Starcraft 2: HotS and stuff

I figured it was about time I did a bit of a natter about Starcraft.. and I guess it's the perfect time to do it, with Heart of the Swarm being released in 9 days and the beta was closed on the first of March(I think), which was two days ago! Since I've been spending a bit more time checking out twitter, I have seen a lot of pro-gamers tweeting that they don't quite know what to do to fill their time now that they can't play HotS.. I don't have that issue, mainly because I haven't played it for quite a while!

Apart from that though, for those who have been living on another planet, the new HotS trailer was released the other night and here it is!

I am mainly looking forwards to the campaign being playable and to see what has changed in the overall SC2 experience. Heck, I guess part of my time till HotS is released will be spent checking out the features that were implemented into WoL, that I never actually knew about! I'm sooo out of the loop!

The changes I'm talking about are patch 2.0.4, the full patch notes can be found here. The main ones that piqued my interest were the following:

Anyone can now create or join a Clan and participate in private clan chat, post news on Clan affairs, and more. Clan tags are pre-pended to character names of all players who join a Clan.

The very idea of clans is pretty cool and the fact that clan tags automatically pre-pend onto your name just rings out as awesome to me.

Players will soon have the freedom to select any game region to connect to and play.

Global play, wayhay, now I get to test my mettle against those pesky non-foreigners.. who will no doubt destroy me at any and every turn!

The overall AI play experienced has been greatly enhanced.In a custom game, players can now elect for an AI player to follow a specific build order, such as Full Rush, Timing Attack, Straight to Air, and more.AI players will now report key information back to their player allies, such as when they are scouting, attacking, expanding, and retreating.Additional AI improvements, including the ability to issue specific commands to AI partners, will be coming in Heart of the Swarm.

Any updates to the AI is pretty sweet, it got pretty tiresome playing against the AI when all it did were the same tactics and all that happened when you ramped up the difficulty was that it ramped up the speed at which it did the same tactics, really.

In other news, my pc still hasn't arrived yet :(:(:( though it should be delivered sometime tomorrow! Hopefully just before I get home from work.. though it will probably be delivered right before I have to go to work... then I will have to go to work and actively have to not think about my new pc and what I could be doing with it.

I've been playing a bit more Diablo 3 in the past week, I started doing something new.. leveling hardcore characters.. after doing a bit of research I found out that the best way to do this is to level 3-5 at the same time.. so I'm leveling a Witch Doctor, a Barbarian and a Demon Hunter on hardcore.. oh, did I forget to mention that I will be limiting myself by not using the auction house for the duration of leveling.... ohhh and did I also forget to mention that I will be attempting to do this while set to Monster Power 10.

Daunting task! At the moment, it's going pretty easily.. though they are only between levels 7 and 12.. the plan so far is that I will level one of them up 5 levels, then swap to the next and so on. I am allowing myself to trade between the characters however.. which is why I picked the three classes I did, as the Barbarian's main attribute is Strength, the Demon Hunter's is Dexterity and the Witch Doctor's is Intelligence.. so any drops I get, I will be able to use on at least one of my characters!

I'm looking forwards to it, exciting times!

Though, with my new pc I am getting free copies of the new Tomb Raider, Bio-shock: Infinite and Crysis 3.. so I'm not sure whether or not I will be playing those, or trying out some new things on the beast! I can't quite do what I really want to do just yet as my internet connection is still a big pile of tripe.

That's all from me!

Ciao for now!

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Diablo 3: The Monk

As promised, I'm here again! This time with a little look at the class that I have been playing the most in the short spurts I've had at playing D3 recently. Unfortunately, most of my time has been taken up with working and.. being told what to do by she who must be obeyed.. so I'm whipped, what of it?!

I actually have something else on my mind too, I was wondering about the different sites that offer homes to blogs and considering moving across to a different one. I did a brief search and it looks like WordPress is the main competitor for Blogger; in one head to head, here, they say that Blogger is much easier to use and WordPress is much more difficult to get to grips with... so, being the lazy bugger that I am, I think I'll stick to Blogger! Do you have any thoughts? Let me know!

Enough about that claptrap! The Monk! The monk is a melee based class with some funky dunky spells to help them out.. if I had to compare them to a WoW class, I guess it would be the Paladin. They can heal themselves and groups(with an Aura) and dish out a bidda damage and also be quite tanky in multiplayer. Their main attributes are Dexterity and that's about it I guess, though it never hurts to stack the old hit points.

