Musclessss

So I'm lifting a lot of weights lately and I'm beginning to look pretty buff.

I can squat 300lbs. I can bench over 225 lbs. I'm cut, I'm ripped and the chicks fucking love it.

For those dudes out there who are wondering why they're not getting the results with the females that they want, its all about your T levels.

Let me repeat that for emphasis because it really is all about your T levels.

Scientists have proven that when you win an altercation or an argument, your T levels go up, when you lose they go down. This is why for example when you pass a shit test by not giving a fuck or flipping the switch on a girl she gets more turned on, because you're mind is literally giving you permission to produce more T.

T T T T T T!!!!!

When you win a big poker hand, or a tournament, or outsmart someone or outplay them, the victory stimulates more T production.

But you can short circuit this by lifting, lifting, lifting. So go lift already you fucking pussy! I went to lunch with this beta doctor the other day, every piece of ass that came into the place he started scanning with his eyes like a predator looking for a gazelle to eat. I don't need to explain to the well versed this obvious truth, but for those of you hard case newbs who don't get it, displaying overt interest in a girl before she displays it to you is a LOSING move.

You approach indirectly, you display value WITHOUT a direct intention, this is not done by faking it, it is done by literally NOT BEING THAT INTO THE GIRL TO BEGIN WITH.

WOMEN are seductresses, men are on their path, whatever that path may be. If your path is to get money so you can get bitches, then you're a bitch yourself. Your path should be to self actualize and be the best version of yourself you can be, and when you're doing this, your T levels go up and the seductresses will seek YOU OUT!!

So go the fucking gym and lift already.

This new Ghostbuster Movie

I want to talk about a few different spectrums with respect to this film.

The first spectrum is control vs empowerment.

The movie doesn't stand on its own without the previous two films having existed. Ergo, without the effects of the brand of the previous films, this current film would not even be considered popular in any respect.

The goal of the first movie was to entertain people, the goal of this movie is to bank on the success of the first movie. This is not about empowerment, but about control.

Now lets talk about fear vs love.

When you want to entertain people, you work from a place of love. Your goal is to show them an emotionally moving experience, regardless of what that emotion is. When you want to make money, you try to do something you think will be popular and you make decisions based on market research, polling and other such nonsense. You're trying to make money because you're an executive that is thinking of his career and moving forward and success and all that shit. You're acting out of FEAR when you make decisions based on what will make money, instead of what will make a great movie.

Now lets talk about authenticity vs faking.

The first film featured 2 actors who worked together on SNL (Murray and Akroyd). In fact a third SNL alumn (Murphy) was supposed to join but didn't due to making 48 hours or some shit, I forget. The point is, they purposely put comedians together that had a previous rapport, with the goal of entertaining people. And it showed as Akroyd and Murray were both perfect.

This movie took some popular female comedians and mashed them together in the hopes of it being popular. Why four girls? Because marketing research. Whatever happened to creative people making decisions based on entertaining people?

Inorganic, inauthentic, fear based, control based.

Every single thing about this film is wrong. It is an aberration. Hollywood has become too stupid to even know what to do with themselves anymore. People think that shitty entertainment is no big deal in the grand scheme of things, I wonder how stupid the kids growing up today will be one day, I bet dumb as paint.

We keep dumbing things down, putting out stupider less plausible characters, dumber comedy, everything is getting worse.

Stop destroying old franchises that didn't suck. Stop rebooting shit. Let creative people make movies again.

Yeahhhh..

So here's the real issue with this shit. The real issue is that we have to bank on the mythology of old because people no longer believe in the now, the things coming out now are not having the same traction.

That's because the empire is severely decayed and we prefer to time warp to a period when it wasn't.

Asians have taken us over, globalization and the race to the bottom....

Some more thoughts on the coming elections

For some reason beyond me, many people are convinced that Donald Trump is a joke and should not be taken seriously.

A MULTI BILLIONAIRE who makes winning business deals again and again, who finds ways to get shit done that other people can't, who is running his campaign EXACTLY as he runs his business (he's spending way less that the competition and getting way more bang for his buck).

You know what the biggest problem with American Government is? Incomprehensibly inefficient use of taxpayer money towards the establishments aims, as well as corruption that reduces efficiency. For example generic prescription drugs are not available in the states because the big pharma companies paid the right people and signed the right contract and the end result is pills cost an arm and a leg and companies that would provide said drugs for MUCH CHEAPER are NOT ALLOWED TO SELL THEM. That's not capitalism, that's corruption, collusion, price rigging, the most immoral way to run a business.

