Quote of the Day – The Settings of Diablo III

It’s tough to understand why Diablo III recycled the settings of its predecessors when there are dozens of new alternatives, unless we frame Diablo III as an installment in a series that now has its own genre conventions. It’s the rough equivalent of a Metroid game having a lava area and an ice area—it’s just the way things are done.

Ars Technica review of Diablo III

The question of setting choices came to my mind last night as I finished up Act I and headed to Act II, only to find myself taking a caravan from Tristram to the desert just as I did in Diablo II.  We’ll see if I end up searching for tombs again.

Out in the desert

Not that the repeat of settings is a bad thing, just like naming a street “Market Street” or some running water “Deer Creek” are not bad things.  But with a whole world of possibilities, you might wonder why the team didn’t seek to inject something new in the scenery.

My hope is that this was the knee-jerk reaction of a new team taking over somebody else’s legacy and wanting to maintain the association with the previous versions.  Maybe we will see new places when the first expansion comes along.

Of course, that brings up the whole topic of Blizzard and expansions.  Will this be in the old Blizzard model, where we’ll get just one expansion, but it will show up in a year?  Or will we see a few expansions, but have no idea when they will show up?

Spoils from the War in the North

With the war in the north having concluded, letting everybody get back to the usual routine of kicking the other guy in the nuts when they are looking the other way, there was some time to hand out rewards.

Certainly Razor Alliance was a major beneficiary in the conflict.  But my own alliance, TNT, was not forgotten either. We were rewarded for our participation in the war with some new null sec systems to have and to hold.  We went from 10 to 15 systems along with another station.

This will give the alliance more systems to exploit for fun and profit.  I am not sure if I will get much of a chance to visit them.  I tend to stick to a couple of systems to start with, and the new systems are in another region, Pure Blind.

TNT null sec sov

The systems are not that far away, and I am going to guess we have, or will have, a jump bridge set up between the two locations to keep us from having to go around through Deklein or down through NC territory.  I am just one of those people who settle down and accumulate crap in their home station.  It makes it tough to move, and all the more so in null sec where there might be a camp at any gate.

But now rather than just being one little purple spot on the daily sovereignty maps, TNT is now two little purple spots on the daily sovereignty maps.  Go us.

Meanwhile, it wasn’t cake and ice cream for everybody in the CFC.  The alliance Black-Mark was giving its papers and told to leave.  That pretty much put an end to them as an alliance as its sovereignty went away and most of its member corporations moved into other alliances.

Clearly they were not quite as cohesive as our foe  Raiden, who also ended the war seriously set back on the sovereignty front yet still has a significant membership.  Though they did manage to hold onto a system in n0.0 space.

And the removal of Black-Mark from the CFC left a big hole in space, which was filled in by Goonswarm and Executive Outcomes.

What was Black-Mark territory

And so the cookie crumbles in null sec.

None of this is recent or vital news. Certainly not something that belongs up on EVE News 24.  It is just an update on things to remind me what was going on in my little corner of null sec.