You can run with a couple of different styles with the Monk, you can use one weapon and shield and soak damage and bore packs of mobs to death(much like the WoW Paladin used to), you can dual wield one handers(which I think fits more with the way Monks look) or you can try and lift a mighty two-hander with your scrawny looking Monk fella.. 

I found working my way through the beginning levels to be easy, almost too easy really! Especially with abilities like Breath of Heaven and Serenity. Of course, late Hell things got a bit rougher, but still not too difficult.. even Inferno doesn't hurt too much.

Do I like it? Yah, I really like the play style of the Monk for some reason(probably because it's ez-mode balanced!!!). I guess I am still a sucker for running into a group of mobs and laying the smack down and enjoying the abundance of red mist that sprays around when you kill them all! But where are you at with your Monk?!?! I hear you cry in unison.. well, I'm glad you asked! Currently I'm just starting Act II of Inferno. My last session ended when she rang me and made me die to the first champion pack I encountered in Act II! :(

I have no idea if other people who play monks use the build I do.. I think, if I can remember rightly it's something like this and I really like it. It gives a ton of survivability and puts out a decent amount of damage.  Granted it's nowhere near close to the Witch Doctor's damage.. but who would expect it to be? I'm currently stuck with some alright gear.. working on getting upgrades in the ole inferno...

Time to stop talking and get back to ... watching my pc perform a CHKDSK... joy.

Ciao for now!

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Diablo 3 how to: Setting up the Real Money Auction House

First off.. wow, this has been a long time coming! I've been living back in the UK now for about 2 months and we only got the internet set up hmm, about a week or so ago thanks to moving into a newly built house share - BT and the landlord being utterly crap, managed to somehow fudge getting it set up for way too long.. and even now, the speed is garbage. I actually think I have poo'd faster than this internet.

Let's get to the meat of this one.

So, you found a nice shiny rare or legendary that you think someone else in the world may be able to give a better home to than you and you want them to have it.. but not for free, I mean, nothing in this world is free right? You could put it on the Gold auction house, but really.. you don't need gold! You need the cold hard pixels of cash. Real cash that you can see on your screen..

So, how do you set it up? First off, you need to decide which way you're going to do it. There are a couple of different ways you can interact with Diablo 3's real money auction house. Battle.net balance and PayPal.. I personally use PayPal because well, you can't claim your Battle.net balance as cash you can only use it to "buy" other Blizzard features like World of Warcraft Paid Services or even digital versions of the other games!

In order to use the Battle.net balance you need either a physical or mobile authenticator attached to your  Battle.net account, you can buy the physical from the Blizzard Store or download it onto your mobile/cell via itunes or your marketplace ie. Google Play.

In order to use PayPal you need to sign up for the Battle.net SMS Protect service, you can find the FAQ here. They(Blizzard) highly recommend attaching an authenticator to your account, no matter if you are using the Auction House or not!

Once you have that all set up, you're ready to get back in game and sell sell sell!

Please bear in mind, they do charge you a fee to use these features.. they are as follows:

For Equipment (weapons, armor, accessories, and other unique items)

• Transaction Fee (Gold Auction House): 15% of final sale price
• Transaction Fee (Real-Money Auction House): 1£ GBP per item / €1 EUR per item
• Transfer Fee (when sending proceeds to PayPal or other authorized payment-service provider): 15% of amount being transferred

For Commodities (gems, materials, dyes, pages, recipes, and other non-unique items)

• Transaction Fee (Gold Auction House): 15% of final sale price
• Transaction Fee (Real-Money Auction House): 15% of final sale price
• Transfer Fee (when sending proceeds to PayPal or other authorized payment-service provider): 15% of amount being transferred

For me, I haven't actually made that much from it(about 15 euro)... I guess partly because we moved over to the UK and it took me forever to get access to a scanner and send my passport and a bill to Blizzard to update my country of residence and partly because I'm not very good at the game.

Ciao for now, I'll be back soon!

