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description=Originally a pair of views on gaming, it s now musings by Redbeard on video games (mainly MMOs), board games, RPGs, and other geeky hobbies.;

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other and because they both kind of fit into a similar game type their fates became intertwined diablo ii and baldur s gate ii released on june 28th 2000 from wikipedia released on september 21st 2000 from wikipedia again the fact that the game that released first diablo ii was an action rpg and that baldur s gate ii was more of a traditional rpg was kind of lost in the discussions that followed as the fans of the two games devolved into two separate camps as to which game was superior i know the concept of both games being good was kind of lost on people myself included as i found myself being the baldur s gate fanboy among my gamer friends at work and yes i will freely admit that i was outnumbered in the arguments that followed part of that was simply because i lived with d d for so long and dealt with so much crap for it back in the 80s that a good well designed d d game was always going to get my love that what my friends loved the most about diablo ii that you could use gems to customize your gear wasn t why i played baldur s gate ii bg2 had story the setting a familiar system and honest to god romance storylines in the game that blew me away in an early prelude to my love hate relationship with gear in mmos my friends preoccupation with gear wasn t what drove me to play either of these games the irony is that here in 2023 we re back to the diablo vs baldur s gate arguments with the releases of diablo iv and baldur s gate iii within a few months of each other just like before d4 released first on june 5th 2023 from wikipedia and bg3 followed suit later on august 3rd 2023 can you guess yes it s from wikipedia one thing is certain i won t be playing either game any time soon i ve got other games to play and once i settled all of my bills for the month i had other spending priorities in mind i mean i m sure both games are nice enough and they likely scratch the itch of their respective fanbases but at this stage in my life i can afford to wait that being said if people want to make arguments here go for it just play nice it s been quite a while since i ve had to wield the ban hammer on someone other than a spammer blaugust2023 although having also played a paladin in my early d d days i ll freely admit that bioware adding carsomyr an actual holy avenger to the game was highly inspirational no i didn t play a paladin in bg2 but my heart soared knowing it was out there posted by redbeard at 6 00 am no comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels blaugust2023 baldurs gate diablo musings monday february 22 2021 okay now that the town hall is over blizzconline 2021 has come and gone and for a change i paid attention to it being able to watch the livestream for free does help a lot in the past you could pay to watch the livestream or you could even pay to watch the activities on directv honest but even then i d only read the commentary from wow insider blizzard watch or from my fellow bloggers so when the do you not have phones comment blew up i wasn t around to watch it live so yeah i was a bit concerned about how this remote oriented con would work out and whether the con would skew more toward one of nintendo s quarterly updates or something straddling an authentic in person con experience for the record i was fine with either as long as blizz didn t a shoot themselves in the foot with another do you not have phones comment b shoot themselves in the foot with another tough gamer moment comment or c shoot themselves in the foot by trying to bow and scrape to the chinese market basically don t shoot yourself in the foot oh i get it about china and the ccp it s the 2000 lb elephant that will trample anyone who gets in their way when they can make one of the richest people in china jack ma vanish you know they don t mess around and by comparison blizzard and most other gaming companies are the tuna out there for the orcas to feed on so if you want china s market you have to play by china s rules the last blizzcon and the events leading up to it made that abundantly clear this time around however a global pandemic took center stage and china receded into the background i ve been working from home for so long that i ve forgotten that it takes some time for people to get used to it so when blizz people started talking about how they had to get used to conferencing and collaborating remotely their issues simply did not compute for me it was only about a minute or two in when i realized that jeez they ve never done remote work before once you get used to it dealing with work from home becomes second nature and if you ve a boss that is flexible in your work habits then you can take time out to be the kids taxi or make it to a game and then come home and get more work done but using collaborative tools like teams or webex can take some time to get used to and a graphic designer ready setup in the home is probably a whole other level of complexity that i never had to deal with these were the sorts of challenges that blizz confronted but it seems that they ve gotten used to it i suspect that the transition took longer than blizz management expected particularly in terms of work output but on the flip side they now have a workforce that isn t tied down to southern california property values i m not exactly sure if they ll take advantage of that but you never know work from home foibles aside i found the info sessions i watched informative but not overly so i knew going in that the nature of the con meant that the extra time spent getting dynamic feedback from the crowd as well as the natural give and take wasn t going to be there so that meant that the info sessions themselves were going to be shorter that wasn t an indictment of the process it s more of the way it is when you design a presentation you have to give enough time for the crowd to react and respond before you can continue and in a virtual environment you don t have that the part i was most interested in was bc classic and i wasn t disappointed i felt that holly spent extra time reminiscing about the old days in order to establish her bona fides which given the nature of her coming from everquest i felt it was necessary to pacify certain parts of the wow community who still think of her as the eq person still the info about items such as bosses classes and when you can roll a draenei sindorei were spot on among those of us who were watching from the myzrael us discord server we were all in all very happy with the info provided could there have been more sure but i suspect they re still aiming for a may release and don t want to get locked into that timeline if something shakes out in the beta the you are not prepared was a wee bit dated but as someone pointed out in our bwl run saturday night illidan is not prepared for us now for an old time gamer like me it was nice to see the repackaging of the old blizz games including the lost vikings and the reworking of diablo ii i realize this is the era of remastering games see the upcoming mass effect trilogy remaster as an example but if it is done well then it is a welcome benefit to gamers around the globe the pc environment especially has changed so much over the years since me or d2 were released that even without the graphical remaster the code would have likely required a rework to operate