I think the real big time sapper is all the errands that need running. You go shopping 'just to buy stuff for lunch this week', but then its almost lunch time you so buy lunch while you're out and check out the bookstore briefly and have a quick look in at EB games; by the time you get home its 3 hours later. Then you have to have a drink, wind-down a bit from being out and about etc and you've just lost 4 hours of productive time.

That's what seems to happen to me, anyway.

 

Oh, and what are you going to do if Blizzard announce/tease D3 at E3? Or at some other time this year if you think E3 is an unlikely time schedule.

 

Which is why I do my best to never leave the house.

As for D3, I'd feel about it the same as if some movie studio announced they were making The Hobbit, but there was no PJ, Fran, WETA, etc attached to it. Other people were taking over the franchise. I'd hope for the best, but be far from confident of it.

Everyone who played a key roll in making D1, D2, and D2X is now gone from Blizzard North. It's hard to criticize Bliz with the overwhelming success of WoW, but really, what else have they done in the 5 yeas since D2X? War3 had a tenth the popularity of SC, SC Ghost is a slow motion debacle, and that's basically it. How does a gaming company with hundreds of employees and with at least 4 and possibly 5 games under simultaneous development in 2002 have just one finished and one pending 4 years later?

If I'd been an SC fan, I'd be pretty worried about that franchise. It's not just Diablo that's gone, tons of Bliz Irvine people who did SC are long gone too, and while the new guys might have even better ideas than the old bunch...

 

Yes, but, as Flux mentioned, Blizzard does have a huge staff that should be working on many projects. We only know of 2 and one of them has been put on permanent hold.

So they are working on -something-. Warcraft is already covered with the expansion, a real Starcraft game for PC could be in the works, or there's Diablo.

Given the risks of creating an entirely new IP, companies tend to stick with what they know, and Diablo is set for a sequal already, so they're probably working on it to at least some degree.

Also if they tried to release it 10 years from now they'd run the risk of their fan base being diluted if other, better RPGs have come out in the meantime (Oblivion, Hellgate: London, other D clones and MMORPGs).

And last of all, in terms of "money now and money later", it is always better to have money now than money later, unless money later is significantly more than money now. I think with WoW and the expansion coming out, now would not be the best time to release the game - but they can certainly announce it for release next year, by which time WoW fever will have cooled off a bit.

 

Blizzard's problem, if you can call it that, is that they turned one of their RTS franchises into an RPG, which seems to sort of freeze out their original RPG, diablo. Why should they rush out (even if they could) D3 when probably half the people who would buy it are currently paying them $15 a month for Wow? Bliz makes more off of them in 2 or 3 months (considering they only get a % of the sell price of a new game) through subscription than they would from a new game purchase, and compared to online subscription, me or you paying $50 for D3 and then playing it free on b.net for 2 or 3 years is a profit loss.

Theoretically bliz should have had another RTS out after war3 unachieved, or something in another genre, like SC Ghost. Realistically, their game dev cycles are so long (especially when the entire d3 team quits) that they can't plan anything very far in advance, and I don't think they'd sit on a finished game just to wait for an opening in the market, or something like that. It's not as if there aren't dozens of other options out there for RPG players who aren't into WoW. I'm sure D3 and Wow could coexist in the market, though I think D3 and WoW2 at the same time would be more likely.

 

SC is very, very alive in WEG, WCG and other similar professional leagues. SC is basically the Korean's national sport (SC matches are broadcast on TV). =)

 

u are like 4 times in the first 20 positions in mounchy mole... u realy play that a lot dont u?

 

munchy mole. I don't play that much, and it vexes me that anyone can get a higher score than me on any tetris-inspired game. I played perhaps an hour a day for the first few days it was online, but since then I've been doing maybe 3 or 4 games a day, and since they take me about 6 minutes per game, it's just about a perfect length game for the sort of quick work-distraction I enjoy.

I hardly ever score less than 215k, but never more than just over 230k, since I either do poorly on the early levels, or end up choking away about 10-15k on either 8, 9, or 10, where the big points are found. So I get a lot of scores in the 225k range, and only bother to put my name on them maybe half the time. No matter your skill, you need luck with the random level layout, especially on the higher levels, when a nice grouping of worms and not too many off in dead corners can cut 15 sec off your time and add 12k to your score.