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Moving and stuff

Right at this minute I am homeless and will be till Saturday.. thankfully we have somewhere to stay in the interim. Though I have no access to my computer or the internet other than on my phone we are making it work. We have been watching the first series of a show called Suits, which is surprisingly good! We also have a few episodes of Bones to watch! I realised yesterday that I will have to do without any Diablo 3.. till I don't know when!! Can't check my auctions either, though I doubt any sold.. nothing has sold since the first item I managed to sell. We will survive I think, but only just... And she who must be obeyed may very well kill me if she has nothing to distract her from how annoying I am.. so if this is the last anyone hears from me... I want Chris to have my BBQ, Shaun to have my laptop...

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Diablo 3: The Demon Hunter and stuff

So, I got to level 11 with a Demon Hunter so far, seems quite fun! Though, I must admit most of my time over the past couple of days has been spent playing my Barb again, I specced him to a more tankish build and things are going much more smoothly. But anyway! The Demon Hunter, a ranged class that seems to have quite a lot of survivability, that could just be because I've not really leveled it! Not through taking the damage but more by avoiding it. Perhaps at later levels it will become more like the glass cannon-like Witch Doctor I've got!

It does seem fun, though.. I like the fact that you don't have to use a 2h bow/xbow or whatever and that you can dual wield the 1h stuff, funky! They also have a skill called Vault, which I love! I keep doing it even when I don't have to.. like I'm wandering around and I'll just "tumble acrobatically 35 yards", I think it's the animation that makes me want to do it.. maybe the sound too!

I just got a skill called Bola Shot, which I used for the first time on a pack of spiders.. boom boom, tumble tumble, boom boom! Teehee.

In other news, the Real money auction house went live for items.. and I sold some level 48 Monk fist weapon.. I think it sold for 12 euro and I ended up with 10, not bad for a days work! Shame nothing else sold :P Oh well! I'll just have to keep trying to find stuff to sell! Lots of people were talking about making 250 dollars, or euros.. but I don't know anyone who has. The most I've actually seen someone get was 25 euro, which is still pretty awesome I guess!

I'll just take a time out to update you on my other characters. I have my Witch Doctor at level 60, my Monk at level 56, my Barbarian at level 51 or so, a level 11 Demon Hunter and a level 9 Wizard.. I'm finding myself with the itchy feet syndrome I get when I play WoW. I can't stick with one character for too long but I guess that helps with the games longevity for me.

Ah well, I guess this post shouldn't really be called the Demon Hunter, cause I don't talk about it too much.. let's just add "and stuff" and y'all can deal with it!

Ciao for now!

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Diablo 3: The Real Money Auction House

I was going to post today about the Monk, but as I sat down to write, I had something else dominating my thoughts! What was that? I hear you gasp with anticipation? WELL!!!

Today was the third(or so) date that had been set for the Real Money Auction House to be released for Diablo 3. Yet again it appears to have been delayed, at least in the EU. It does seem to be live in the Americas and several people are reporting that they have sold items for up to $250, which is kinda insane! I guess these items must be high end Inferno items, for them to be that price.

For me, I'm waiting with baited breath.. hoping that the few items I have ready to throw up on there will sell, heck.. even if they just sell for a couple of euro I'll be happy! Who knew you could make money by playing a game.. I won't buy anything on there though, oh no!

I have had people asking me if I really think people will buy things for real money on the Auction House.. and honestly, I really think they will. People seem to buy things with no second thought to if it's really worth the money they are paying.. I mean, we all get the shaft by shops.. so why not in a game too?

But how high will the prices actually be? I think that the dominant sellers will be hackers/bots.. as with the World of Warcraft auction house. They are very good at catching them and banning them, but there are just too many I feel.. the next in the hierarchy would be people who camp the auction house, sitting there refreshing the page till they see a steal, then re-post it for quadruple the price or whatever.. I have a good friend who did this with WoW and they made a LOT of gold from it. The average Joe trying to make a sale will probably find it's not really worth it.. when you take into account the time it takes to farm an item/materials.

At the end of the day, it relies on us using it, for anyone to make anything from it. The question I have for you, the end user is.. will you use it?

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Diablo 3: The Game

Here we go again! Second installment time! It's late! 4:15am late and I apparently have to stay up till 10pm tonight... and Diablo is undergoing maintenance.. whatever will I do?! I guess I'll just have to spend some time trying to customize this page! Wish me luck! Forgot to add this link in the first one.. I guess this will do!

