In the interest of helping I'll try a brief explanation of game simplified as far as I can.

DOTA 2 and games like it have you controlling a single hero character much like in Diablo or any of it's derivatives. You play it as teams against one another, with the goal in essence being to destroy your opponents base. Each team starts out with half the map, and has defensive structures(towers) on their side that attack anything near them. Finally, there are typically several paths from between bases along which AI controlled waves of units are sent from each of your bases. Killing the AI units, enemy heros, and towers all gain you experience and money that you can spend on upgrades of various sorts.

Diablo 3 was an atrocious mess.......agreed 100%! They have even turned WOW into a "Give the player ANYTHING they want" child like game.

@shagen454:
Blizzard has never been a creative force; their strength was in polish. They were great at taking existing concepts and designs and showing everyone how it should be done (see: Warcraft/Starcraft, WOW).

Unfortunately, game design is incredibly stagnant right now and Blizzard has nothing new to emulate. 1996 was the last time they launched a unique property (Diablo). They've been mostly remaking their own games since then:
* Warcraft sequels/spinoffs
* Diablo sequels/expansions
* Starcraft (Warcraft meets Warhammer 40k)
* Starcraft sequels/expansions/spinoffs
* WOW (a spinoff but a major one)
* WOW spinoffs/expansions

Then they lost a lot of the talent that made them good at the one thing they were good at (see: ArenaNet), so they're stuck milking the addicts at this point.

It's funny how bored people are by a Blizzard game. Then Valve basically puts out a Blizzard game re-hashed (technically it wasn't a Blizzard game but it was based off their engine & feel) and it becomes one of the best games of the year. Go figure.

But, maybe I am being too optimistic for old Blizz? tThey really still haven't proven themselves after the launch of Diablo 3 - what have they done? Released two really good expansion packs and put out a Magic the Gathering game. All of which are really good. I honestly think Diablo 3 was a fluke - I'm not sure how they let that beast out. Probably because they got so sick and tired of re-making it to be any good.

They do still release awesome games - I think it comes down to they have done nothing mindblowing. I had a conversation with a co-worker not too long ago about how Valve is release a fucking OS and what has Blizzard done comparatively with it's trillions of dollars? I think that is what pisses people off.

Sorry. I swore off Blizzard after Diablo 3.

The game looks good, but my hypocrisy goes only so far. I'll stick with DOTA 2 ty.

I'm excited for this! MoP is not nearly as bad as the melodramatic masses made it out to be.

Now Diablo 3 - that was another story.

If you are truly curious I hope you'll read everything.

TLDR Post Inc:

It's basically pragmatism and the slippery slope. You're making a registry of all the citizens who own guns. I mean have you ever applied for your firearms license before? Have you ever purchased a handgun? It's pretty crazy.

I wanted to purchase a handgun about 10 years ago after I got held up. It took me over 6 months to get my permit. Then it took me about another month to be able to purchase a handgun.

The Process:
In order to get your firearms id card you have to apply for it. Part of the process involved me having a sit down "evaluation" with a detective that was basically an interrogation for about 30 minutes.

Then once that detective says "this guys not crazy" He takes his form and all my information and mails it to the FBI. Then I had to wait about six months for the FBI to say "this guys not crazy and/or a terrorist.

When I have my Firearms ID card I can buy a shotgun or a rifle if I want that's no problem. But if I want to buy a handgun (which I did) I have to go back to get a handgun permit. Luckily since I was applying for my firearms permit they also gave me one (read one) permit to buy a handgun. I could buy one handgun; If I wanted more I had to apply for ANOTHER permit. Not another Firearms ID Card just another Handgun permit.

So I take my permit and I purchase said gun. I can't purchase the gun after 5:00 PM because the NIC office over at the FBI closes and they have to call it in. Even AFTER they call it in I still had to wait like 6 days before I could pick it up.

I receive a copy of the permit (and a receipt) , the dealer gets a copy, and the last part gets sent to the FBI. Once the FBI confirms they have a copy of the permit (which includes the serial # that is on multiple parts of the gun) then and only then am I allowed to pickup my firearm.

So even if I sold it to someone everyone would know know who it belonged to beforehand.

I'm not sure how much more gun control you can have. The "gun" that needs the most "control" are handguns because they are used in almost all gun related crimes if you look at the stats.

I wont' get into hypothetical situations about how citizens could perform those checks or whatever. I just want to show how regulated things are already. The idea that I could purchase like 10 handguns and then re-sell them all to someone else and NEVER have it traced back to me seems almost impossible. Heck I doubt I could even get approved to own that many handguns!

Also:

I'm not a "giant conspiracy" kind of person. But I feel like with the way government has been going with Guantanamo, stop and frisk, not really enforcing a lot of anti-trust laws, not really prosecuting some of the big banks responsible for what happened, etc etc etc I just feel like there really an upward swing for government control and collusion with protecting their own interests and not the interests of the people.

I don't see the government as an instrument of the people anymore it just seems to be wealthy people patting each other on the back.

What happened in Boston really upset me where people were just pulled out of there houses at gunpoint because there "could be" a terrorist nearby.

