. It's got like half a chance to impress me before I even think about maybe buying it. XD

No pre orders. But I will likely get both of them if they aren't broken.

Icy Veins forum member wrote up a huge "everything we know" post. https://www.icy-veins.com/forums/topic/46709-everything-we-know-about-diablo-4-so-far/

Mine was running great until I got past the prologue and put me into the part where all the other players are running around. From that point, I had regular, severe frame drops and a lot of rubber banding and desynch issues. Was pretty frustrating. They are looking into that and the disconnect issues people have been having though, so there's that at least. Outside of the performance issues, the game has been pretty fun. They really upped the visuals and how they present the in-game scenes. Was impressed with a lot of what they've done there. Gameplay seems suitably Diablo. There is a touch of some of the things they did in Immortal that weren't scummy and actually kind of cool, which is nice, but it also gives me pause to wonder what their endgame systems might be like. Might wait a week or two if I get it just to see what the consensus is after people have had solid time with it.

This seems like a pretty fair beta review from D2 YouTuber/streamer Dbrunski: The limitations on trading sound dumb, but, for example in D2 I only ever play offline single player, so what do I even care about trading

Not that I disagree with you Shade, but some of that is misleading. The thing with Jayne happened WAY before Blizzcon, back before they had even responded and reduced the casters and Blitzchung's punishment (the tweet was from the day after Blitzchung's protest and was removed the same day it was put up). If they have in fact started to adjust their stance since then, this doesn't really apply as evidence to the contrary. Like I said though, time will tell. Not terribly promising either way with how things have been however. Blizzard's half assed, mostly hollow efforts are at least a step up from what Riot is doing. A few days after the stuff with Blitzchung happened, Riot released a statement effectively warning their casters and players away from making political comments on their broadcasts. This coming shortly after it was noted that the team "Hong Kong Attitude" never had their full team name spoken on air and casters regularly cut themselves off from saying the name and quickly altered it to "HKA" instead (though Riot claims that wasn't intentional or driven by them). It's also important to note that Riot Games is WHOLLY owned by Tencent. >_> On a side note, Blitzchung has been signed to a Hearthstone pro team, so he'll be ready to go when he can compete again at least. The team sighted that they value "character and integrity" as much as skill in the announcement. Back on topic, I'm really liking the systems I'm seeing for D4 so far. Especially how weapons (for Barbarian), and forms (for Druid) can transition with the ability you use. It's a really neat concept. Art direction is really cool too. Watched some of the art presentation where they talked about all the different "families" of monsters they'll have. Hopefully that means a bigger variety overall than we saw in D3.

That is quaint since it seems fairly obvious that if it wasn't something that angered the Chinese government, this wouldn't have mattered. Hard to take their "no political" thing seriously as he apologizes while wearing his rainbow pin on his shirt. Clearly they are fine with SOME political speech, just not the kind that pisses off the authoritarian Chinese government. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I dunno about Diablo 4, but I’m probably gonna buy Diablo 2 Resurrected when it releases this fall!

Diablo 4: Unveiled Diablo 4: Systems & Features Diablo 4: World & Lore Diablo 4: The Art of D4 Diablo 4: Artists at Work Someone reposted all the videos from Blizzcon. We'll see who long these last.

Online reaction to the latest patch in advance of Season 1 of D4 seems to be universally negative... so that's not a good sign for the game... but maybe they will fix all of these problems by the time you guys actually find time to play the game!

I played after a few patches. Main build was a mage casting one. I guess it was a little more active but man it was fun. Once you got the ring that let you create 2 mages per cast, shit got real. Rathmas baby. https://www.icy-veins.com/d3/necromancer-skeletal-mages-build-with-rathma-and-jesseth-sets-patch-2-6-6-season-18

I played for maybe an hour last night. It was running OK, just a couple frame drops every now and then. I guess I was lucky and got on when there was no queue.

Any of you folks getting in on the Diablo IV open beta this week? A few different D2 streamers I follow on YouTube are playing right now, so I'm just following along with them. The opening cutscene was rad. No comments about the gameplay yet as I've only been watching like 10 minutes

First panel got taken down AS I was posting this so...yeah I dunno. I downloaded and I might throw them up on my server for download if people care enough. Also yeah that fucking thumbnail...jesus.