And these people who call Trump a laughing stock, well to me, THEY are the laughing stock. Ignorant haters who don't hold a candle to the man's skills and business savvy. These same people would rather see Hillary Clinton be the president.

If you take just ten minutes to google her name with the word criminal, you will find an OCEAN of facts, FACTS that prove the woman has no moral conscience WHATSOEVER. She will make backdoor deals and cares NOTHING for the common man and is a symbol of the inefficiency and nonsense that plagues politics. Furthermore she consorts with cocaine dealers and a ton of the money that has financed her over the years comes from CRIMINALS, because SHE IS A CRIMINAL AS WELL!!

It boggles my mind how stupid the average person has become that their eyes cannot see what is plainly staring at them. The blind lead the blind alas.

Proof of this is that Bernie Sanders is in a fight with Hillary Clinton. She shouldn't get a single vote if the voters were educated and understood up from down and left from right and possessed even the most basic common sense.

I fear humanity has become so stupid that we may get exactly what we deserve.....

A Rant about Trump and America

We're seeing an interesting shift in American politics right now. I am of the opinion that the men in the closed room that own all the assets and make all the decisions are on top of things at all times, that is to say they run the show and have already planned eventualities several steps ahead.

It is with that concept in mind that I would like to discuss one Donald J. Trump.

He's crass, he's genuine, he's super cool. It is no surprise that he is far more popular in polling that Ted Cruz, Jeb (who just dropped out) and Marco Rubio, John Kasick etc...

Its fairly obvious that the bulk of Americans are no longer of the opinion that the establishment serves their interests. The LOGICAL candidate from such a viewpoint would most certainly be Bernie Sanders.

However, that being said let's tell it like it is. When Sanders suggests that meaningful change can only occur with a "Strong grassroots political movement involving millions" what I'm hearing is a sort of soft revolution. Those of you who take an interest in history will no doubt recall that FDR in order to get the New Deal signed and approved had to present the elite with an ultimatum of epic proportions: make this deal or all production stops, all unions go on strike and everything slows down to a crawl. The irony is that such an ultimatum can no longer truly be provided by the working class unless EVERYONE revolts. In the first place there is very little production locally to speak of, the only inconvenience to the elite of a mass revolt in the States would be no body is running the StarBucks or the gas station or waiting tables. North America is a service economy and once that service can be provided by robots or automation or what have you, the large bulk of the population effectively become liabilities to the elite, not assets.

Right now they are of use for one primary reason, they pay taxes to feed the military machine. They also help to some extent to make America appear powerful on the global scene.

Now lets get back to the focus of our article, Mr. Trump. He is the EMOTIONAL candidate for the dispossessed American who's needs are no longer being tended to. The reason he appeals to the emotion of the dispossessed American is fairly straightforward, he is so blunt, so honest, so forthright. He is off the cuff and does not seem to prepare the bulk of his statements. People want change and they subconsciously gravitate towards the person that will provide that change. Sanders has appeal for these people, but I myself, and I do not think I am alone in voicing this opinion, am worried that even if elected, Sanders will find himself with enemies who will try to stop his every move for change.

Trump seems like the type of guy who is willing to break the rules and rewrite them altogether, someone who isn't afraid of standing up the corruption and bureaucracy and unlike Sanders is probably willing to break a LOT of eggs to make the omelet. He's either going to be amazing or the next Fascist Dictator. I'm incredibly fascinated either way and can't wait to see what happens next.

As far as those men behind closed doors who make decisions, what if Trump is part of their plan to radicalize America even further. What if they're several steps ahead of everyone else and have already concluded that the people no longer have faith in the establishment per se and that they need to dangle something new in our faces to keep us passive even longer. What if Trump is their guy from the beginning? Isn't that what they did with Obama? Look you can trust him, you don't need ro rebell, the system will change, he's BLACK for God's sake!

Look you can trust Trump, he's self funded! He's not part of Washington!

I think the young people in America are waking up to some harsh truths and are grasping desperately for answers and are willing to listen to anyone who they think could provide it, Trump certainly fits that bill.

What if the life the baby boomers knew was a fluke in the context of history? And the offshoot of that middle class wealth is slowly dying out now? What if the middle class all but disappears in the future? Isn't that already happening?

