Hasta La Gadget!

It does seem as though there are plenty of raw wounds on the minds of Linux-Wine users who play Diablo 3, as they are still being hammered, so to speak, by Blizzard’s auto-ban service. Some WineHQ forums have already seen a bunch of Linux users complaining about their current auto-ban situation, which actually went into effect a few weeks after Linux users started to play the game. Of course, there are two sides to a coin, and many readers who took sides with Blizzard claimed that the video game company was just banning cheaters, and but there has not been any concrete evidence supplied by Blizzard to confirm that the auto-bans which took place was a result of direct service exploitation. To put it in plain English, there was no admission on Blizzard’s side folks playing Diablo 3 on Linux-Wine were caught cheating.

What do you make of the entire situation? Do you think Blizzard needs to look into the entire context and rethink their next step?

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Diablo 3 patch 1.0.5 arriving on October 16th, Diablo 3 PvP features uncovered in datamined game client,

Given the popularity of Blizzard’s games, Starcraft and Diablo, we’re sure that are fans out there who might have fantasized what Diablo would have been like in a space-setting. Well it seems that Blizzard did consider that once and according to an interview with Shacknews, David Craddock, the author of the unofficial biography, “Stay awhile and Listen”, revealed that Blizzard had prototyped a game with the codename “Starblo”. We guess it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that the codename is a combination of Starcraft and Diablo. (more…)

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Blizzard offering free character transfers for some World of Warcraft servers, Future World of Warcraft updates to be more frequent, but smaller,

The Game Boy Color is certainly one handheld console that captured the imagination of millions of kids worldwide, and it had quite a run that lasted for many a year. Now that we are in 2012, it is interesting to read about what some of the other game developers had in mind – such as Blizzard biographer David Craddock stepping forward to say that at one point in time in the past, there was a vision to bring Diablo over to the Nintendo Game Boy Color, where the title will aptly be called Diablo Junior. The game would be “inspired” by Pokemon, where players were able to exchange exclusive characters with among each other. Development on Diablo Junior kicked off at approximately the same time as Diablo 2, where a Game Boy Advance version was also in the pipeline.

The thing is, Diablo Junior never really made it out to the mainstream because of the high production costs that Blizzard cited when it came to developing handheld games. I am not so certain about that statement, as it is very possible should Diablo Junior be a hit, they would have stumbled upon a goldmine to recoup their development costs and then some.

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Diablo 3 1.0.3 patch released , European Diablo 3 servers spit out Error 37 and Error 73,

If you were in one of several of the largest cities in World of Warcraft‘s Azeroth this weekend, it’s quite likely that you were killed – but no worry, Blizzard has fixed everything up now with a patch. This patch fixes the exploit that caused level 1 characters to be able to stroll on in to a set of major cities and decimate their entire population of both playable and non-playable characters alike. As it was, images of death were majorly visible to the general population over the weekend, this throwing Blizzard into a tizzy.

With a message that appeared inside the last day, Azeroth appears to be safe once more. As Blizzard puts it, the fix appeared to be simple, but the damage was already done. At the moment it would appear that they’ve got everything under control, but that they’re still hunting for the villains that made the deaths of masses of characters a possibility. Blizzard has sent out word that they’d be glad to hear any information regarding the incident as soon as possible – note it!

“Earlier today, certain realms were affected by an in-game exploit, resulting in the deaths of player characters and non-player characters in some of the major cities. This exploit has already been hotfixed, so it should not be repeatable. It’s safe to continue playing and adventuring in major cities and elsewhere in Azeroth.

Video above via BornInCrimson – showing some of the death in Stormwind.

As with any exploit, we are taking this disruptive action very seriously and conducting a thorough investigation. If you have information relating to this incident, please email hacks@blizzard.com. We apologize for the inconvenience some of you experienced as a result of this and appreciate your understanding.” – Nethaera, Blizzard

This situation should remind you of a certain South Park episode in which one single player had enough power to destroy any other character in the game – WoW – to which the boys responded with days and weeks of leveling up, preparing to destroy him. It ended up being that Blizzard had to intervene with a “Sword of a Thousand Truths”, a weapon that only existed in legend – and on a USB stick – with enough power to destroy the one deadly player. As it were here in the “real” world, the hacker(s) still roam free – powerless, but free.

[via Joystiq]

World of Warcraft city deaths patched while murderer roams free is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Mists of Pandaria, the fourth World of Warcraft expansion, has been available for a little over a week now. Today we’re finding out that Mists of Pandaria sold 2.7 million copies in its first week on shelves, which definitely isn’t bad, especially for an expansion. However, when held up against the sales of Cataclysm, World of Warcraft‘s third expansion, Mists of Pandaria sales are a little underwhelming.

Cataclysm sold 3.3 million copies in its first day, compared to the 2.7 million copies Pandaria sold in its first week. It would seem that World of Warcraft players aren’t as excited for this particular expansion, and there could be a number of different reasons for that. First and foremost, it could be that Pandaria is failing to grab players’ interest in the same way Cataclysm did. Cataclysm, remember, involved the destruction of Azeroth at the hands of a dragon named Deathwing, which to some is probably a bit more exciting than discovering an ancient race of panda bears.

World of Warcraft could also be suffering temporarily at the hands of Guild Wars 2, which was released at the end of August. Hype for Guild Wars 2 was incredibly high during the lead up to its release, so it makes sense that some World of Warcraft players would leave the game for a little while to go see what Guild Wars 2 has to offer.

Regardless of the reason behind the lower number, Blizzard is still happy with Pandaria’s week one sales, and anticipation for this latest expansion was enough to push World of Warcraft’s active player count over the 10 million mark once again. Indeed, 2.7 million sales in the first week is nothing to stick your nose up at, it’s just interesting to see that Cataclysm managed to net so many more sales when it launched. What’s your take on the whole situation?

[via Eurogamer]

Mists of Pandaria launch sales lag behind Cataclysm is written by Eric Abent & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.