Tag: game design

  • World of Warcraft: Subscriptions Down By 2.9 Million

    Activision/Blizzard announced their Q1 2015 earnings and one of the not-so-shocking results was the subscription loss in World of Warcraft. Specifically, the loss amount to 2.9 million subscribers, which is a pretty massive loss ($43,500,000 in revenue per month potentially). What happened? And why is this not exactly surprising?

  • Diablo 3: Data Mined Patch 2.2 Notes from DiabloFans and Gear Discussion

    More concrete information has been released on the DiabloFans website containing not just some of the upcoming changes to the legacy legendary sets but some new features that will be released in Asia (at first), the Cursed Realms, side quests, etc. What I want to focus on in this blog is the information regarding the…

  • Baldur’s Gate 2: Working with EE Keeper

    At a certain point where you feel you’ve accomplished your basic goals in a game, the way you can take it to the next level is modding it. With Baldur’s Gate 2, there’s a really cool utility called EE Keeper that allows you to modify your saved games for the Enhanced Edition. The main purpose…

  • Baldur’s Gate 2: Modifying NPCs to Be More Interesting

    I heard there’s a program that allows you to modify NPCs a bit. The main benefit is to give the NPCs a little more variety and hopefully make them more appealing (since many have either poor stats or just offer nothing in terms of their classes). So here’s some ideas in terms of making the…

  • Diablo 3: Ideas on Improving Class Sets

    Something that I want to work on in this blog is coming up with some ideas to improve upon class sets. I mentioned previously that I do feel Demon Hunter’s Marauders set is in a good spot overall prior to the nerf and that the real issue is improving upon other sets. Here, I want…

  • Diablo 3: Thoughts on the Upcoming 2.1.2 Patch

    I still haven’t given the PTR a shot yet for Diablo 3 (I did manage to download it). But I have watched several streamers demonstrate it as well as hear commentary from streamers and forum posts. I wanted to share my take on this patch.

  • Diablo 3: Patch 2.1.2 Coming Up

    One of the talks I was looking forward to the most at BlizzCon 2014 was the preview of the upcoming patch 2.1.2 changes. On Thursday night, I had the chance to meet with the Diablo 3 team, but I purposefully avoided asking anything about future content patches as I figured everything would be addressed here…

  • Diablo 3 Reaper of Souls: Redesigning the Hellfire Ring and Amulet

    I touched briefly in my previous article on my dissatisfaction with both the Hellfire Ring and Amulet and added a few simple ideas to enhance these items. For this article, I want to delve a little deeper into a few ideas I’ve been tossing around my head in improving these two items and changing their…

  • Diablo 3 Reaper of Souls: Build and Gear Discussion

    Obviously, Diablo 3 has come a very long way since the vanilla days where you practically had only 1-2 viable class options and limited useful items in terms of builds and gear. The game has been moving towards a far more flexible game play where gear options are a lot more interesting with legendaries having…

  • Diablo 3 Reaper of Souls: Kadala’s and Legendary Stealth Post-Season Nerf

    Many people on the forums have mentioned that Kadala and the drop rate for Legendaries have been nerfed in recent days. While the usual “RNG is RNG” people use their simpleton argument, there’s no denying that there has been a wide spread nerf to drops.