I would think if you are reading this, then you’re somebody who is aware of the history of the Diablo franchise.  When it comes to PC game IP’s, few are as venerable, recognized and celebrated as this.  Blizzard’s reputation in no small part is staked on the quality and polish of the previous two games.
Here we are, just slightly short of *twelve years* since the release of Diablo II.   Twelve years ago, a resolution of 800×600 looked fucking awesome, and the gpu-based gimmick lighting effects would make you shit your brain and say, “how could it POSSIBLY get any better than this.”  If you shit your brain, you should not be capable of making qualitative statements about possible improvements in video game graphics, so *you think about that*.

In twelve years, we’ve seen LOTS of improvements in the quality of graphics.  We’ve gone from PSOne to PS3, we’ve gone from 1024×768 being the average ‘high end’ desktop resolution, to 1920×1080 being most prevalent.  Widescreen!  Holy cats and dogs!  Imagine being you twelve years ago and being told that by 2012, foremost the world will NOT be ending nor will there be any Raptures, but that an LCD widescreen display will be more affordable than your monthly gasoline budget!  You’d probably tell your future-self to go fuck your-future-self, then reconsider it and invite your future-self to go to a bar and pick up some loose, drunk woman for that impossible threeway you always wondered about.

I write this on Monday the 14th, only half a day away from getting my hands on my GameStop pre-ordered Diablo 3 Collector’s Edition, at midnight.  I am 39 years old, a father of two, and sufficiently cynical and disillusioned with the world.  I however spent the day at work feeling like a kid on that last day of school before Christmas vacation, *so close to getting at the goods*.  There have been lots of great games over the years, and a few that I’ve really looked forward to.  But, I don’t think I’ve been as excited and anticipating, as I have for D3.  I was pretty psyched up for GTA4 a few years back, but I think there’s something more to the Diablo experience that adds to the tension.
That something, I think, is that I believe I’m sharing the building anticipation with more people than any other game.  All of my friends that like video games to any extent are getting on this.  Friends that aren’t much into video games, are getting on this.  Friends that aren’t interested at all in video games, or just aren’t interested in *this videogame* (aka fucking heretics), are at least asking me for opinions and information about it, curious about the phenomenon.
Let’s keep perspective; it’s still just a goddamn video game.  But amongst the video game enthusiasts, this game is A Big Deal.

So, how much do I know about Diablo III?  Very little, actually.  With games I know I’ll be buying the minute they’re released, I go on a media blackout.  I avoid cinematic trailers, gameplay teasers, screenshots, preview articles, or even idle banter with friends.  I keep track of the release date and try to avoid all other data.  I feel that way I get the total experience that the developer wanted me to get, without any spoiler-quality foreknowledge.
Bearing that in mind, I DID play the free open-beta weekend about a month ago.  It was an awful experience for me too, I couldn’t stay connected for longer than 10 minutes without having to relog, and the bulk of the time I wasn’t even able to log in.  What I experienced though, whetted my appetite and has me avidly looking forward to tonight.
As far as a game developer goes, I (along with a gibbering, sycophantic chunk of the first-world populace) feel that Blizzard is a can-do-no-wrong company. I would like to believe that my loyalty doesn’t come easy either… let’s take BioWare for example.  I get psyched up for a game if it’s just under the BioWare umbrella.  But, their reputation with me is in active decline for the past couple years. I was just as mad about the ME3 ending as the next person, and with how much I love the ME franchise and still do, I’m not going to give the ending a pass because the time leading up to it was so good.  I loved Dragon Age, but DA2 is dogshit start to finish, and I consider whether or not a person likes the ‘Anders’ character an inarguable litmus test of good taste (if I need to explain how, chances are you have bad taste).
That being said, I just don’t have complaints about the Blizzard games I’ve played.  WarCraft 2 was the first title of theirs I played, and it was one of the very first PC games I ever bought. Then came Diablo. Later, came StarCraft.  From 1996 to 2011, every Blizzard title I got was a complete hit with me.  I’m not even a fan of the (in)famous multiplayer, and I still loved and dumped hours into StarCraft.
Then, came World of Warcraft.  Whether you love that game or hate it, you have to respect it.  It was a giant middle finger to the shitty dev practices of EverQuest, and it remains a giant middle finger to the shitty management practices of SOE at large.  SOE has murdered just about every MMO it has had contact with since WoW’s creation, while WoW has remained a steady, profitable title for Blizzard, and remained a satisfying game to play for its customers.  Ad populum may not work for logical arguments, but I think it works as proof for stating that Blizzard is doing the whole MMO thing right.

I have decided that I am going to keep a travelogue of my adventures in the Diablo III world.  I need something to offset my adult guilt at being a grown-ass man that is likely about to play a videogame obsessively like some priority-deficient kid.  Now, to be fair, this is probably me making something like a new year’s resolution that I have no proper reason to expect that I’ll keep, but it’s worth trying at least.

Next stop:  Midnight launch event at the GameStop where I preordered.

The first time, was largely due to just forgetting the admin password.  Plus, I like that fresh-install smell.  So I threw everything out and installed.

The second time, I didn’t forget the password, but I went such long stretches between posting that I just didn’t feel any connection to the previous posts.  Things, for a variety of reasons lately, feel a lot different lately than  a couple years ago, or even just last year.

Plus, I like that fresh-install smell.

So here we are, round three.  I installed this software about a month ago, and just let it sit, unmodified.  I don’t have any good justification for fucking with it today; I just felt like it.  So here we are.  Looking at the default WordPress blue and white template, a little pruning done on superfluous links, and an overwritten placeholder greeting post.  I do not know how ‘faithful’ I am going to be to this device.  I don’t even know who will, or how this will be read, since I don’t really intend to tell anybody I’m messing with this thing.  A first post like this, I doubt I’m selling myself very well to the rare, inquisitive reader that made it this far anyways.

Welp.  Excelsior.