ZOMG teh Diablos!!!

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So, as the entire world knows, Blizzard’s much anticipated Diablo III was released on this past Tuesday.  There were a couple of hitches in it’s North American launch, but as of this morning it seems to be full steam ahead.

This isn’t the first time that I played D3, I did get beta access about a month and a half ago.  But I really only jumped into the beta to see what the fuss was all about.  Personally, I did not think it possible to administer crack via the interwebs, but somehow Blizzard found a way.  I swear, even in the closed beta they had the iCrack delivery system well established.

While I’ve never played any of the Diablo’s in the past, I am familiar with the “dungeon crawler” type of game.  Some of the games range from the text only Zork, to the early Wizardry and Might and Magic series of games.  I’ve also pretty much mastered the Eye of Beholder series and it’s pseudo-random little brother Dungeon Hack.  One should note the relative age of these games.  I haven’t really played a true dungeon crawler since around 2000 or so.  Until D3, of course.

The first character I rolled was a Barbarian.  He is currently only level 17, but he’s also a pure joy to play.  It’s all “Hulk SMASH” all the time.

The controls are incredibly simple, the rewards almost literally explode from enemies, and with the variety of destructible environmental items it’s easy to see why D2 has been so popular for so long.  I have no idea of how the story telling went in D2, but I can say that in D3 I an entirely engrossed in it.

WoW’s MoP expansion is basically just around the corner and I’m very much looking forward to it, but I also have to admit, to myself at least, that D3 now has a permanent place in my game rotation.

-b1urry

Misty Beta Landscapes

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So, as any WoW player could tell you, the beta for the Mists of Pandaria expansion is in full swing.  It has actually been available for better than a month now, but it has only been since this past week that Blizzard announced that all Annual Pass holders are finally able to enter it.  As for myself, I’ve been in since the third round of invites and I have been having a ball with it.

I’ve spent most of my time re-acclimating myself to the default UI and running through the quests that are currently available.  Endir is currently 88 and is thumping heads in mountain steppes of Kun-li, and Unguis is applying the pew pew in the Krasarang Wilds.

With this post I’m not going to do any particular analysis of anything in particular.  What I do intend is to simply put down my impressions of the world itself and the quests that we will be immersed in.  For the full set of screenshots, check out the full MoP Landscape gallery.  At the time of this writing we are currently in build 15677, so some things may change once the expansion goes live.

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Search, Content, SEO, and You

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I’ve only been into web development for only a few years.  As such, I consider myself to be only an intermediate developer, a beginning designer, and a budding copywriter.  That said, I feel I must stress that the following is simply my observations about what I’ve seen in the industry and may or may not reflect reality.

I am involved with a couple of online employment sites that offer freelance work, and I regularly scan available jobs in both web development and copy-writing.  This is a wonderful way to get a foothold in the industry, but in the area of copy-writing I see a trend in some SEO requests that I’m not really okay with.  Fortunately for my sensibilities, Google is taking steps to make sure that much of what I’m going to discuss will actually punish a site for using these tactics.

Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is very important for any company with an online presence.  Who wouldn’t want to have their site at the top of any search involving their area of business?  As long as there are search engines SEO will always be a factor and those who are masters at it will always be a valuable resource , but like anything that can be gamed there is a dark side to it.  I’ll discuss in more detail my opinions about good SEO in a later post, but here I’ll be touching on keyword cramming, link farming, and spinning; three of the most often used of the more underhanded tactics out there.

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So Confused

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So, as I may have mentioned once or twice here on this blog that I’ve become an active seller in the glyph market in WoW.  I’m only active on Azgalore and, to a lesser degree, my old home of Norgannon.  Norgannon isn’t much of a problem and I tend to pull in a bit of gold fairly consistently.  Heck, the only real problem with the Horde Norgannon market is that prices are generally quite a bit below the average over the span of servers.

Azgalor, however, was a rich diamond mine ready to drop gold into my pocket.  I say “was” because Azgalor’s glyph market now more closely resembles an asylum filled with people that are more than willing to list at a loss, while at the same time trying to gouge buyers where it thinks it can get away with it.

Over the last three weeks or so, maybe longer, competition has become insane.  There are now at least four different posters that will, for one reason or another, post their entire stock for less than 30 gold each.

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It’s Legen – wait for it – Dary!

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The wacky group of people I run with in WoW, the guild Stands in Bad, has had not one, but two sets of legendary weapon quest lines completed in the last three weeks.

Not too shabby for a casual raiding guild.

Our resident raiding rogue, Teenytiny, completed her quest for the legendary dagger set last April 4th, and has been giggling manically on and off since.  Only she got to see the final cut scene for when she received her daggers, which is kinda bogus on Blizz’s part.  They could have done something where we could have watched it with her, or at least arrange a “public” acknowledgement of the achievement.  But then, it is a rogue weapon, I suppose you have to expect the end to just trail off into the shadows.

Just yesterday our moar dots slinging pint sized warlock, Darktyme, finally completed that long assed quest line for the legendary staff Teragosa’s Rest.  The final investment of this weapon is a very public display in both Stormwind for the Alliance and Orgrimmar for the Horde players.  It’s actually quite an amazing display, even after having seen dozens since the Firelands raid opened.  It’s also surprising just how many well wishers there are during that presentation.  Of course it’s not at all surprising how many jackholes still ask in trade channel what all the dragons are for.

So a great big grats to my guildies, Teenytiny and Darktyme, and may SiB find many more legendary times in the future.

-b1urry