Blackthorne's Scabbard - Bugs crawling up on deck

Does Blizzard even know what a Scabbard is? See how much I sold this for after the jump.

Typos are on the horizon, matey

What a "hansom" belt we have here.

Yes, I am referring to the typo in this belt's flavour text. Quality work, Blizzard.

Back in the Diablo 2 days, whenever there was an exploit, or bug, or anything peculiar, my instant reaction would be, "How can I exploit this". I would have a simultaneous boygasm and nerdgasm as I rushed to the forums to figure out exactly what the bug was and how to exploit the exploit, while calculating the profitability margin in my head.

But 10 years later, after having learned a little bit about how software companies work and how to write code (my IRL job), I just feel a great sense of pity.

"Really? The stats of an unidentified item aren't properly encapsulated when showing the item on chat?" "Really? There are typos in the game that round non-zero values down to 0? Zero discipline regeneration per second is awesome."

I pity them because I've done the same things in my line of work. But to a much lesser extent. And especially not out the door to the public. Our QA guys are actually good. So why can't Blizzard get some proofreaders?

The Inside

The guy working on your PvP

Most people don't realize what goes on inside a software company. Let's demystify.

Myth one: The developers and managers who make code decisions don't care about your opinions on the forums.

Reality: It's not that they don't care. They simply have very little interaction with you. It's very hard to know what customers are thinking sometimes, even if there is a huge forum. And half the threads being "I'm quitting" sure doesn't help the situation. I'm sure that Blizzard developers aren't allowed to have official forum accounts because what would that do? The PR faces outwards, the coders face inwards. PR is responsible for trickling your opinions to the coders via the company hierarchy, but coders are busy developing your PvP. What's more important; PvP or "hansom"? This leads to the next point.


Myth two: Why aren't they making these 500 changes to the AH that we want? Why don't they understand that 3 search facets is crap!?

Reality: I'm sure that Blizzard completely understands what the Diablo 3 player is thinking. However, they also know way more things that we don't know. Like what's in the pipeline. What's the next patch going to have. And the fact is, they aren't obligated to tell us what these things are. Why should they? If they find a major issue with something they've already announced, then they have to go deal with a forum backlash of "why isn't this out yet".

If they don't fix the AH right now, it could be because they are rolling out everything in 1 shot (so they don't have to refactor code all day). Patch 1.05 might completely redo the AH, who knows. Give them some credit that they are trying to do it in the best way possible. We don't have all the information, so why make wild accusations?


Myth three: This bug is never going to be fixed.

Reality: It will be. Eventually. Bugs come down a pipeline, categorized, organized by importance, then assigned to developers. In other words, it gets triaged. Sometimes changing "hansom" to "handsome" is actually kind of a pain in the ass that could take 2 hours. Two hours away from developing PvP. So they just put it away for the next update.


Myth four: Wow, nothing came out this patch. Blizzard is on vacation.

Reality: Oh come on. These threads should just be deleted. Sometimes I work on features that take 3 months. Sometimes I make small changes that take a day and are so small that it's not even worth mentioning. Blizzard is the same way.



Myth five: The Blizzard customer service sucks and can't do a thing.

Blizzard CSR doesn't make you hold, they hang up on you

 Reality: The Blizzard customer service sucks and can't do a thing. It's true. I've dealt with them. The customer service reps aren't really enabled to do certain things, so they can't magically transfer you 20$ or 20m gold to your account. They just have a sheet of canned responses that they use to appease you.

So if you get scammed, then don't fall for it again. Some WoW players have this sort of "entitlement bubble" in which they think they should be protected from scams and exploits, but Diablo offers no such thing.

I get scammed all the time. I feel bad about it, I feel like a dumbass. It's okay to feel like an idiot sometimes. It helps you learn. Not only about the game, but about yourself. If you start throwing shit out windows or if you sulk for a day, then you need to man up and learn how to deal with things when they don't go your way. Stop being an entitled prick. There's worse things that can happen to you IRL at no fault of your own; learn to deal with bad things as they happen. Start being an adult.

I'm not saying scammers are benevolent spirits sent from heaven to teach us life lessons, but shit happens; don't expect an undo button.

/BlizzardSympathizer?

I'm not trying to defend Blizzard with this post. I think their forum presence is disgraceful, and there's plenty of problems with the game that they just need to fix right now. Every time a Winged Molok starts bugging out and teleporting and going invisible on me, I want to uninstall get annoyed. Maybe things get said on the forums. But I say those things in jest; after all, it's just a game.

Think about the game like if it was any other video game. You don't "quit" Max Payne 3, you just stop playing. Diablo 3 isn't a way of life, but some people are expecting it to be. It's perfectly fine to play other games while Diablo gets its groove back. Steam Summer Sale, anyone?


Scroll down to see how much I made on the belt.

I bought 2 copies of Magicka with this

"You didn't talk about the belt at all! F*$# you!"

Ok, let's get back to the belt. Well... it's a seatbelt set belt. From Blackthorne's. It's green colored. Smells a little bit like an old orange rind. I think people wear the pants and the belt together, since the belt keeps the pants from falling off can roll high INT or DEX affixes. I'm a little surprised it sold for 20 bucks since it didn't have a resist all roll. Happy?

By popular demand

I'm going to list the scams that I unwittingly fell for. Laugh at me, commiserate with me, do what you like.


1. Someone tried to sell me a dex-roll Andarial's Visage (in D3) for 3m, and he did the trade swap for a str-roll. I kind of deserved that; it was only 3m after all. Thank you, benevolent being, for teaching me the meaning of greed. And I hope you get banned you son of a bitch.


2. I did not save 15% on my car insurance.


3. In Diablo 2, I traded 20 sojs for something that I can't even remember. Instead of putting up 20 sojs, I threw up 19 sojs and a Raven Spiral (worth maybe 20 sojs by itself). Rings are rings, they all look alike. Naturally the guy didn't say a word and went through with the trade. I scammed myself. XD


4. I bought a physical authenticator.

5. Someone tried to convince me that my "Eviscerator's Lock" was worth only 20m gold. He offered to throw in some white dyes, which in his words were, "From a special game event, you had to save the merchant to get these dyes". Seemed like a good deal at the time, so I traded him. No, I did not fall for this one; I'm not quite that stupid.




There ya go. Cheers.