So, what is this game called Diablo 3? I guess I should really offer some explanation, in case you don't know.. right? Well it's kind of a hack and slash/dungeon crawl/grindfest genre PC game created by Blizzard Entertainment.. it's been a long time coming, I remember playing Diablo, Diablo II & The Lord of Destruction years ago! I'm told it was 2001 when the LoD hit the shelves.. I refuse to believe that it's been that long since I was a young lad playing games!

It's a point and click fast paced action-fest, the aim is to get your character to the max level(60, like vanilla World of Warcraft!), with all the best equipment you can find.. there are four "acts", which are kinda like these huge places you have to explore and quest in, to get your levels and gear! There is one thing that a lot of people have spoken out against and that's the fact that you can only play Diablo 3 online, even if you just want to play on your own you still have to be online. Then there is the Auction House, which I think I will go into more detail about in another post.. probably solely dedicated to it.. because it's got a lot of talking points!

Once you have finished playing through on the normal difficulty level, you'll be around level 30-32.. then you get to play through the same acts again, but with buffed baddies to hack and slash your way through! There are four difficulty levels for you to "beat", going from Normal to Nightmare, then to Hell and then finally to Inferno. I think I hit 60 at around act 3 of the Hell difficulty, but I could be wrong!

The best things about Diablo that I've found, is the gratifying sounds of your character, whatever class it is, tearing up the hordes of monsters that will surround you at every turn with mega fantastical weapons or spells that make them explode into a fine red mist.. or you could just decide to conjure up a giant frog that will swallow them up! There is of course getting loot.. Getting loot is cool, everybody loves getting new things even pixels do.

I plan on going over each class, as I play it more and more.. I'll most likely start next time with the Witch Doctor as that is the character that I have at the max level at the moment! Working on getting a Monk up there too, while I try to get my Witch Doctor some uber kit so I can attempt more Inferno(which in my limited experience so far, is quite difficult).

With that said, I think it's time to retire for the night.. or maybe I'll just watch an episode of Fringe..  just one, mind...

Ciao for now!

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So, this is it?

So here I am, sat here after spending several hours playing games, looking at my screen and wondering what now?

After a good few more hours, I decided to do something productive and write something! It's been a good year or so since I even thought about writing! But what to write about? Then it hit me.. I love video games and video games love me.. well, not really! I'm pretty pants at playing games but I can't help spending time playing them!

You will have to forgive me, I tend to ramble and have disjointed thoughts.. so if I wander off on a tangent.. bear with me, I will get back to what I was saying, I promise! Who am I? Well, my name is Steve and I am a alco.. no, wait that is wrong. Actually, the first bit is right, my name is Steve! How did I get around to sitting here and writing this, is the most important thing to go here I guess!

I have to admit something, like millions and millions of others played World of Warcraft for.. well, for far too long. Though, the thing that I have to be thankful for, is that it ended up getting me a job.. to all you mothers who tell their children that playing games won't get them anywhere, HAH!! It did for me! :-D After working for a few years with Blizzard(awesome place to work by the way!), I decided it was time to move on.. and now I'm looking again for a new home within the video games industry.

Before the World of Warcraft, the first game I remember playing was Chuckie Egg.. on my families first computer our BBC 32k. What a fantastical machine that was! No DVD drive, just tape.. that's right the games came on cassette tape! Then I followed the usual suit, Atari(not commodore), N64, PlayStation 1+2, then I discovered the PC and online games.

My introduction came with a text based game, Wolfenburg.. which I think may well be still going, kind of. Then my friend made me get a game called Guild Wars.. then that same friend, after making me play that, let me create a character on his World of Warcraft account and that was that and this was this.. which brings me to the actual topic that I intended to write about... Diablo 3.

So how about it? Unless you have been living under a rock for the past month or so, you'll know that the long awaited finale in the Diablo series came out on the 15th of May and since that date I have spent so many hours playing it! I just can't stop! It's just so much fun to jump around and mash up the monstrous critters that I can find.

For now I intend to write up about the game in general, how it plays and what there is to do and what my thoughts are about it! I may even eventually include clips of my awesome ability to be pants at it.. if you're lucky!

To start there are 5 classes in Diablo 3, Barbarian, Monk, Demon Hunter, Witch Doctor and Wizard. I'll talk about each class in detail a bit later.. but for now.. she who must be obeyed looks to be getting restless and I must appease her.

Ciao for now!

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