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David Piner

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Starfield Slammed with Physical Edition Controversy

News
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Starfield is an up-and-coming game that’s really releasing, unlike Star Citizen, except that like Star Citizen it seems the game may only be ethereal: the physical edition will follow games like Fallout 76 and not offer a physical disc. Something fun to mention about Fallout 76 is that I got burned hard, I paid more for a physical copy only to get a code in a disc box that, may I add, was made of the absolute flimsiest plastic. Boo on you Todd Howard. This story starts with a tweet on June 25th 2023 where Bethseda said that the game would include only a code in the box. Following that, they immediately deleted the tweet. Screenshot below: The tweet is now missing. No word yet from Bethesda on whether Starfield will include a physical edition or not. It’s quite clear though that if they don’t include physical media then they…

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Battle.net Attacks Leave Players Frustrated on the Weekend

News
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Diablo IV is so popular that it would be odd if you didn’t have a single friend waiting for the weekend to get on and play non-stop. This weekend, June 25th 2023, the Battle.net servers were hit with a DDOS attack causing services for Diablo IV to temporarily go down: I think the most interesting aspect of the mentioned tweet is the responses from fans everywhere complaining that they have work the following day. It is rather unfortunate and sad to see whatever mischief-maker or wrongdoer do this. It also serves as evidence of just how big Diablo IV is. If you are having difficulties connecting to Diablo this weekend or any Battle.net game, you may have to wait for a while. Even with the huge distributed denial-of-service attack mitigation attempts that exist on the modern internet, the malicious actors appear to stay one step ahead whenever they get the…

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Saying Goodbye to The Realm Online

News
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Today while I work on the YuriCorp Community Minecraft server, I am reminded of the origins of online multiplayer games: MUDs (Multi-User Dungeons). MUDs were text-based online games, often accessed using Telnet, that allowed multiple users to play together. MUDs were the genesis of the MMOs we play today and early attempts at adding a graphics layer were the very first series of MMOs. That includes The Realm Online. The major downside of early MUDs was that they were entirely text-based. In the 1990s, with slow dial-up internet connections, text was really the only viable option. However, the evolution to graphical MUDs happened quickly. One of the first major graphical MUDs was The Realm Online, released in 1996 by Sierra On-Line The Realm Online was quickly relegated to forgotten memories as Ultima Online (1997) released and was a completely superior experience while EverQuest launched in (1999) making The Realm Online…

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Star Marine Is Canceled Again

Editorials
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Star Citizen is a game that still kindly asks you for your money for some reason unbeknownst to anyone. Chris Roberts himself at this point likely is included in that list, although we’re past half a billion in funding now and Star Marine still is dead. I wrote in early 2016 that Star Marine was canceled which was, looking at the last decade, quite right. It languishes today not as a separate FPS game but a broken buggy module within Star Citizen with three maps and no players and soon to disappear altogether as a separate mode. Much like someone who is trying to convince you that their AI product, coded by ChatGPT is going to be the one, Star Citizen continues to languish as a cult around a product made of dreams and sunk cost fallacy. At this point even just removing Star Marine would probably be good for…

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The Rise, Fall and Future of Lore: Why Recent Indie Games Failed and How to Fix Them

Editorials
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Lore and worldbuilding have the power to ignite passion in players and fuel an immersive experience. At their best, lore-driven games create a sense of mystery and discovery that motivate players to explore each part of the world. However, some recent games have exploited lore and ambiguity primarily as a marketing tactic, rather than using it to enhance gameplay or build meaning. This phenomenon highlights the need for more balanced, player-centered design. When developers commit to transparency and ethical practices, lore can be used to strengthen community trust and craft impactful stories. But that depends on valuing immersion and artistry over profits alone. We’ll dive into the history of lore focused games, what happened and where to go from here. This is all inclusive of the entire indie scene, even if there’s a heavy emphasis on mascot horror. It makes the best example and we’ll avoid referencing mascot horror to…

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Diablo IV’s Ending Explained

Guides
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Diablo IV has a very anticlimactic ending that may leave you scratching your head if the game is really over or what has occurred. It may not make a lot of sense at first, but there’s a few things at play when it comes to the ending. We’ll go first over the ending itself literally then take a figurative look at what all of this means for Sanctuary. Quick Note: For the backstory on Lilith, Inarius and Sanctuary see sort of “Part 1” which goes over the events before the game. We’re going to dive right into the ending, which kicks off towards the very end of Diablo IV. How Does Diablo IV End? Inarius and Lilith were both, from the player character’s point of view, insane from their time exiled. Inarius had been in hell for a few millennia per Lorath (which holds the canon from the books still)…

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Who Are Inarius and Lilith and What is Sanctuary (No Game Spoilers)

Guides

Players can be quite confused at who Inarius and Lilith when they have almost no exposure to either of them before Diablo IV’s launch. Inarius is a rogue angel and Lilith is a rogue demon who created Sanctuary as a means to escape the Eternal Conflict between angels and demons over the Worldstone (the focus of Diablo II). They birthed the nephalem which eventually over time became humanity. That’s everything. We have a ton of technical lore history below, but if you’re just curious who they are that’s about the best summary I think you can have. When they introduce themselves in the game as the mother and father of Sanctuary, they’re not lying. There’s a lot more technical info on the situation than that, but we first need to talk about what came about to cause them to create Sanctuary. We’ll then go into a mixed bag of topics…

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Diablo IV Leveling Guide – Best XP Farm 2023

Guides
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There are two choices to get xp fast in Diablo 4 and it depends entirely on what you want to do. You can do the campaign which is a necessary and required component to playing your first character. At certain points in the story you may need to level up to continue or you may be ready to grind out your levels, either way we’ve got the best farm location and XP gaining tips. If you’ve already done the story you can skip the campaign again and just focus on leveling, meaning you need somewhere to farm without having to move around and do a lot. In this guide we’ll go over the important steps to optimize XP, but first let’s talk about getting that XP. After all you probably already know to turn it to world tier II from the start and play on the highest world tier. This…

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Diablo 4 Class Tier List – 2023

Tier Lists
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Diablo IV is a powerhouse of top down clicking loot harvesting demon slaying mania and you can do so with a selection of classes. The question is, which class is the most optimal and then what would be the primary core skill? Let’s take a look at our top picks for the wanderer in Diablo IV. This list assumes playing solo, since group dynamics can make up for a lot of weaknesses and turn a lot of eh builds into something stronger. Since there’s so few classes in Diablo 4, we’ll break it down to a tier per class. S Tier Necromancer (Bone) The Necromancer’s minion builds are strong in the first 50 levels, but towards the endgame you’ll be thankful to take the bar space back and choose from some powerful abilities instead of taking the golden along. Right now, the bone abilities like bone spear make the Necromancer…

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Idleon Voidwalker / VMan Unlocking Guide

Guides
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The “VMan” is the third class promotion for the Journeyman “secret class” in Legends of Idleon. It requires a Maestro at level 150 to get started, but you’ll likely need to be into World 5 to really get the character unlock with any speed. It requires all of the first three worlds to have 1,000,000 kills registered along with some other steep requirements. Let’s dig in. VMan Unlocking Guide You’ll start by visiting world 4 at level 150 on a Maestro. You should only have one secret Journeyman class character per account ideally. So once your Maestro is level 150, you can begin the quest. Do note, the quest does require a lot of kills which means you may need to wait even longer before you can finish it. Once you’re level 150, on the right side across from the cooking table is Agent L150 who will start the quest.…

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