Food for thought, I used to make about 4200$ per month after taxes and would spend up to 2500 a month on food, rent, car, cell, expenses, you get the point. That's 1700 a month savings (of course I'm splitting rent and food with my girlfriend at the time, much more expensive solo). This is what you would call a middle class life in a 3.5 apartment in a downtown area of a major metropolitan city, eating well, going out regularly.

That 1700 a month is a decent amount to save certainly, but by the time I can afford a home without a 30 year mortgage that makes me pay overall 200% of the property value in interest I need about 200 months (16 years) straight of savings.

16 years of no vacations. 16 years of no splurging on nice shoes, new clothes, a leather couch.

16 years of nothing but work, groceries, laundry, and the occasional restaurant. No ski trips, no hotel getaways, no deviation from the daily grind.

16 years of no concerts, no spa visits, no new car, no new anything really, just work and pray the company remains stable enough that your position is still needed in 16 years.

The point is that in the 70's we know how affordable things were for the middle class, how easy it was for them to obtain property, work a solid job at the same place, move up the ladder, and improve their life.

Today that has been choked to a fraction of what it was. in 16 years ill be 49. And in 16 years that house that used to cost 340K will cost 500k (or more who knows).

Contrast this with baby boomers who had a 2 year mortgage to own a home. And you wonder why birthrates are down? Why marriage rates are down? Why things are failing? Here's a discomforting truth, maybe the middle class is being weeded out and that this is a process that has been happening for decades.

Back to Trump. In order to reverse this and give the middle class a leg up, we would need to see a return to manufacturing, a return to investment of corporate profits into infrastructure, education, jobs, the "LOCAL" economy. This requires either more heavily taxing the ultra rich, or redirecting the huge military budget towards those domestic goals. I find it incredibly hard to accept that either of these things would be allowed to happen given the current state of politics and the current balance of power.

But at least its entertaining to watch.

American Politics at a Glance, February 2016

Thought I would right some things down about Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton and all the rest of it. I guess we should mention Donald Trump as well.

Before I delve into these topics I should first stipulate that I do not believe in any way shape or form, that the US president actually makes meaningful change in the United States. I believe that meaningful change is rather engineered by multinational firms, central banks, corporate lobbyists and the rest.

To me the President of the United states is a glorified public relations agent whose purpose is to make more palatable to the American People and the public at large, the intentions and machinations of the Military Industrial Complex. In other words, the President is the president of spin. When a new trade deal is proposed that will hurt the US, the president's job is to convince the people that this deal is not a rip off and will in fact serve their interests. When Edward Snowden blows the whistle, the purpose of the President is to quell people' disgust with government by saying "its for your own good, trust us...".

And so it is with a sort of bored detached amusement that I look at these elections before us and I ask myself a few key questions.

A. Is Hillary Clinton actually a human being or is she a carefully constructed cyborg whose purpose it is to simulate emotion and like-ability based on research and polling her staff does? i.e.: Is she into gay rights and feminism because its popular or because she actually believes in these things? i.e.: is there anything of any authenticity whatsoever coming out of this woman's mouth, at all???

B. Is Bernie Sanders actually for real? It's hard for me to accept that he's for real, he seems legit, he seems like he's not a corrupt piece of shit politician. And yet the real tragedy of this is, that if he IS for real, he will most certainly NEVER become the next President of the United states.

C. Can any cosmic force on earth or elsewhere stop Donald Trump from becoming the next President of the United States?

Lets start with A and flesh that out a little more. Hillary is totally false. Shake hands, kiss babies, say the right things, act in ways that offend as few people as possible, pretend to care about the people, etc. Almost half he twitter followers are fake accounts, everything that comes out of her mouth was placed there by a staffer, her mannerisms of speech are filled with pauses and gaps because she is constructing a fabricated identity. She worked for the fifth estate, serves corporate interest almost to a default, sucks on the teet of shadow government power with glee in the hopes of getting on the biggest stage. Her ego is the size of an 18 wheeler. The only thing she cares about is making herself appear as something of substance. I submit to you that there is simply NOTHING THERE. She doesn't stand for ANYTHING. She just says what she's been told people want to hear. She is trying to convince people that she is presidential, and in fact she would be a very good president if the goal of American politics for the future is to pass the buck, do the same fucking thing everyone before has done, pretend to fight for the rights of the people but make the deals that matter behind closed doors.

