
Diablo III coming May 15 - switz
http://us.battle.net/en/int?r=d3
======
vyrotek
While I'm very (very) excited for this game.. I'm very nervous about my
productivity this summer. There are few things that can pull me away from
coding. This is one of them.

Maybe D3 will open some new startup opportunities? Yes.. yes that's what I'll
tell myself. It's all research.

~~~
xenophanes
You could sell a game guide for D3, however Blizzard legal hates those.
They've done stuff like file takedown notices with ebay, over and over. Then
when the guy filed a counter notice, they refused to go to court, waited for
the time period to expire, then started filing more takedowns for his new game
guide auctions. This disgusting behavior got his ebay account suspended! And
they refused to ever explain specifically how the game guide violates their
copyright or trademark (hint: it doesn't.).

I personally wanted to make a game guide for Infinity Blade 2 but epic legal
threatened me out of it (and we had a friendly pre-existing relationship,
which counted for exactly nothing. they'd interviewed me for their website and
sent me free stuff, and i had a free guide on their forum with 200k views that
they had made sticky). Dealing with their legal crap wasn't worth the hassle.
I was even willing to give them undeserved money to be left alone, but they
wanted a large cash payment upfront and were unwilling to discuss any other
payment approach.

Anyway the point is game guides should be a pretty good small business
opportunity -- there is a very real market for help playing games better and
being more successful in them -- but there are (baseless but real) legal
problems so be wary.

You might expect game companies to be thrilled to have services sold around
their games, which their customers find provides game-related value to them.
Just like Apple is happy to see other people selling iPhone cases. But a lot
of game companies are not happy and will harass you.

~~~
yaks_hairbrush
Wouldn't making a game guide be fair-use, similar to an unauthorized
encyclopedia of a fictional universe (like Middle-Earth)?

Even so, I suppose you'd have to defend the fair-use in court.

~~~
xenophanes
Yeah of course it's fair use. A guide is a commentary work and it's not even
close to substituting for someone buying the game. The point of copyright law
is for the copyright owners to be able to make a profit -- copyright is to
help encourage people to make and sell stuff. You aren't competing for sales
with their game, so there's basically no way you're violating the game
copyright. Just don't include video walkthroughs of the whole game (which
could actually be a substitute good for buying the game).

If they've published their own game guide, just don't take any material from
it and you won't be violating any copyrights on that either.

For trademark, the point is to prevent consumers from being confused about who
is responsible for products, so people can build up a brand name and have a
reputation they are responsible for and have control over. Guide titles like,
"Ubergeek's Ultimate Unofficial Guide to Diablo 3" do not violate trademark
because they do not cause any confusion about whose product this is. It's well
established that you _can_ use someone else's trademark as a substring in your
product title when it's important to explaining what your product is and won't
cause consumer confusion. (Similarly, "Pegasus Case for iPhone" or "Ubergeek's
iPod Battery Replacement Kit" would not violate trademark.)

But, yes, as you say: being completely right doesn't prevent you having to
defend yourself and spending time and money on that. (Could you recoup lawyers
fees after you win? I have no idea about that.)

DISCLAIMER: I am not a lawyer. (But I have read some legal sources about
this.)

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jeremymcanally
Oh, they're fiendish indeed. They're offering the game for free if you sign up
for a year of WoW. That's just mean.

I managed to abstain from that, but I did pre-buy and pre-load the game. I was
just so excited they had Mac support (which, last I'd heard, was sort of up in
the air I thought).

~~~
fbuilesv
The Mac support has always been great for Blizzard games and D3 is no
exception. I've been playing the beta in a 2009 MBP for a couple of weeks now
and everything looks pretty smooth.

Unlike companies like EA, Blizzard spends real time making sure their Mac
offerings are as good as the Windows ones and that is enough for myself to be
a supporter.

~~~
MartinCron
_I've been playing the beta in a 2009 MBP for a couple of weeks now and
everything looks pretty smooth._

Question about heat: My wife's MBP (2011) runs what seems to be dangerously
hot doing even basic web video and she's worried that D3 will melt it
entirely.

~~~
maqr
It can't. All modern chips have thermal protection. It'll just throttle down
if it gets too hot.

------
yaks_hairbrush
I don't like Blizzard much anymore. I liked WarCraft 2 and 3, and Diablo 1 and
2 (liked is a bit of a strong word for Diablo 1 and 2, though... 'twas more
addicting than fun). Nice gameplay, good for LAN parties, and a decent hacker
culture on all of them. In fact, the excellent map editors in StarCraft and
WarCraft 3 were inspired by some hacker-made Warcraft 2 map editors.

Now? Blizzard's doing all they can to control the whole experience. No LAN
capabilities, shameful treatment of the bnetd folks, and others that have been
mentioned here. Contrast to id games who open source their engines and invite
folks to build on them.