I believe that Obama has a good reason for trying to put these tools in place and he has no motive behind it he is just trying to protect the American People in his own way. But I don't believe gun control will help at all and all it will do is put more of a hindrance on law abiding citizens. I'd equate these laws to Anti-Piracy solutions? Ala Sims3 and Diablo etc etc. It just punishes the actual customer NOT the criminal.

If you told me there was a way to ensure program the registry of gun owners could only be searched if the striations from a bullet were scanned that was used in a crime or something like that I'd be fine with it. But there really is no way to do that.

Sorry it was long but it's not really something I can just say something short.

I'm sure people will says "Well what are your guns going to do against tanks and helicopters and xyz xyz". First I'll point to Iraq and Afghanistan and how well those "wars" went. Everyone can agree it was a disaster and we probably made a lot of terrorists by just killing people innocent or not. The same thing would happen here in America.

Would the government actually TRY to take over? I don't' believe so because it's not in our best financial interests. Everyone wants to stay wealthy and some sort of civil war would be horrible for our economy. But I believe over time constantly just eroding our rights will just lead to that. People got pulled out of their homes at gunpoint and screamed at by police in boston and they were just like "Well the police are just trying to keep us safe!" I just find that creepy.

There's a saying blah blah blah doesn't go out with a bang it happens with a whimper. I'm not going to make myself look smart by googling the quote.

Anyway that's my whole post sorry if it's long but I'm tired. I would have put it in the discussion section but I'm not at the appropriate star level.

Ok, I can't resist adding Tristram, from Diablo.

Actually, if you just go through SupraDarky's playlists on YT you'll be entertained for hours.

I just wanted to point out that the whole sim city launch is not worse than for example the diablo launch, what made it look much worse was the way EA handled the situation.

Also, nobody forced you to buy the game. Problems like the restricted city size or the pathfinding were pointed out by many players who had access to the beta. And you can find these issues in almost every serious review to sim city, so it's not like you didn't have the chance to know that before you bought the game.

If you gave EA money for this abortion, you are part of the reason why some publishers (EA, Ubisoft, Activision...) want to treat PC games as $60 rentals, and you are most definitely part of the problem. There are an ABUNDANCE of better, cheaper PC games developed by companies who want your business and won't treat you as just an open wallet. Sim City was a great franchise once, but just like Diablo, Crysis, and anything from Bioware nowadays, it's been consolized, socialized, and/or monetized into crap that most PC gamers want nothing to do with.

This "real cities do not exist in a bubble" is just corporate blathering to justify the always-on DRM, as if fans of the series have forgotten it has always been, first and foremost, a single player game, and a very enjoyable one at that. It is ABSOLUTELY IDIOTIC to force such a drastic change in gameplay/genre into a game that has been so defined by it's gameplay/genre over the years. Same thing when EA remade Syndicate as a FPS. A FPS Syndicate ISN'T SYNDICATE! I don't want to play with anyone else. I don't want my fucking savegames on your shitty server, even if it was an awesome server. If I give you $60 for your game, it's now MY game, and you leave me the fuck alone!

AAARRG! It's like PC game developers are all being run by fucking console kiddies and greedy shitstain corporate types who never played NetQuake or DWANGO, or Heretic, or System Shock, or X-Com, or any of the Black Isle or pre-Dragon Age 2 Bioware stuff, or any Diablo without a "III" behind it, or Warcraft: Orcs and Humans, or the Ultimas, or the Roberta Williams adventure games, or Wing Commander, or Tie Fighter, or MechWarrior. Deus Ex! A full fucking Deus EX play-through would be required before I'd even THINK about hiring your ass to develop a new PC game! On second thought, play it three times, once for each ending!

uuuuugh... so... anyway... yeah, fuck EA.

Ok, fine. Rage.

diablo 3 was pretty bad for launch date. I've never experienced that sort of downtown and bullshit for the first 2 days.


diablo 3 was a big let down. but I still played the shit out of it.

I'll say it for you

Diablo 3 was terrible

There has been much wailing and gnashing of teeth about Starcraft 2, Diablo III, Anno 2070, and other games that require an online connection.

The ones on Steam that require you to always be online are either multiplayer-only games (because you need to be online to actually play against people), and games that have their own online-only requirements (Ubisoft's UPlay, for instance).

Steam itself doesn't have any you-must-be-online reqs.

always online games limit what games i will purchase, i have to make the decision of only being able to play the game sometimes or get something that lets me play when i want without limitation, but because i dont always get internet support on travel i have to choose wisely. so i will choose something else to purchase over drm games.

diablo 3 was a single play through on the classes i wanted to play, could not play the game where there is no internet so it was uninstalled when i was done getting the classes to 60, diablo 2 was (and is still) years of fun. when they announced Simcity4 as a always online, i decided that i will never purchase a copy of that game. sucks for a company i have fully supported up until now.

i refuse to support companies that make bad decisions. If a game is good enough to purchase, people will purchase it. you dont see bethesda crying about loss of PC sales of skyrim...

It's a server side game. Hence, no offline single player. Think of Diablo 3.