B. I have to admit, I think Bernie Sanders IS for real. I think he IS genuine, fair, and believes in democracy, which is why he cannot be elected president. If he is elected corporate forces and lobbyists and the industry of greed and evil will do all in its power to prevent him from exacting any meaningful change whatsoever. It's just not gonna happen for Bernie, and its a crying shame because I wish he would win, I wish the people would take back their country, I wish the working class of america would picket and fight (in fact probably all of these things are happening at all times, but the media is careful to ensure that news of these things NEVER spreads too far). If the working class of the country were to engage in an all out revolt and take to the streets, then Bernie would probably be the perfect president. I am of the opinion that a moral man who believes in good and evil CANNOT be elected president, it just can't happen. This guy would tax the rich and corporate interests and use that money to invest in infrastructure and jobs, which would GREATLY stimulate the economy in the short and medium term.

C. Then of course there's Donald Trump, who I would vote for in a second because it makes SENSE. He has big balls, he's an alpha, a leader, doesn't give a FUCK what other people think and is GENUINE. Does he articulate the popular rage? Of course!! But unlike Hillary, hes real, and unlike Bernie, he seems more RESOURCEFUL because of his skills in business dealings and his success in the private sector. He seems like a good negotiator, a good businessman, a strong willed individual. He's ACTUALLY COMPETENT AND PROVEN. Most politicians are USELESS IDIOTS. But will he help the common working man or help grow the middle class? I HIGHLY DOUBT IT. Instead I picture heaven for businesses. There is however the possibility that he would try to stimulate medium and small sized businesses by empowering them with loans and protection, which COULD be a good thing. I trust he is capable of improving the country, but doubt that he will try to really. I wonder what he would do as president, probably usher in an era of extremism.

Now if I had to pick a candidate in ideal circumstances it would be Bernie, for sure. I wish circumstances were ideal, but they're not. I fear for Bernie, and I shudder to think what would happen if that bloodless witch Clinton wins the democratic Nomination and he decides to be her running mate, makes me want to puke.

A review of Nostalrius PvE - from a somewhat experienced PvE player

I used to LOVE World of Warcraft.

I distinctly recall my first 1.99$ trial DVD that I purchased, back in mid 2006, before the Burning Crusade had come out.

The environments were lush and immersive, there was a player community that seemed vibrant and plenty of action was happening on the server. I leveled as a Rogue and by the time my first Deadmines run was completed, I was HOOKED. The loot, the showing off to other people, the displaying of ones skill via the dps meters. I wanted loot, and what I needed to get it was other people, and what they wanted was me to do was dps well and avoid stuff that kills you, and so I forced myself to get better at the game. I wanted to feel like the dude in Ironforge who's sitting on his mount and has the coolest shit you've ever seen and people just stare at him in wonder.

I got my wish into Burning Crusade, became a top raider, got to see all the content before most anyone else, got to kill illidan and archimonde and almost got Kil'jaedan. I burnt out and quit as the guild I was in was progressing on him, because I just didn't give a flying fuck about it anymore. I had transferred servers a few times because the guilds I was in had become stuck and were unable to move forward.

I played some more in WOTLK, and a tad more in Cataclysm, but that was it. For the past four years I have not even picked up WoW, and have not really wanted to either. The truth of the matter is that I was tired of the time commitment to be a top raider, it seemed like the main thing you needed to invest to get them purple pixels was time. Time is a valuable commodity and I can't feel good about spending it on a relatively fruitless hobby.

Recently I heard about a Vanilla server called Nostalrius, I heard about it on a suggested Youtube video, so I tried it out.

To my surprise, I found it to be very addictive (at least initially). The reasons for this are as follows:

• Vanilla WoW was HARD and required you to group up to get anything meaningful done (Elite quests, questing in general, pulling more than 1 mob at a time is dangerous for most classes, etc)
• The time commitment in Vanilla was intense, such that people with full dungeon sets were committed, you could tell who was a serious player just by their appearance, the speed of their mount, the way they enchant their gear, what gear and spec they use, etc. While it is harder to get things, getting them becomes that much more meaningful as a result.
• The need to communicate with your fellow players: because there is no dungeon finder, no server transfers, no name changes, etc, you HAVE to network, you HAVE to converse with others, you HAVE to play nice. You must ingratiate yourself into the community otherwise you don't get very far.

Overall my experience with it made me realize quite a few things. The reason we liked hard mode WoW was because it felt rewarding. When I rejoined in Cataclysm and saw how easy it was to gear, how brainless the Raid Finder raids were, I was kind of disgusted. It defeated the whole purpose of Vanilla WoW, it undid the entire initial motivation to play.

