f13.net

Just got an email that SC2 and D3 are $20 off this week. That puts SC2 at $20 and D3 at $40.

WoW is on sale as well.

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/7916590?utm_content=offer-banner&utm_medium=launcher&utm_source=internal&utm_campaign=wow (http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/7916590?utm_content=offer-banner&utm_medium=launcher&utm_source=internal&utm_campaign=wow)

Still $20 for the Warcraft 3 Battle Chest, though.    :heartbreak:

Eh, Amazon has D3 for the same price with free shipping (Blizzard charges for shipping)

They still ship games? On DISCS!?

Starcraft II is tempting at $20.

I'm not sure how long the sale lasts, but if there is time, you can check out the first few single player missions via the starter edition: https://us.battle.net/account/sc2/starter-edition/
and then pick up the full version if you like what you see.

I played the demo when it was new. The thing keeping me from ponying up is mainly that I don't like the whole "blizzard account" and "no offline play evar" things. I would only be interested in it for the campaign. But I have like a dozen games I bought on Steam this summer that I need to play plus I am sure I will end up picking up a few cheap Xbox games to play on my couch once my 360 arrives on Monday.

Blizzard's hooks have been out of my flesh for close to four years now, I like the idea of not letting them get them back in.

For what it is worth, you can in fact play the single player campaign offline (it is usually what I do if my internet goes out for some length of time).  However, you don't gain achievements when playing offline.

The campaign is totally worth $20, IMO. The story shit is cheesy as hell, but the actual missions are a lot of fun, and there's even a decent amount of replay value if you like chasing after achievements.

Blizzard who? The problem with only selling through your own store, when you only release a game every couple of years, is you aren't going to get passing traffic.

Um, what? Since when have Blizzard only sold through their own store? Their games are available at just about every major retailer including Amazon, Walmart, and their worldwide counter parts who are probably getting the most traffic during the holiday shopping season than anyone

The dangers of only ever buying games through Steam.

Actually, I went through an EBGames on Friday, and they had two Blizzard boxes on the shelf: one was the Warcraft 3 Battle Chest, and the other was Cataclysm.  No StarCraft 2, no Pandaria, no Diablo 3, nothing.

Not that this establishes any kind of pattern, I just thought it was funny.

FWIW Diablo 3 was 10 bucks today. For a few minutes/hours before it sold out:
http://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msstore/pd/Diablo-III-PC-Game/productID.245853100/vip.true?&ClickID=cfqaw4asliex4v4xf4nk7asiz7eisvq7nzzk

Yeah, but the silver lining is that you probably don't buy EA games either then. A trade-off in your favor :why_so_serious:


Yeah that is kind of odd. While not at all what I've seen lately, but that's probably because I haven't stepped foot into a Gamestop or anything in a while, just Walmart and Bestbuy

Does EBGames even stock new PC games anymore?

Yes they do.

In a sense, yeah, but in our local store their inventory management is hilariously out of touch.  They had a few copies of Guild Wars 2 there, next to a copy of some expansion for Ultima Online (something to do with samurai?) which has been sitting there unsold for years at least.  They had a copy of Fury as recently as September, though I didn't notice it this time.  I really hope nobody bought it.  I know they had copies of Diablo 3 at least back at launch, I assume it sold and they don't bother restocking it so they can give more shelf space to their unsold copy of Alvin and the Chipmunks.

Is it really a danger?

SC2 was decent but derivative. D3 didn't work out.

You have to go back years for a blizzard game that you'd miss.

Yes, Blizzard should really rethink how they develop, market, and sell their games. It should be obvious to them considering how they're huting for money and players.

I play both regularly.  Sc2 mutliplayer is probably the best competitive title out right now, maybe with DOTA 2.

I don't think anyone was arguing that blizzard are hurting for monies or that SC2 isn't a decent game.

SC2 may be the "best competitive" title out right now along with DOTA2, but LoL is completely eating both of those games' lunches.

For f13, I guess that's true.

DOTA2 is to LOL what EQ2 is to WoW.

DOTA2 is LoL's underappreciated and ultimately less successful predecessor, and the only game in the genre with sufficient buttons to press?

Clearly this means Valve needs to add hats to DotA2.

EQ2 went hyper-realism when wow was doing cartoony fun.  DOTA2 from all I've seen seems to be the "gritty" version.

I took it to mean "take the 'hardcore' parts of the archetype game and turn it up to 11" versus "make it accessible to 'noobs' or 'casuals' while still making it palatable to the more hardcore of the original's audience".

There's really nothing gritty about DOTA2 in terms of presentation at all.

I just took the comparison to mean DOTA2 sucks.

I think there's some merit to the comparison, but really in the way some are putting it out there. 

In a way, LoL is a lot like WoW.  It took an already successful game, refined it for the masses, and proceeded to print money hats. 

I'm not sure, however, if EQ2 and DOTA2 are fair to compare with one another.  But, I don't know enough about EQ2 or DOTA 1 to really speculate.  DOTA2, afaik, is reskinned DOTA.  The core game has not changed.  EQ2, I believe ( I didn't play a whole lot) was significantly different than EQ1, but made the mistake of going up against WoW with less forgiving system requirements and a graphical style that didn't make up for the added machine needed.

I know I'd like DOTA2 a lot more if made some concessions to casual play.  But, it's not for me, it's for DOTA fans.  (It's still pretty good, IMO.)

EQ2 may have had different mechanics than EQ1 for the most part(how could it not? eq1 being as old as it was) but the core "grindiness" of it was the same, only for 'teh hardcore'

Retail stores here have a +60% price penalty for being Australian so are only for the console owners and people who don't know about online game sales.

So yes, I went into an EB sometime last year... but only to point and laugh.

Rift is probably a better example than eq2.

It attempts to build on the success of wow, aims at people with more experience of the genre and interest in complex mechanics (for better or worse).

But ultimately it won't be as commercially successful.

EQ2 was EQ1 with the personality, character and most of the fun surgically removed. The fact it got flattened under the WoW juggernaut was well deserved. It's still ordinary even though it has improved a lot since release.

... I have no idea how that ties into the LoL / DotA comparison since I play neither.

I think the comparison doesn't work regardless. DOTA 2 isn't really a sequel at all, it is just DOTA 1 using the source engine.  Yes, there are some minor differences of course.  I like DOTA 2 better than LoL as a game, and I think it is a better competitive game in terms of the wealth of strategies and playstyles that are viable.  LoL is clearly a better casual game (and I've played LoL more recently than DOTA actually) because of that simplicity.

But this whole thing was about competitive games because I said that Starcraft 2 was probably the best competitive game out right now in response to the claim that Blizzard hadn't released anything worthwhile lately.  I plainly disagree, even if you consider Diablo 3 to be a disappointment.  That isn't even considering the single player, which is well worth the 20 bucks SC2 was going for during this sale.  The only disappointing thing about SC2 is that the custom games (Use Map Settings games, in Sc1 terms) haven't quite caught on the same way as they have in previous Blizzard RTS titles.

This morning I had an email offering Mists of Pandaria for 50% off.

Yes I got the same one. I went to the Blizzard store to confirm it, but yeah, they were offering Mists for $20. That's a new record.

oops thought I was in the rocksmith thread->moved

I thought I was going to buy it when it went on sale, but I just have no cares available. SWTOR is just a better WoW for me than WoW at this point.

I just received an offer to return to Azeroth with 10 Free Days of Game Time plus a free trial of Mists of Pandaria.

I got that too. I can't muster up the enthusiasm to even take advantage of that.