I personally know some of the people working on the D3 project. I doubt they will tell me dates about anything yet though. I am just waiting for Friend and Family invite for alpha testing whenever that time comes.
Do you think they will have beta testers? If you can get in could you put in a good word for me? Remember I sent you potions in WAR. I have not heard much about Guild Structure in D3, but if they have it I would XoO could provide a great guild for beta testing.
News on Battle.Net There will be advertisements. Personally I am fine with that as long as the game remains free to play online and the Ads to do not interfere with game play. If there is an Ad window while I am logging on or looking for a game I don't care as long as it's gone when I am playing. Source: http://www.diii.net/blog/comments/massive-inc-and-blizzard-multi-year-advertising-deal/
Wow, looks like blizzard is getting greedy now. I'm OK with adds in a independent or a game run by a small business, but Blizzard? Seriously, all the money they make from WoW and past games that are STILL played on an obsessive basis, you would think they could make Diablo III a game without adds to rake in the money.
It would be a terrible business decision to create a product that loses money just because you have one that makes a lot. This is not greed IMO, this is a solution where the users have access to free online play. If you ever played D2 on B.Net, there was an AD bar at the top (As far as I remember).
There is an ad bar already on B.Net regardless of what game you're playing (WC3 may be the exception) so this won't really change anything. If they want to place another small ad box or two somewhere I won't mind as long as it's not in your face and disappears once in game.
Yea I know Bnet already has adds here and there, I thought you meant they were going to add more to it.
If you think about it, the old way of doing it was to wait 2-3 years until the servers declined then add ads just to pay for server management, but if they put in the ads now instead of later theres a good chance they will be able to keep the servers better for longer, and when you have Hard Core servers every lag spike is like one of the monsters having a gun for no reason... doesn't matter how good or stacked you are, 1 spike can kill you.
Tyrael is Changing! Before: Now: "He lists the following things to have changed: * Tyrael now has vastly improved glowing wings. * An ambient sound was added to the main page. * The navigation bar now emits a red fog/mist from the main Diablo 3 logo. * A loading bar appears above the selected language indicating completion progress for that page’s navigation bar." Source
I really like the new effect, just 2 days ago someone asked me about D3 and I went to their main site to link it back and was almost hypnotized by the bobbing ribbons, thinking more and more how out of place they looked.
Media Update #3 12-11-2008" "We have added three new pieces of artwork and seven new screenshots." Source