Starcraft 2: Heart of the Swarm

Heyo all!

So, I wanted to take a few minutes to talk about the Beta that is going on for the next part of the Starcraft 2 legacy.

Basically, it's a few new units for each race that will be available in multiplayer and a whole new campaign story, this time instead of from the Terran perspective, it's told from the Zerg(WAHOO!). Needless to say because I love the story/playstyle of the Zerg I am really looking forwards to it.

At the moment, you can only play the multiplayer because they need to balance the new units so they aren't like super duper overpowered in the competitive side of the game. But what do I think about it? Well, the new Zerg units are well, quite okay.. but there is at least one change that I am really really happy about.. and it doesn't even really effect the game in general..

As Zerg, all your units move faster on this stuff called creep.. you need to spread the creep with your Queen unit by planting these things called Creep Tumors. In Wings of Liberty these things couldn't be planted on anything like a ramp.. and when you spread them the next one just sorta appeared.. but now... now the spreading has an animation.. it looks like a snake travelling over and above ground to the next point you clicked! And you can put them on ramps!

Not even really a huge change.. but it made me stupidly happy. Perhaps more happy than I should have been about such a small change.

One thing that I was really sad about, was that they had said that one of our units; The Baneling, which explodes in a mess of green goo and happens to be one of my favourite units would be able to move while burrowed under the ground(Note: in Wings of Liberty it could already burrow under ground but couldn't move and was lovingly called the Baneling Land Mine). But it seems they have removed this ability :'(

This is the first of many posts about the Beta, I will most likely go into more details about the new units for each of the races.. or maybe just make one post dedicated to each race and throw info at you about them like that.

In other news.. I have managed to finally get Battle.net SMS Protect off my account and have got it updated to my new phone.. hopefully now I'll be able to start selling stuff in Diablo 3 again!! If things even sell there anymore. I guess I'll find out! Wish me luck!

If you have any feedback or have something you'd like me to tackle let me know, also please follow me on Twitter @McKnublet and subscribe etc!

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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