The visuals are nice. There are some nice creature comfort improvements on your backpack. Everything is the same size so far. Super easy to mark stuff to sell. There are different sections for consumables, gear, quest items, etc. I haven't played too much, only level 15 necro, so I can't say how the leveling and stuff works too much. I'm not going to spend any real time working on a build due to the 3 day beta. There are some nice world even type things that other people can help with. Overall it feels good so far.

MT sent this earlier: https://www.ign.com/articles/blizzard-admits-it-messed-up-with-diablo-4s-disastrous-nerf-patch-announces-upcoming-sweeping-changes?utm_source=twitter Looks like they might be pulling their heads out of their asses. A huge improvement over the D3 team and their constant bull headed bullshit responses to player feedback. If they can at least fucking TRY instead of telling us about "their vision" and why we're actually wrong, I'll give them the benefit of the doubt to fix shit. I'm still not playing this season with the game in this shit state but at least they might fix this sooner rather than later.

I dunno about that. Seems like an empty apology filled with posturing to me https://www.pcgamer.com/au/blizzard-president-clarifies-decision-to-ban-hearthstone-player-and-two-casters-over-hong-kong-controversy/ PC Gamer: I wanted to revisit the statement you made at the beginning of the opening ceremony yesterday. You said Blizzard is "committed to everyone's right to express themselves in all kinds of ways and all kinds of places," and you made a commitment to do better going forward and that your actions are going to matter more than words do. Are you going to be repealing the punishment against Blitzchung and the two Taiwanese casters involved in this incident? J. Allen Brack, Blizzard president: We are not. Why? So, one of the things that we talked about in the commitment to expression about all kinds of ways and all kinds of places, is the fact that we're huge believers in free speech, and we're huge believers in free expression. We have a long history of that being part of the culture of the company for employees. That's certainly part of the culture of the relationship that we have with the community. And so employees are free to post on their social media accounts. If you think about the people that we have that are esports athletes, our Grandmasters, or anyone who is participating in esports, they're free to say and do whatever they want on their social channels. I feel like we have a far more open set of guidelines and policies than really any other traditional sport that takes a view around making sure that all of the people stay on message. And so, that's how we think about free expression and how we've contextualized it. We want the official broadcasts, which are a small percentage of the overall content that gets created, to be about the games. And we want those to be focused on the games. Again, it's not about the content of Blitzchung's message. It's about the fact that it was not around the games. If we hadn't taken action, if we hadn't done something, you can imagine the trail that would be in our future around doing interviews. They would become times for people to make a statement about whatever they wanted to, on whatever issue. That's just a path that we don't want to go down. We really want the content of those official broadcasts to be focused on the games, and keep that focus. So Blizzard's perspective is that, of course you want players to express themselves, except for when it's taking place through official channels? That's right. Is it fair to say that if Blitzchung had said any political message, it would have incurred the same punishment? It wasn't that he was specifically calling for Hong Kong's freedom, it was that he was saying anything political? That's correct. The content was not the problem. It was the fact that it was not about the game in question, it was something very specifically different. I think, and I don't want to speculate around if he had said this, that, or the other, and how would it have gone—I think that's a difficult thing to think about, but it's not about the content of his message. There are many people that are supportive of him and his message. --- Sounds all well and good right? Exceeeept.. https://www.vg247.com/2019/11/03/overwatch-coach-hong-kong-tweet/ So he's outright lying here. And then also the fact that this announcer is allowed to say things like "Sounds good" when people support free speech and democracy but he doesn't lose his job so I guess those other two announcers who did nothing wrong were only fired to appease Chinese stock holders. Lets also not forget that J Allen Brack is wearing a LGBT pin during his 'faux apology' so clearly certain politics are apparently okay. He's just a hypocrite and pandering to that 4.9% of Chinese stockholders. In summation, Blizzard are outright lying and this 'apology' is worthless. He said actions matter more than words and you know what? He's right. --- I stand by my previous position. I'll probably play Diablo 4 but the magic is dead. There are good developers in Blizzard but the higher ups are just corporate shills who will happily sell out Blizzards morals for Chinese money. Now Blizzard stand beside Activision, EA and Bethesda for useless corporations focused only on making money whatever the cost.

Article drop, some interesting stuff: The First Look At ‘Diablo 4’ Raises A Few Red Flags Here's how Diablo 4's shared world works Blizzard Explains Diablo 4’s Loot System, And It Sounds Really Good Couple Panels as well: