Wandering around gloomy dungeons attacking endless waves of enemies should be the most tedious thing in the world, but in Diablo 3, it’s quite the opposite. Blizzard, with their years of MMO experience, know exactly how to appeal to the obsessive compulsive gamer. By constantly rewarding you with loot and sparkly gold pieces, and giving you a feeling of power over your enemies, the game digs its talons in and never let go.

It’s an action RPG, so don’t expect reams of complicated stats. The raised camera angle gives it an old school feel, reminiscent of the isometric look of the original games, and the controls are simple, using only the mouse and a few keys. In many ways, it feels like a game from another age. A modern game with retro sensibilities.

It’s a slow start, though. We didn’t die once for the entirety of the first act on the normal difficulty setting, which lasts about six hours, and unused health potions were piling up in our inventory. Based on the first few hours of play, it seems as if the game is about as deep as a particularly shallow puddle.

POWER UP

But it’s when your character levels up, and enemies get smarter, that the combat comes into its own. At first you only have a pool of basic offensive attacks to choose from, but as you gain XP, you get access to a wealth of unique abilities.

You attack enemies by clicking. Lots and lots of clicking. Hold the mouse button down while hovering over an enemy and your character will repeatedly attack it until it dies. Powers are assigned to the number keys, and have an MMO-style cooldown. Mixing the two forms the basis of the combat, and it rewards experimentation.

There are five classes. The barbarian is self-explanatory. They use brute force, wading into battle with heavy weapons and strong offensive powers. Witch doctors summon undead minions to do their dirty work, and weaken enemies by cursing them. Wizards, predictably, are experts with magic, and have a variety of ranged and defensive spells at their disposal. Monks engage enemies in hand to hand combat, and are incredibly fast. Finally, demon hunters are a pure ranged class, and use dual crossbows and launch explosives.

It’s an eclectic selection of characters, and they all feel distinct, and work well together. For example, a wizard might freeze a group of enemies in place, allowing a monk to charge in and punch them to death. The combat feels great. Even though you’re only clicking a mouse, there’s a great feeling of weight behind your attacks. Enemies pop like balloons and tumble down stairs (thanks to the new physics engine), and there’s a fair amount of gore.

In later levels, your foes become more intelligent. Some wall your party in, rapidly teleport around the level to confuse you, or knock you back when you approach. Bosses are tough, but only because they have insane amounts of HP. Most can be bested by simply dashing around, avoiding their attacks, and spamming them with ranged magic. Mostly, though, enemies are just fodder – but entertaining fodder. You never get sick of killing them.

There’s a story, but it isn’t crucial to the experience. If you’ve never played a Diablo game before, the mythology can be quite confusing, but it’s a fairly simple fantasy tale at its heart. Voice acting is a mixed bag, but overall the presentation of the game is of an extremely high quality. The music is atmospheric, and the visuals – which have the same stylised textures as World of Warcraft – are richly detailed. There are loads of neat little visual touches, and environments are varied: from sun-bleached deserts and snowy mountains, to rain-soaked fields, and the bowels of Hell itself.

GET CONNECTED

The integration with battle.net is both brilliant, and utterly terrible. The server problems that plagued the launch have cleared up, but it’s still unforgivable that crowded servers should hamper the single-player experience. We’ve been thrown out of the solo campaign twice, both times losing progress. It’s one of the most irritating examples of DRM in recent memory.

But it’s not enough to stop us enjoying the game, and the way battle.net makes drop-in, drop-out co-op possible almost makes up for it. Providing they’ve made the game open, and there are slots free in their party, you can jump into a friend’s game at any time.

There’s next to no loading. Co-op adds further depth to the combat, as the classes have been designed to work in tandem with each other. Because there’s so much loot in the game, your character will always look unique, even though there are only five classes to choose from. It doesn’t have the same level of customisation as, say, World of Warcraft, but you can bring an element of personality to your hero.

One thing we love is that whenever you replay a quest, it’s always different. Levels in the game are randomly generated, which means you never feel like it’s a burden having to go through a level you’ve already done in co-op. The layout of the map, the placement of the enemies, and the locations of treasure, are all random. You can also mix things up by changing the difficulty setting. Going form normal to hard doesn’t just give enemies more HP; it actually gives them a whole new range of abilities, forcing you to think up new tactics to beat them.

The game has been designed with replayability in mind, which gives it a pleasing longevity. Even if you think you’ve finished the game and seen all there is to see with one class, there are still four more to master. We can see ourselves still playing it for months to come.

Battle.net is also used to host an auction house, where loot you find can be sold for vast amounts of gold. You can also buy gear here, but we advise against it. Often you’ll buy a weapon that’s so powerful, it renders all the loot you find obsolete. This might make you obscenely powerful, but you’ll be missing out on the thrill of discovering a rare new weapon in a dungeon.

Items and gold can be shared between all of your characters (who are stored online, so you can access them from any computer), which doesn’t make sense from a story perspective, but is hugely convenient. If you’ve amassed a fortune and loads of useful crafting materials (more on that on the next page) as one character, your brand new alt will have full access to them.

Crafting gives you something to do between bouts of dungeon crawling. The town hub – a safe area where you can store items, get healed, and trade with merchants – has a blacksmith that can break down rare items into materials.

You then use these to craft new weapons and armour. The quality of the recipes you have available depends on how much money you’ve invested in the blacksmith’s shop. For every lump sum of gold you give him, he offers better items to craft. It isn’t a staggeringly complex system, but it’s an entertaining distraction from regular combat, and a good way of making some extra money. If you craft something special, you can flog it on the auction house for a tidy sum.

If you want a vast, open RPG like Skyrim, Diablo is not the game for you. It’s a tight, focused experience, and heavy on action. Even though it should be massively repetitive clicking on monsters for hours upon end, it really isn’t. The constant stream of new skills you unlock, endless supply of loot, and randomly generated levels keep you interested.

It only gets better when you play with friends. Working together to take down bosses and discover secrets in dungeons is the very definition of classic role-playing, and it’s always nice to have someone to show off your awesome new hat, or magic pants, to – and to trade with. But you can still enjoy it on your own, thanks to the lengthy, involving story.

Diablo 3 is like a combination of Blizzard’s other two big games, StarCraft and World of Warcraft. It has the social elements, fantasy setting, and tactical combat of WOW, but with the real-time gameplay, and top-down perspective, of StarCraft.

The DRM issues and busy servers have left a bad taste in many peoples’ mouths, and not being able to play solo offline is ridiculous, but if you can get past that, you’ll find a supremely polished and rewarding role-player that’s a blast with friends or alone, and fiendishly addictive.

Blizzard have taken the seemingly tedious act of clicking repeatedly on a goblin, and turned it into one of the most entertaining RPGs in recent years.

Great news for all of you who fight their battles on the Fields of Justice in the name of Noxus: Darius, the Hand of Noxus, has now been revealed.

Abilities:

・ Hemorrhage (Passive): Darius aims his attacks strategically, causing his target to bleed. This effect stacks up to five times.

・ Decimate: Darius swings his axe in a lethal circle. Enemies struck by its blade take more damage than those struck by its shaft.

・ Crippling Strike: Darius’s next attack severs a crucial artery. As the target bleeds out, their movement and attack speeds are slowed. Crippling Strike’s cooldown is lower the more bloodied its target.

・Apprehend: Darius hones his axe, granting him passive armor penetration. When activated, Darius sweeps up his enemies with his axe’s hook and pulls them to him.

・ Noxian Guillotine (Ultimate): Darius leaps to an enemy champion and strikes a lethal blow, dealing true damage. This damage is increased for each stack of Hemorrhage on the target. If Noxian Guillotine is a killing blow, its cooldown is refreshed.

Lore:

“There is no greater symbol of Noxian might than Darius, the nation’s most feared and battle-hardened warrior. Orphaned at a young age, Darius had to fight to keep himself and his younger brother alive. By the time he joined the military, he had already developed the strength and discipline of a veteran soldier. The first true test of Darius’s resolve occurred in a crucial battle against Demacia, where the Noxian forces were exhausted and outnumbered. Darius’s captain called for his troops to retreat, but Darius refused to accept such an act of cowardice. Breaking formation, Darius strode towards the captain and decapitated him with one sweep of his gigantic axe. Both terrified and inspired, the soldiers followed Darius into battle and fought with incredible strength and fervor. After a long and grueling battle, they ultimately emerged victorious.

Seizing momentum from this victory, Darius led his now fiercely loyal troops in a devastating campaign against Demacia. After proving his power on the battlefield, Darius turned his gaze homeward. He saw a Noxus riddled with weakness, where greedy, complacent nobles drained the nation’s strength. Seeking to restore his country to greatness, Darius took it upon himself to reshape the Noxian leadership. He identified weak figureheads and violently removed them from their positions of power. Many in Noxus saw Darius’s cull as an attempt to seize power, but he had a different plan for the throne. He had been watching the rise of Jericho Swain with keen interest. In Swain, Darius saw a leader with the mind and determination to bring Noxus to glory. Now allied with the Master Tactician, Darius works to unite the nation behind his vision of true Noxian strength.

A united Noxus could control the world – and would deserve to. – Darius“

A few days ago xfunction Fraglider Cup released new information and updated their attending-teams list. It didn’t seem enough though as yesterday it was announced that Swedish team icsu will be attending the event.

The tournament will take place in Matosinhos, Portugal on May 25-27 and will count with many international teams, turning it into one of the most important events in Portugal ever. It is yet to be confirmed whether ex-WinFakt will attend or not, but given the facts so far, it is unlikely to happen.

semXorah , Phantoms , airwave,
RevolutionGames, madjick , energiE5,
madVision, minorityteam, DREAMERS,
xfunction, etikmatters, Game-Warriors,
shArkz, HardStyle, x6tence ,
morbidShot,Exotic , wints,
k1ck eSports Club , NorthernGrade, PTO-Gaming,
Pandorum, uP Gaming, NOSENSE, DN-Gaming
ex-WinFakt , zNation , icsu
The team was last seen in action last weekend at the $10,000 Inferno Online tournament, although they fell short to fnatic in the first round after losing both maps with 16-4 results.

icsu ‘s line-up for xfunction Fraglider Cup:
Danniél Antonio ‘dalito’ Morales
Daniel ‘rape’ Börzsönyi
Emil ‘striker’ Westerberg
Joel ‘emilio’ Mako
Tommy ‘potti’ Ingemarsson
The announcement was made via Fraglider’s stream. You can watch the VOD here.

Blizzard just released a feature list of whats going to be implemented into Heart of the Swarm.

“Greetings fellow StarCraft II players! The past couple weeks have been amazing for the StarCraft II community. At the Dreamhack Open we saw the Swedish “Spoon Terran,” Thorzain, triumph over GSL champion Polt in front of a hometown crowd in an amazing series. That same weekend, the Major League Gaming Spring Arena finals went to best of 7 games to see DongRaeGu victorious against MarineKing, avenging a loss in the Winter Championship. Looking ahead, Team Liquid StarLeague 4 was just announced here and is already getting a lot of excitement from the community. And finally, we have exciting news coming out of Korea as KeSPA and OnGameNet commit to all-new StarCraft II leagues, joining GomTV’s GSL and GSTL to create an all-new StarCraft II eSports landscape. Add all of that to the 2012 Blizzard World Championship Series, and the StarCraft II community is already off to an epic 2012 in what could be the most exciting eSports year yet.

In the midst of all this great community news, we want to announce some of the exciting things we’re working on this year for StarCraft II. Here’s a list of some of the features we are planning to release at or around the launch of Heart of the Swarm:

Multiplayer resume from replay
Global Play
Multilanguage support
Clan/group system
Unranked matchmaking
Multiplayer replay viewing

Let’s go into more detail on each of these, starting with multiplayer resume functionality. We know how important eSports is for the StarCraft II community, and it’s important to us too. For some time now we have been discussing ways to improve StarCraft II to ensure that tournaments both large and small run as smoothly as possible. While we are discussing many different improvements, we’ve heard your feedback and are creating a way that games can be continued if they are ended prematurely during an eSports event. We have been investigating solutions to this issue for some time, but we expect to offer the ability to resume play from a replay at or around the launch of Heart of the Swarm.
Some of you may have read details about Diablo III Global Play, which will allow Diablo III players to create characters in different regions from their home region so they can play with friends in other parts of the world. We know this is something StarCraft II players have been asking for, and we’re working hard to make it available along with multilanguage support, at or around the release of Heart of the Swarm. We’ll have information as we get closer to Heart of the Swarm’s release.

We continue to read your passionate requests for clan support. We can confirm that we are building a clan/group system that will be released with Heart of the Swarm. We also intend to have our first version of unranked play so you will have the ability to match-make against like-skilled players without having to affect your ladder ranking while you practice off-race or experiment with a new build order.

We’ll also be offering a beta sneak peek of Heart of the Swarm to attendees of the MLG Spring Championship on June 8–10 at the Anaheim Convention Center in Anaheim, California. Additionally, we will be releasing news in the next few weeks about how your participation in the upcoming Arcade (1.5) beta can win you chances to get into the upcoming Heart of the Swarm multiplayer beta test.”

All the new features seem great as its shaping up to be an awesome expansion with alot of gameplay changes and great features. Especially the unranked matchmaking to help players overcome ladder anxiety. Also important to note is the role of Blizzard for e-Sports in Starcraft II. In the past they have decided to hold off abit on their support but are now fully supporting e-Sports with the upcoming expansion and World Championship.

Our second gameplay trailer from the upcoming expansion pack Battlefield 3™: Close Quarters showcases the map Donya Fortress in all its destructive glory. You can also see the new game mode Conquest Domination in action, being a mix of the tactical classic Conquest mode and the instant action gameplay featured on these tight maps.

Battlefield 3: Close Quarters is a massive themed expansion pack featuring frantic and relentless infantry combat on four highly competitive indoor maps. Like all themed expansion packs for Battlefield 3, it also contains new weapons that you can bring back to the base game, new Assignments, and new dog tags. Look for Close Quarters in June 2012 and find out more at www.battlefield.com/battlefield3/1/close-quarters

k1ck has once again overcome their domestic competition in Portugal at EPT4, taking down Phantoms 2-0 in the grand final (16-4, 16-11) to clinch the title and 1,500€.

EPT4 featured a total of sixteen teams, fifteen from Portugal and DN-Gaming from Spain. They were divided into four groups of four, and the playoffs were held in a best-of-three, single elimination bracket.

The former Defs team Phantoms knocked out the sole foreign team 2-0 (16-5, 16-14) in the quarter-finals and then took down Mario “n0rx” Pacheco’s NorthernGrade in a close 2-1 series in the semis (9-16, 16-14, 16-11).

fox proves his team is still number one in Portugal 

The older brother Ricardo “fox” Pacheco’s team fared slightly better than his brother’s as they didn’t break a sweat on their way to the grand final, losing a total of seventeen rounds in their four map victories.

The grand final ended up being fairly one sided as well, as Phantoms’ best effort wasn’t enough to dethrone the longstanding top team of Portugal, who secured yet another domestic title with a 2-0 win (16-4, 16-11).

EPT4 final standings:

1. k1ck – 1,500€
2. Phantoms – 800€
3. NorthernGrade – 300€

This tournament marks k1ck’s fourth consecutive EPT title, still proving their number one status in Portugal regardless of the loss against Defining Stars at last year’s World Cyber Games qualifier.

Blizzard Entertainment will be offering a beta sneak peek of StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm to attendees of the MLG Pro Circuit Spring Championship event which is hosted at the Anaheim Convention Center in Anaheim from June 8-10.

A large number of public demo stations will allow attendees to try out the latest multiplayer build of the first expansion of Starcraft II, Heart of the Swarm.

This build will most likely differ from the one shown at Blizzcon a few months ago and will contain some of the feedback and changes that were made in the last months. If you have missed these changes check them out here.

The top players of Starcraft II from all around the world will assemble and battle for $76,000 in prize money at the Spring Championship with the first place taking a hefty $25,000. In addition to the MLG competition and Heart of the Swarm demo stations, the Anaheim event will also feature the USA national finals for Blizzard Entertainment’s StarCraft II World Championship Series. The qualified players for the USA Nationals will fight for $30,000 in prize money as well as an invitation to the upcoming North America Continental Finals. The top finishers in that event will represent their countries at the Battle.net World Championship event taking place later this year in Asia.

With two major StarCraft II eSports tournaments and the opportunity to play Heart of the Swarm in advance of the beta test, eSports fans have plenty to look forward to at the MLG Spring Championship event in Anaheim. Those who can’t make it in person can still catch all the action via live streams. Additional information about the brackets, format and more will be available in the upcoming weeks and we will keep you updated as always.

Curse gaming have announced the teams that will be participating in there second League of Legends Invitational with a prize pool of $20,000 This will feature teams from America and Europe.

After a successful first invitational which seen Curse’s very own team face Dignitas in the final. unfortunately Team Curse lost the final. So with Dignitas currently holding the crown will they keep hold of it in the next event against more teams?

In the second of the Curse’s Invitationals we will see teams competing from Europe and America. There will be a total of 32 teams of the best teams from around the world, 16 from America and 16 from Europe. See below for a full list of the teams that will be taking part.

The event will take part in two different stages the first part of the event will be an online qualifier, This will take place from the 29th of April till the 20th of May. The 4 best teams from the qualifying stage will move onto the finals which will take place in San Francisco from the 1st of June to the 3rd.

North American Teams

4Not.Fire -

Team Legion -

Curse -

Team Solo Mid – Reginald, Chaox, TheOddOne, Xpecial, Dyrus

Jpak and Friends -

Lzuhura Gaming -

Team Green Forrest -

mTw.NA – CuRtoKy, Xmithie, BalIs, Mandatorycloud, Atlanta

v8 -

Monoesports -

Counter Logic Gaming -

Dignitas – Locust, Scarra, Imaqtpie, Voyboy, I_Will_Dominate

Choppa in da car -

Epik Gamer -

Ordinance Gaming -

Fnatic RaidCall* – LaMia, Cyanide, xPeke, Shushei, Mellisan
*FnaticRC will be playing with the North American teams due to their stay in South Korea.

European Teams

exHCL Gaming -

Low Land Lions -

Team Natus Vincere -

Counter Logic Gaming – Snoopeh, Wickd, Yellowpete, Krepo, Froogen

Eclypsia -

MYM -

SK Gaming -

Moscow Five – Alex_Ich, Darien, Diamond, Genja, GoSu Pepper

Team Alternate -

Team Sypher -

against All authority – Linak, MoMa, nRated, sOAZ, Yell0wStaR

Killerfish eSport -

Western Wolves -

Team Teamless -

Team Derpers -

Absolute Legends – Sleper, Flyy, Extinkt, Xinec, Malunoo

The teams will be competing for a prize pool of $20,000 The prizes will be spread as the following:

1st Place: $10,000
2nd Place: $5,000
3rd place: $3,000
4th Place: $2,000

Natus Vincere have recorded another very close victory, this time getting revenge on WinFakt for the earlier loss. Despite being down 11-4 at the half, the Ukrainians ended up victorious 16-14 on de_tuscan, which scheduled them an encounter with fnatic in the Grand final of Copenhagen Games 2012.

Earlier in the tournament, WinFakt knocked Natus Vincere down to the lower bracket with victories on de_train and de_inferno. However, the Consolidation final wouldn’t be played on either of those maps, as the teams agreed on de_tuscan this time.

WinFakt started as Terrorists and the opening pistol-round was brought down to the wire, as the Finns’ stand-in Miikka “dRiim” Toroi managed to win a 1vs2 situation in the last second. After the necessary ecos by Na`Vi, the Finns surprised them by a quick attack at the A bombsite which secured them another round and a 4-0 lead.

Natus Vincere weren’t very affected and they decided to buy in the next round, which turned out to be a good decision, as they brought the score to 4-2.

WinFakt, however showed that this was their time to shine, as they went on to rack up several unlikely rounds in a row, including a 2-on-4 situation by Aleksi “allu” Jalli and Timi “aslak” Verkkoperä, getting up to an 11-3 advantage. Natus Vincere took the last round of the half thanks to Sergey “starix” Ischuk, who was the only bright spot in the Ukrainian team, as he won a 1vs1 situation with a defuse in the very last second.

Natus Vincere wouldn’t be the champions they’ve been in the past years if they would simply lay their hands down and surrender when facing an 11-4 deficit, which they proved by winning the pistol round and starting a comeback. After near-perfect anti-ecos Na`Vi took the first buy round as well, and a round later they were already closer at 11-9.

WinFakt managed to win the sixth round of the half, and increase the lead to 12-9, but Natus Vincere reset the Finns’ money system by winning the next round. That provided them to get just one round away from evening the score at 12 each, which they did after winning the next round thanks to two opening AWP kills by Yegor “markeloff” Markelov.

WinFakt snapped out of it shortly, getting back into the lead 13-12, but Natus Vincere equalized right away and forced the Finnish team on another eco round, which got them into the lead for the first time in the match at 14-13.

The Finns still had a round up their sleeve, getting the score back even at 14-14, but Natus Vincere proved to be the better team on this occasion, winning the last two rounds and thus the match, 16-14. 

markeloff co. make yet another final

The Grand final between fnatic and Natus Vincere will start as soon as both teams set up on the stage. The Ukrainian team needs to win two maps, while fnatic will be needing just one to win the 9,400€ prize.

WinFakt’s impressive and unexpectedly successful campaign has come to an end with a 3rd place finish, which secured them 2,600€.

The number of available champions in League of Legends is steadily approaching the milestone number of 100. At the same time, Riot Games is fighting a Promethean battle trying to achieve perfect balance. A direct consequence of this fact is that an increasing amount Champions will eventually achieve a status of viability for competitive play. The meta game isn’t holding its horses either. Thanks to the ever growing community and the increasingly competitive professional scene, new ways to maximize the efficiency of less popular Champions are being discovered left and right. Such insights often lead to the relevant Champions claiming their spot in the lime light.

It’s not uncommon for veteran players to own every champion in the game, and have a large surplus of Influence Points to boot. Thanks to the special Champion Bundles Packs in the Riot store, it’s very easy for a new player to drop an amount of cash equal to what they would spend on a pay-to-play game, and instantly own dozens of Champions. To get the most out of each Champion, a Summoner wants to arm them with best the weaponry and defenses. The way to do this in League of Legends is by having a unique runepage and masterypage for every single Champion.

How is someone that’s exhaustively played League of Legends since the closed beta, owns every single Champion in the game and has every available rune going to do that, when the maximum number of available runepages is only 1/5 of the amount of Champions available? Even worse, what if this person likes to play All Random All Bottom on Dominion, a custom game mode that’s been soaring in popularity lately? Why do they have to go into a game knowing that they can only optimally configure about 20% of their Champions? What’s the point of unlocking all the content if you can’t even use it without obtuse limitations?

The curious Homo sapiens sapiens desires to maximize its experiences in life.
It’s natural for us to explore variety. But when exploring Champion variety in League of Legends, we encounter an unintuitive and rather limiting system. I’m still talking about the way rune and mastery pages work of course. Wouldn’t it make much more sense for each different champion to have their own set of unique rune and mastery pages? Let’s explore what that would look like.

In this minmaxers’ Valhalla, a level one Summoner account would be blank. New Summoners would start the game with no Champions, no runepages, and no mastery pages. Upon completing a few games, they would’ve gathered sufficient Influence Points to purchase a Champion. The twist is, this Champion would come with a personal runepage and masterypage included. After countless hours of playing, a Summoner could max out their account and own all available Champions, each with their own unique configuration pages. At this point, surplus Influence Points could be spent unlocking additional runepages for specific Champions. The cost for these extra pages could be based on the Influence Point price of the relevant Champion. This way, everyone wins. Summoners can enhance the customisability of their preferred Champions, and Riot Games could potentially sell hundreds of extra runepages to each Summoner, instead of being limited to only about a score. Let’s assume a cap of five rune and mastery pages per Champion, which is a rather generous number.

Doesn’t that sound amazing? To me it does. But it gets better! Additional benefits could be reaped from having such a system in place. First of all it would be a vast increase in user-friendliness for the pregame lobby. No more messing around with shared rune and mastery pages in a limited window of time. Instead, the relevant configuration is loaded automatically when you lock in a Champion, and only when multiple pages are owned, a selection has to be made. Disconnect during Champion select and have the game start on you with a random Champion? Not a problem friend, the correct mastery and runepages are automatically selected, as they’re linked to the Champion you randomed. No more 30 second races against the clock when swapping Champions in the pregame lobby. Upon completion of a swap, your client will automatically load the correct setup and you’re good to go.

Think about it fellow Summoners. We got Riot to give us twenty runepages instead of ten. Why couldn’t we get them to give us Champion-specific configuration pages, to the benefit of all parties involved? I believe we can. Remember, the customer is always right ;-).

What do you think? Share your opinion in the comments section below!