I keep thinking I’m going to get back into Diablo 3, but it never seems to happen; they inspire new outrage on a weekly basis with everything that surrounds the clicking, but I’m not even running the executable! I’m safe altogether from these fresh horrors. And everyone else beat it and left. If I wanted to get back in, I’d be doing it alone. So that might not happen.

So, as those who have mostly left the bulding already, Diablo 3’s Real Money Auction House is double mysterious and we don’t know what it’s for. Well, okay: we know know. The “moneys.” What I’m saying is that getting new shit actually is the game. For us, anyway. Getting and, crucially, equipping new loot. The whole AH thing short-circuits the entire idea: the game is, functionally speaking, a pinata. Right? Obviously, you could just go buy candy at the store. It’s not about having candy. It’s about getting candy.

If I commit money earned in-game toward an item, be it from a vendor or from the auction house, it’s still a closed loop. We’re talking about a quantum of game time when we talk about gold. Paying money, let alone an exorbitant sum of money, seems like a singularly poor investment. In free to play games, I give myself an “allowance” of actual money to games that have earned it, typically up to a cap that is the equivalent of a retail purchase. But this game is sixty Goddamn dollars. Valve ultimately realized that people would purchase more hats if they gave the heads away for free; ultimately, there may be a parallel there.

Because I did not design On The Rain-Slick Precipice Of Darkness 3, I can express an appreciation of Zeboyd without it getting too weird, hopefully. Hopefully.

In OTRSPOD3, you heal back to full health after every fight. Also, items regenerate after each fight. So in a game that we’ve done everything we can to make it look like the delights of old, it still has a very modern streak. Because it is not about resource management, as JPRGs tend to be, each fight is more like a puzzle - but you can level up your pieces. I was a fan of theirs before, but watching him modify the combat values on our shared spreadsheet ever so slightly stirred in me an authentic respect. Their difficulty settings actually mean something, too: you can change it mid-game, but if you really want to feel as though you are being crushed between two numbers, that is a sensation we can certainly provide.

(CW)TB out.

it is simple and elegant