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Jimmie
"Online Only" sucks. No LAN and no mods make me a sad boy.

~~~
harph
This. I will not be buying this game, because I don't want to support this
model.

~~~
uriloran
Yes, I think you're right. It's better not to support it and it will be good
for our productivity, too.

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maerek
After my roommates pre-ordering it for my Christmas gift back in _2010_, glad
to see this thing is finally launching.

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debacle
Judging by many of the posts of /. and reddit, the level of distaste with the
'Battle.net 2.0' scheme for Diablo III is much higher than what it was for
Starcraft 2, probably owing to SC2's inherently multiplayer nature and the
huge deviation in gameplay from Diablo II to Diablo III.

I has been common knowledge for a while that Diablo III will likely see a
console port. Looking back, it's hard to imagine that that didn't severely
impact the design of the game.

~~~
nas
SC2 players _hate_ Battle.net 2.0. I don't think Blizzard cares too much,
since they are focusing on the larger casual market. They originally stated
that there would be no chat channels ("why would you even what them?"). That
makes sense for a casual player who is already on Facebook and uses that to
communicate with their friends.

~~~
debacle
I think the core idea is that Battle.net 2.0 represents a step back from SC:BW
Battle.net in most regards, and the only steps forward don't make Battle.net
2.0 nearly as functional as WC3 Battle.net.

Only time will tell if their IP has the traction to overcome the limitations
of their system, and how that impacts future iterations of their games.

------
jchonphoenix
Why is this relevant to hacker news? This piece of news is something I'd
expect if I went to reddit, but this shouldn't be anywhere on Hacker News at
all.

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kmcgrath
RIGHT DURING FINALS WEEK, GREAT. Now there's going to be a lot more college
seniors that won't be graduating.

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thetron
I am super excited for this, but a little disappointed that Blizzard
apparently doesn't understand exchange rates.

The Australian dollar is currently worth (marginally) more than the US Dollar,
and yet the game costs an extra $20 here. I don't understand how this is
justifiable.

~~~
simonsarris
I'm not sure if you're having a rhetorical meow or just want to know what's
going on here, so I'll offer an explanation.

It's not about exchange rates and never ever will be. It's about purchasing
power. It's just normal market segmentation, like how textbooks are cheaper in
India/China than in the U.S.

Whats the average purchasing power of an Australain versus an American?

The Australian dollar is worth more than the US Dollar, and what's Australia's
minimum wage? What's America's? They're about $15 and $7 respectively. If
anything, Blizzard could probably stand to charge Australians _even more._

But I'm sure they've done the math on this, and there might be other factors,
but I'd gander that in terms of purchasing power the costs of the game to an
American and Australian are probably pretty similar.

Now if you were making money in the U.S. and had to spend it in Australia,
_then_ you'd be very right to meow about exchange rates, since they don't take
into account purchasing power, but very very few people who buy the Australian
game are going to be in that position.

~~~
joliveira
In Europe there are huge discrepancies in purchasing power between countries
even inside the Euro zone but, at least when buying online directly from
Blizzard, the price is the same wether you live in Greece/Portugal or
France/Germany.

Having the same price for every country inside the UE and not using the actual
conversion rate hurts even more the people in countries where average wage is
bellow US wages.

It wouldn't hurt them that much having different prices for different
countries inside the UE, just make it so you need a credit card from the
country to pay the price corresponding to that country.

(at least there is amazon.co.uk and I am a little happier)

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Steko
Expectations for D3 have gone from out of this world to all over the place
lately. On top of the release pushbacks and feature cuts a few weeks ago one
of Blizzard's PR people said essentially "don't get your hopes up for D3"
(Google _Bashiok Diablo 3_ ). That furor was a bit overblown but still
expectations are down for many people.

I think D3 will be more of what we got in SC2: essentially the same game but
prettier. Which is sad because Diablo, WC2, SC and WoW were blockbusters
(edit)in large part(/edit) because of their innovations.

------
valuegram
I'm interested to hear about expectations for Diablo III. I'm long ATVI
because of their dividend, financials, and value fundamentals. Gaming also
seems like a growth industry and Blizzard/Activision have some strong gaming
franchises. I figured the upcoming Diablo III launch would only help the
situation.

~~~
politician
I love Blizzard's timing... by setting a date we can surmise that WoW's Free-
to-Play model is failing and that May 15 is the latest date that a release-
date-averse publisher like Blizzard feels it can still preempt the Guild Wars
2 release. It makes one wonder if these large publishers have game
theoreticians working on optimum release dates.

~~~
endianswap
There definitely have to be some solid reasons behind this specific release
date given the fact that they've been cutting features in the last couple of
months to be ready to ship in May (such as PVP). When were their other games
launched? I seem to remember StarCraft 2 launching around May/June.

