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| Zynga's "FarmVille 2" |
Meanwhile, the PS4 is sitting by the wayside waiting for some new games to come into the playing field. I may even pick up a copy of Thief or pre-order Infamous: Second Son today, both titles are of some interest to me. The fact that I am playing FarmVille shows that I do need to find some serious games to play, and fast!
Diablo III has been on the playlist a bit lately, for those who are unaware, the game's loot system was scrutinized upon initial release for taking away from it's predecessors 'smash and grab' looting style, where the player was motivated to continue destroying monsters with promise of better loot. The initial Diablo III looting system was far too 'random' and items that were dropped, even by the 'hardest' bosses would often be of no use to the player, making the system feel broken and too reliant on the 'Real Money Auction House'. My Girlfriend and I (who have sunk a few hours into the game on Co-Op) are more than familiar with this phenomenon.
However, after much crying from the community, the recent Diablo III patch introduced the 'Loot 2.0' system. A refined looting system where the items dropped by monsters and bosses are not only more rewarding with difficulty, but are more specifically tailored towards the character which the player is using. Loot will occasionally still drop that is suited to other classes, but this is at an acceptable rate and still allows for players to occasionally trade or swap gear pieces. It is strange that the patch also removed 'Gold Trading' but I'm speculating as to whether this is a temporary change whilst the loot 2.0 is introduced. And lastly, come March 18th the 'Real Money Auction House' will be shut down. Hooray! This is of course all leading up to the release of Diablo III's first expansion pack, 'Reaper of Souls'.
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| Diablo III - Reaper of Souls Expansion Pack |
First things first, this is definitely one of my favourite blizzard cinematic trailers of all time. The feature list for the expansion isn't bad either. The addition of a new "Adventure Mode' and level 70 becoming the new maximum level are just the beginning. A new class the "Crusader" is being introduced as well. The crusader would appear to be a hybrid between Monk and Barbarian, whilst he would appear a rather 'tanky' class, the Monk and Barbarian will actually take a passive 30% less damage than the Crusader, so one would assume the Crusader has a lot of mitigation utility considering he generally in close combat (EG: his shield). Check out the Crusader video for a more detailed outline of the new class.
It's a big month for Blizzard Entertainment, shutting down the Real Money AH in Diablo III was a start. They also announced the Pre-Purchase for "World of Warcraft - Warlords of Draenor", and on the 25th of this month the "Reaper of Souls" expansion will be available. To top that off, on March 11, "Hearthstone" Blizzards casual 'card game' was released on PC and MAC. The Beta was rather successful with much player interest, and I expect the game will do rather well as it is somewhat unique and has a good plethora of characters and story creating the foundation for the game. The real test will be to see how successful the Android and iOS versions of the game will be, that for me is where a game of this style would be most successful, and is certainly the platform that I will be playing the game from.
All said and done for now, this month of March is looking somewhat exciting for the PC gaming world, and if I do manage to get my hands on a new PS4 title soon, we'll see how that goes...
CookeRS
