Devil's plan

We all have different amounts of time for entertainment. Some of us can only invest one or two hours of our days to play video games. Others can invest significantly more. Whatever your playtime is, the fact is that you can only do one thing at a time. Actually, one of the first things they taught us in media studies is that it's all about fighting for a piece of consumers leisure time. The invention of television is often blamed for ruining the popularity of movie theaters for this same reason.


Since May 15th, WoW players are dealing with the same problems the movie fans had to confront back in the 50's. We are all investing more of our time to play Diablo 3, which means WoW is being pushed aside. Global WoW economy dropped in size by approx. 30% according to the WoWuction.com numbers.


In my last post I promised to explain how Diablo 3 helped me make more gold than usual. While this idea might seem contradictory to what you just read, believe me, it is possible.

Hell finally breaks loose

Yep, in case you haven't heard, Diablo 3 is out. Old news. Let the madness begin.

I was never a huge Diablo fan. Running similar, randomly generated and rather claustrophobic maps, praying to the RNG gods all day long was never my idea of having fun. Still, for whatever reason, I've been hooked. I got it for free with my annual pass, so i figured "what the hell." It's hell indeed. The amount of time I've been spending in front of my computer since Diablo came out is really starting to bother me. It reminds me of that time when I used to raid and farm in WoW, when smashing keys for 12-15 hours used to be a usual daily routine for me. This time, it's Diablo 3 and instead of my keyboard, my poor Logitech MX518 is screaming for help.

Where the F*** U Been?

I didn't think it would happen this time. Every time I start a blog, I get excited about it and then something happens in real life, "A terrible flood! Locusts! IT WASN'T MY FAULT, I SWEAR TO GOD!!!" So, blogging got put off for a week or two. But I am back, I am not giving up just yet.

 So, to skip straight to what has been going on, I've been playing the Beta hoping to discover something epic. The problem is there is not much to discover yet. Since this is the first MMO beta I've participated in, I was not prepared for all the bugs and crashes. I mean, it's really buggy! First there was a "patch" that made the client crash every 3 minutes. A hacked .exe file that fixes the issue appeared on the Internet later that afternoon, however, using it means breaking the terms of use, so I didn't go down that road. Yet, it took Blizzard more than a few days to fix the issue. This and similar problems, like character copying problems, have a tendency of throwing you off balance, so I've been having a real difficult time playing like I normally do on live.

Still, what I found pretty awesome is the fact that you can play both live and beta at the same time. Since I don't have 2 active accounts, dual boxing between these two makes waiting for scans and mailboxes a lot less painful.

You've got mail.

I am not Tom Hanks and Blizzard is definitely not Meg Ryan, yet I felt the same kind of joy when I received a little present from them in my inbox. The way it was formatted, it seemed like a phishing scam.

"Yea, right, I got into the beta. With the luck I've been having with beta invites so far, I am not getting invited until the last wave of invites is sent out." - is what came to my mind instantly. If there were no Annual Pass promotion and I hadn't signed up for it, I am certain I would never had gotten the invite.

But I got it! I am in the Mists of Pandaria Beta. Yes, I had to commit to an evil 1 year contract to get there, but still...