1.11 Release Notes

[SkaMan]

One thing I really love about the patch is the changes to merc hiring/experience. It's awesome when you've got an ubertwinked char lvling very quickly, and your merc is actually keeping up for once!

~Ska

[frosty]

I am trying to be more positive in my outlook of things too. My view on the runewords:

Bone in SolUmUm, looks like a reasonable match for Skin of the Vipermagi.

Enlightment maybe useful for the oskill Warmth, or the +2 skills, but lack of resists is not good.

Myth will be good for untwinked barbs as the rune req is pretty low.

I don't like peace at all. The ctc valk will override possible stronger valks and also make you lose the valk when you most need her.

Can't make anything out of Principle except it's like an Arkaine's valor

Ctc cyclone armor on Rain will help druids. Not sure it is workable on wereforms though.

The IAS on Treachery is very sweet.

I like Duress and Splendor.

edit: I shall withdraw back into retirement now.

[tmorrow]

Last I checked, /players doesn't work on realm, and there's no ATMA. Oh, shhh, I should shut up before Blizz removes the /players command from SP and makes it so ATMA will never work again.

Edit: Oh yeah, I forgot, playing on realm uses my bandwidth, playing in SP uses no bandwidth. Thus I can play SP and host my FTP server at the same time. Damn, now Blizz will try to force me to verify online to play SP.

Another Blizzard Rep pushing their (not so) hidden agenda.

More reasons for not playing Battlenet:

You don't play your online character for a few months and then try to create a game with said character. "Where did my character go?" ... Oh, that's right, it was deleted. Battlenet decided you didn't want that character anymore, or if you did, bad luck. Our rules.

"How come my game just froze just when my HC melee character is fighting Lister and crew? Arghhhhh ...". Oh, didn't we tell you, we prefer that you connect 1/2 way around the world to our laggy, overtaxed servers, inundated with the lowlife PK'ing, map hacking scum that can't even spell "teh". And what's more, we expect you to like it. Our rules.

It takes an extra programming effort to code the SP exclusions like Uber Diablo, Lilith, cubing keys, runewords etc. In short, Blizzard have gone out their way to irritate and ostracise the SP community and those who play on non Battlenet servers. Because ... well, they have their reasons.

Well, guess what Blizzard. I play by my rules. It's MY entertainment. Stick with what you do best - making good games and I'll stick with what I do best - playing the game in the way that gives me the most pleasure. I for one am unlikely to buy another Blizzard game, I stopped after Diablo 2. Multiplay only, online, pay by the month POS - that seems to be the trend. That's not gaming, that's an ongoing expense.

I'll decide when and how to play my game. I insist on being able to play offline if I choose. It might be SP, it might be 4 player on my home LAN through my switch. I'm happy to pay for the product, but I'll choose the battlefield location. Why does that bother you so much Blizzard? Just how greedy can you be? Paying full price for your product isn't good enough?

Sorry guys, most of the above is rhetoric, unlikely to be read by Blizzard and they wouldn't care anyway. At least some of you will understand my frustration and where I'm coming from.

Quite frankly, I might be resorting to using a MOD that only enables the "missing features" from 1.10 and 1.11. You know, have that online experience offline and stick it to Blizzard.

[Sledge]

someone should try peace out in an iron golem

[Tom_S]

Yada Yada Yada...

Every patch is the same thing. Blizzard did this, Blizzard did that.

In all this years i've never seen anybody stop playing the game because of a new patch.

Let it go. Enjoy the new stuff while you can.

I for one miss the days of finding new stuff every day.

Still remember one of the first FOTDīs:

"To get infinite money go to the Den of Evil and open the shiny chest. It will drop gold every time"

Ah those were the days. Let's get those Den of Evil runs

Just get 1.11 and play with what you have. It STILL is a fun game (at least for me).

[tmorrow]

I think you're being overly dramatic. We'll deal with the future when it's here. And one thing you might want to keep in mind that blizzard needs to make money. They aren't doing this for charity any more than everybody else who's got to sell stuff. If they want to survive they need to focus on selling, and not just to a few but to many. I remember a lot of great games that focused on smaller crowds. Planescape Torment, Fallout 1 & 2, just to name a few. They were all comercially unsuccessful and the company that made them is out of buisness. Idealism doesn't pay any bills.

