"The good is oft interrèd with their bones."

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears.
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interrèd with their bones.
So let it be with Caesar. The noble Brutus
Hath told you Caesar was ambitious.
If it were so, it was a grievous fault,
And grievously hath Caesar answered it.

-- Julius Caesar, Act 3, Scene 2

Unlike Antonius, I bear no ill will. I have no axe to grind, and no reason to deny the developers of Diablo III their due & proper for those aspects of the game which actually do work well.

Don't get me wrong: I do think that Diablo III is a fundamentally broken mess. By which I mean that the developers failed to understand several fundamental concepts in game design, either didn't understand or didn't much care for the conventions of the genre of game they were making, and achieved an end result which fails on so many different levels that it's going to take a few thousand words to unpack it all. 

But that doesn't mean that Diablo III is entirely bad. The game does do some things well, and it does a few things very well, and its only fair that I recognize the game's undeniable charms... before I start tearing it apart to see why it went so far wrong in every other respect.

And so, I shall begin my detailed criticism of Diablo III by praising it.

Speaking of BlizzCon...

With BlizzCon just over a month away, fans of Blizzard's Diablo series are once again being subjected to rumours of a possible Diablo announcement, or Diablo II HD, or Diablo 4, or.... something. Or, really, anything.

I would recommend that Diablo fans keep their expectations in check, though, because it doesn't look like Blizzard are giving any higher a profile to their Diablo IP for this BlizzCon than they have for the last few. At least, if one judges by the floor map for the convention.

Let's zoom in a little bit, shall we?

Yes, once again, the Diablo area is the same size as the nearby washrooms. But, hey, at least it's up front, this time, and not shoehorned into a back corner behind the face painting booth! 

We'll know more for sure once Blizzard release the actual schedule of events and panels, but with Overwatch, Hearthstone, and Starcraft II all having their own tournament stages/arenas, and Heroes of the Storm/World of Warcraft sharing a stage, it seems pretty obvious what the foci of this year's BlizzCon are going to be. 

None of this is a surprise, of course. In fact, the only surprise for me is the way Hearthstone has been shuffled somewhat off to the side - maybe the Tavern set up needed some specific sort of space that the main floor couldn't accommodate? It's still a little odd to see one of Blizzard's biggest money-makers sharing a neighbourhood with the face painting booth, Darkmoon Faire, and the voice actors. Maybe revenue is down, thanks to the game's terrible new player experience.

Hope, as always, spring eternal, but this is one case where Diablo fans should fight that hopeful impulse. Anyone hoping for a big Diabloverse announcement at this year's BlizzCon should stop hoping.

A post of links to posts

Let's start things off here by linking to all the posts that I've already done on my other blog that might be relevant.

First, there's the obligatory full disclosure (my personal journey with the Diablo franchise), so that you'll know where I'm coming from.

Then, since BlizzCon2017 is almost upon us, I may as well link to my greatest hits about BlizzCons past:

• D3's 2.5 PTR backlash continues to amaze me
• Another about D3's 2.5 PTR
• BlizzCon cometh... whoopity do...
• Confirmed: Diablo is dying, and Blizzard is out of ideas
• Diablo fans still holding their breath for a big BlizzCon announcement
• Diablo III @ BlizzCon 2016
• ‘Diablo 4’ Release Date: Major Announcement at BlizzCon 2016!!!!

That last is a little misleading, obviously, since there were no major Diablo announcements at last year's BlizzCon. The run-up for this year's BlizzCon appears to be repeating this same pattern, however, albeit with lower intensity, and I'll have more to say on that topic later.

There was a quick post about the "D1 in D3" experience, which I'll also likely refer to again later. It wasn't my only post on Blizzard's trend of pandering to Diablo II fans, either. There was this post about the design flaws of Ancient Legendary items, written on the occasion of Blizzard's reveal of Primal Ancient Legendary items. And there's this post about the infinite value of player-created content, which was actually about Overwatch but which reminded me of D3, for some reason.

And, let you think that I'm obsessed with a five+ year old game that I don't even play anymore, I've also posted about Blizzard's other game, Hearthstone.

And one more, about the issue of cheating in videogames.

And now, having put all the relevant posts in one place, I'll move on to newer topics... or, at least, topics I haven't written about before.