(Hopefully unnecessary disclaimer: I work on Guild Wars 2.)

~~~
politician
SC2 was released early July 2010. D2 was released in late June 2000. WoW and
its expansions in successive Christmas seasons. So, yes, I'd say that May 15
is atypically early for Blizzard. Given the online auction house component,
they may feel that it's necessary to hook the summer crowd early to maximize
returns from _that_ casino.

I wouldn't be surprised if this move forced Arena Net to push back to a
Thanksgiving release, since people generally don't play two online "collect-
em-all" games at once.

------
Teapot
Disappointing graphics so far. This is what i think Diablo3 _should_ look like
these days, [http://uiu.bravehost.com/THIS-is-what-Diablo3-should-look-
li...](http://uiu.bravehost.com/THIS-is-what-Diablo3-should-look-like.jpg)

Anything less and i´m not interested.

~~~
TwoBit
Diablo as an FPS could never be the same.

~~~
Splines
Borderlands did it pretty well. I wouldn't mind playing a fantasy-themed
Borderlands.

------
athst
Okay, so that means I have about 60 days left of productivity/having a life

~~~
vyrotek
Start the count down!

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TwoBit
I love Diablo but this was getting to be like Duke Nukem.

~~~
reitzensteinm
Interestingly enough, Duke Nukem Forever was announced just four months after
Diablo 1 was released - April, 1997.

So D3 has been in the making longer than your average PC title, but it's not
quite as bad!

------
sbmassey
Unless they have some new control scheme, I don't think my hands will stand up
to the intense mouse clicking this game needs.

~~~
MartinCron
I found that with Diablo II, you could click a lot less than was intuitive.
Click-and-hold would be as effective as click mashing, and a lot easier on the
hands.

------
sad_panda
I have the beta. It's pretty awesome to behold, but the gameplay isn't
significantly different than d1/d2.

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davidtyleryork
Is it bad that I'm already scheming ways to make money off of the real-money
auction house?

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thomasloh
right about time! let's find out what's 10 years worth of developing this game
looks like!

~~~
glanch
I think I remember reading that they basically scrapped everything and started
over around 2007.

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thomasloh
does pre-purchasing it now makes any difference than buying it on launch date?

~~~
rkalla
You might want to check all your different retailer's sites (Amazon, Gamestop,
etc.) to see if they offer pre-order bundle bonuses as they do with other
games.

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H_E_Pennypacker
sign of beta?

~~~
arien
Betas (open, and closed too, to a degree) these days seem more like, "let's
subtly have people try our product for free, get hooked and generate buzz
while at it". It's the same as a free trial (although calling it like this has
less positive response, it seems). Just another marketing stunt, long gone are
the days where beta was used strictly for testing.

On the Web 2.0 environment, who started this? Was it Google with Gmail, or was
there something else before?

Also, lately, at least in the MMO scene, going gold doesn't mean that the game
is polished and ready for release, it just means that you're ready to charge
customers.

~~~
TheCapn
You're right and you're wrong.

Blizzard DOES use the beta for hype. With SC2 they gave beta keys to preorders
to help generate revenue and interest prior to launch. Not a lot of
participants actually know the reason for a beta and actually use it as an
excuse to play the game early but Blizzard already knows this.

Blizzard's job of releasing a public/invite beta is to test:

A) How the game functions on the boat-load of machine configurations
available. When you sign up for beta invite on battle.net you need to create a
"profile" of yourself by uploading your PC specs. Blizzard has always provided
games that can run on a low end machine with features and graphical tweaks
that still allow it to look good on a new machine. For me SC2 had to run on
low/medium on my 2 year old laptop but with my new PC it runs on Ultra with
great effects!

B) Network stability. B.net2.0 is rather new and they need to test the
matching functionality as well as load test the servers for every reason under
the sun. Having willing participants allows them to hit all these goals while
still generating the hype.

~~~
arien
Again, it's not just Blizzard I'm talking about. Every single MMO company
since a few years ago is going this way.

Network stability is mostly tested on specific moments like stress test
weekends or at the end of a beta, when they let everyone in to see how far
they can push their hardware.

Of couse this and general behaviour in various hardware configurations need to
be tested. But it's not the ultimate point of a beta anymore, at least not in
the later stages.

I can see it all the time, players just want to get into a beta to see if they
like a game before they pay for it, rather than to help make it better.

------
hackermom
I think I can hear the distant sound of marriage counselors rubbing their
hands. It's THAT big.

------
kahawe
Are there any news on bringing it to consoles? Wikipedia[0] just says they are
probably still working on it but there are no confirmations one way or the
other...

[0] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diablo_3#Console_development>

~~~
TheCapn
I don't have a source on me (Work blocks sites that I could link to) but they
have confirmed that there is a console port coming. I believe they have a
small dedicated team to the port.

~~~
mariusmg
Probably towards the end of the year...