Let's say you were going to make a game, what would you rather do. Focus on MP and sell one copy to everyone playing B.net D2 or keep things balanced, selling one copy to everyone in SP but maybe 1% less to people on b.net? I don't really know how many of "us" there are but I'm almost sure that we don't matter buinesswise.

I don't understand. Blizzard doesn't need to make any special design decisions to create a multiplayer game that works for single player. To support multiplayer they already have to address the issue of scale, 10 players, 100, 1000 etc. After all, single player is a multiplayer game with only one participant. I appreciate that they save on supporting a wide range of diverse systems.

What's nonsense is what they are doing now, which is deliberately coding to exclude SP. I can't see any justification for that behaviour. It simply incites the SP community to be deliberately excluded in this way.

I still can't work out the numbers of who play online versus those who SP. Going off game sales as compared with registered users on Battlenet I think there's a big gap. This gap is made up of those who have moved on from D2 to other games and those that SP and I'm not sure what the ratio is but it may well be significant - time will tell. All I know is that in my small community of friends, we all like to multiplay on Open Battlenet, but we insist on keeping our player files local where we know they will be in a few months time when we want to play again.

As for the oxymoron "business sense", perhaps Blizzard are taking the path that will keep them viable for the future, but I won't be taking that path. I have a strict budget for entertainment. In hindsight I'd be happy to pay several time the current PP for a game like D2 - it's given me years of pleasure (no thanks to Battlenet, only to SP). But I won't pay an ongoing fee in the faint hopes that the newest multiplayer, online RPG

1. Has a nonlaggy server nearer than a continent away.
2. Doesn't have server maintenance coinciding with my 'prime time'.
3. Has game participants with an average IQ larger than my shoesize.

[bill_n_opus]

The IAS on Treachery is very sweet.

NecroChild is talking about the 25% ctc level 20 venom (iirc) on Treachery as being quite the boon for the daggermancer at the Necro forums. Might have to make one someday.

[DeathMaster]

Well, guess what Blizzard. I play by my rules. It's MY entertainment. Stick with what you do best - making good games and I'll stick with what I do best - playing the game in the way that gives me the most pleasure. I for one am unlikely to buy another Blizzard game, I stopped after Diablo 2. Multiplay only, online, pay by the month POS - that seems to be the trend. That's not gaming, that's an ongoing expense.

I'll decide when and how to play my game. I insist on being able to play offline if I choose. It might be SP, it might be 4 player on my home LAN through my switch. I'm happy to pay for the product, but I'll choose the battlefield location. Why does that bother you so much Blizzard? Just how greedy can you be? Paying full price for your product isn't good enough?

Sorry guys, most of the above is rhetoric, unlikely to be read by Blizzard and they wouldn't care anyway. At least some of you will understand my frustration and where I'm coming from.

Haven't really read anything recently, but this new patch thread.

You've got what I want to say.

Looks like blizzard won't get any money off my porket anymore. Yes blizzard has very rights to say "go and F*** youself. Gib monthly fees!!!", after all, it is a blizzard game. However, I too have every rights to say "go and F*** yourself, I ain't gonna buy any of your games".

[Cormallon]

However, I too have every rights to say "go and F*** yourself, I ain't gonna buy any of your games".

Please, calm down. Of course you decide what you buy. And Blizzard is well aware of that.

OK, this time they didn't sell you what you wanted to get...

Wait, sell? You didn't have to pay anything for the patch, did you? Let's be grateful we got it. When you bought the game perhaps 5 years ago, you surely didn't expect to get patches over such a long period.

Blizzard did something to have premium content on their server. Perhaps. So what? We still got more than we anticipated when we bought the game.

Future games may be worth paying a monthly fee or not. I for my part will decide that when I see such a game and the price.

[lone_wolf]

*agrees 110% with tmorrows post*

im one more person who could not care less about any future games from blizz as they probebly all are multiplay only and with a monthly fee. Who knows they might even be download only. Dont know about the rest of you but when i pay for a game i intend to be able to play it when ever i want and i will only pay once for the game. And everytime i have ventured online in games i have found myself losing fate in humankind as a result.(there are exceptions of course but as they saying goes "common sense is all but common" )