properly in the era of rtx 30 series video cards the real kicker is whether the remaster is redone in such a way as to anger the fanbase warcraft 3 a reimagining of the game final fantasy vii or a a faithful but purely upgraded graphical version of the game looks like d2 and me for now it does look like blizz learned their lesson on warcraft 3 but we ll see when the remastered d2 comes out one thing i do appreciate is that the diablo iv development team is providing regular updates and details of the game s progress so you know what s going on frequently this is too much of a black box schroedinger s cat aside and you have no idea as to the details but that the d4 team is spending the time to communicate with the fans as well as their thought process behind certain developments is a very very good thing i understand that some of the items the dev team are working on are going to be hidden story for one thing but understanding details of where they are in the process without throwing out dates is fantastic the one thing i hate is when the suits announce a release date because software development is not like building a widget there will be major setbacks and reworkings that need to be addressed and that s just your average monday morning assigning a date and expecting a dev team to meet it is a potential disaster in the making crunch notwithstanding so in the end i enjoyed this blizzconline and yes the rpg player in me enjoyed getting a chance to see matt mercer and the critical role crew in a diablo esque game on saturday i am glad that the con went as well as it did because i d argue that a hybrid of the strictly in person con and the online version is the way of the future hell when metallica came on my wife wandered over from watching the television and said hey metallica yeah i replied they re playing for blizzcon wait this is live well at least it was done strictly for blizzcon but but that s so cool now if i can get her to watch the intro about how gamers were impacted by blizz games over the years because that was an advertisement for not strictly blizz games but gaming in general that could have come straight outta gencon and not missed a beat but not totally gone from people s minds kind of like saying beetlejuice three times and voila michael keaton appears yes i have been the kids taxi for a long long time i m perfectly happy working from home what i ve discovered about working at the office is that i spend a lot of time socializing and a lot less time working so when i need to get things done i don t go into the office i know quite a few other people in my neck of the woods who think the same thing and they re content to work from home too i discovered that when i went to install lotro on my oldest s new laptop it still looks for old directx 9 x which you can t download anymore and the failure to install was driving me crazy it just occurred to me that there s likely a certain amount of the mass effect fanbase that is going to buy the remastered version primarily because of the upgraded graphics in the sex scenes oh well posted by redbeard at 9 41 am 4 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels blizzcon diablo wow classic sunday november 25 2018 the slow creeping onslaught of the bean counters jason schreier has been busy following up the diablo mobile game announcement at blizzcon 2018 with an indepth article about diablo and by extension blizzard itself the past present and future of diablo dropped on wednesday right before thanksgiving in the us so it is understandable if you happened to miss it then but go and read it then come back here i ll wait pulling the diablo expac from development speaks volumes to me it tells me that upper management was feeling the pressure from the lousy d3 release and they didn t have confidence that the first d3 expac would right the ship that was a big departure from blizzard s previous behavior where they were willing to wait and work on something before it was good enough to release as much as titan was considered a failure by many internally because they never got it across that goal line it does provide a big peek into blizzard s thought process because blizzard had the wow money coming in as well as a lot of customer goodwill blizzard could afford to throw money at something that ultimately became a failure although the release of overwatch from the ashes of titan proved that blizzard could still make a fantastic game from the leftover pieces i realize that people would argue that blizzard could afford to do that because of the wow money but that ethos was baked into blizzard s culture from the get go the wow money only allowed blizzard more space to try to make a failure work however once activision blizzard struck out on their own there was bound to be a culture clash from the two entities as to which vision would ultimate win out when a b was part of vivendi this sort of clash wasn t necessary because a b was a small part of the vivendi conglomerate when a b went solo however they couldn t afford poor sales like they could in the past so how would this end up well we do have a previous merger that provides look into the dynamics of how this would work out and ironically enough it involves two major computer companies compaq and hewlett packard in one corner there was compaq the maker of the first pc clone that challenged the ibm for dominance in the pc space in the other was hp which built its reputation first on lab electronics and calculators and then later on pcs the two were big players in the pc market and when hp s carly fiorina first announced the merger the business analysts weren t so sure about how the merger would work out suggesting that the companies didn t complement each other very well however in spite of a revolt led by walter hewlett son of one of the two founders bill hewlett carly got her wish and the merger happened the two corporate cultures however couldn t be more different compaq was very much a fly by the seat of your pants outfit that would throw products against the wall to see what would stick and then patch things to make them work while hp was more ingrained in a slower methodical make sure it works before releasing style of development based on openness and trust the legendary hp way does this sound familiar perhaps bruised by the revolt and stung by the criticism from analysts carly used the merger to throw out most of hp management and replace them with compaq people leading to the eventual loss of the hp corporate culture within its own company with activision blizzard we are seeing a similar fight appearing activision is very much a release every year with some changes but with a formula that doesn t vary very much type of outfit blizzard works on things until it is perfect enough to release alas the signs don t look good for blizzard in the long run as the killing off of the second d3 expac was the first unofficial sign that blizzard s management was starting to feel the what have you done for me this quarter that seems to infest publicly traded companies the past 3 4 decades the end of the article where blizzard s new finance person has started talking about cost cutting is another ominous sign that blizzard s management is starting to lose its battle to remain independent from direct control by bobby kotick s and the bean counters from the activision side of the company in my personal opinion i think it s time for blizzard to spin off and become a privately held company they may not need to do it to develop games but if they want to develop games the way the...