Once everyone could get epics, epics didn't feel epic anymore. Here on Nostalrius, having a good set of Blues feels like an accomplishment, you feel GOOD about it. But it takes a lot of time, time that most people with an active life cannot accommodate.

I find it interesting that WoW changed because of the periphery of players that could not keep up with the hardcore players. As such the game changed and became much more casual, and so the Hardcore instead of being WAY ahead of the casuals, were just slightly ahead, such that a casual could jump into a raid with the Hardcore players and be geared enough from casual content to contribute right away.

The demise of WoW, once it does finally happen, will be blamed largely on this I think, and it makes me wonder why we place so much importance on having something someone else does not, particularly in a virtual setting in which real skill is very hard to determine.

I raided Sunwell when it was super hard, when you needed to chain drums of battle constantly, when you needed to pop haste potions on cool down for every progression fight. When Felmyst was a fucking PITA. I can tell you that it was challenging, it was fun, and when it all clicked for your raid and the boss went down, it was awesome, but the hours upon hours I sacrificed for this, I can never get back and I goddamn well know I could have spent them doing something more productive.

Furthermore I would argue that skill in a PvE setting is largely a matter of practice and having basic reflexes. Being a competent high level Arena player requires FAR MORE skill and twitch reflexes, and so the purple pixels largely represent time investment, not gaming skills, but networking skills.

I can't blame Blizzard, their purpose was to hook us, take our time and our money and capture our minds, enslave us in a manner if you will, and in so doing they rake up the cash. Once again I can't blame a business for acting like a business.

And as the game got older, they reduced the time commitment needed to achieve the same goals, such that those goals got less and less rewarding when achieved. And now you can't even get that feeling playing retail WoW anymore.

This has led me to conclude that the time commitment needed for these games to feel rewarding is what will destroy them. Nostalrius recaptures this quite nicely, the game makes more sense this way than it does with the easy as pie retail model, but I fear becoming one of these junkies again, raiding all day, eating when I can, not catching up with friends, letting my life deteriorate for a few fucking pixels is simply something I will never do again.

If you never got to experience Vanilla or TBC and only joined in WOTLK and onwards, I strongly suggest you try Nostalrius, and if you want to relive the past, you can play around as well, but if you're a casual gamer, I would stay away, you'll only end up frustrating yourself with this one.

My full and FINAL review of Diablo 3

Seriously though, this time, it's for real. I am going to review this game one last time in a somewhat lengthy detailed analysis and then I am going to stop talking about it on my Blog for the sake of sanity.

But before I get to the game itself, I want to talk about cycles and how they apply to all sorts of aspects of life.

For example, there have been countless studies done on Empires, how they start, how they grow, how they decay and how they die. Countless examples throughout history suggest that this cycle is largely consistent and that in many cases the same thing happens again and again and again.

The empire cycle can be studied elsewhere with much greater detail than here, but I will gloss over some of their aspects so as to later draw some parallels.

And empire is usually built out of some change, a rebellion, a catalysing event, some major movement. The empire grows and builds great wealth, enters its prime and eventually due to over-stretching its bounds via imperialism and placating its populace through bread and circuses, decays and eventually is overrun by an outside force, and then the cycle continues.

A brief example of this is the American empire, that rebelled from the British empire in the 18th century because the British Government was large and corrupt. The founding fathers rebelled from England, established a small and effective government and experienced the largest growth in wealth any empire has ever recorded in history. America was filled with great workers, great minds and industry kept exploding. Fast forward and the Government is essentially a re-creation of the large bloated corrupt entity it was escaping in the first place. It's tax code is 16000 pages long, it has corrupted its people and is overstretched...you get the point. This empire is experiencing the end of its cycle.

Now lets move back to our topic of discussion, Diablo and more importantly, Blizzard, which itself can be likened to an Empire that has grown big and bloated.

You see, when I play Diablo 3, I feel as though I am engaging in a very beautiful very polished simulation that on the surface, appears to offer me a wide variety of choices and interesting things to do. Imagine you are in a room with clean white walls and a bunch of buttons on a gorgeous central panel made of polished glass. Each button has a very distinctive icon on it, like the pommel of a sword. One of them has the semblance of an elephant on it. You press the button and it sinks into the panel with a satisfying click. Seconds later the walls display an African savannah and you can smell the greenery and the mud around you. You are in the midst of a herd of Elephants! Rumbling through the wilderness, heck the ground in the room is even trembling! After a minute or so, the scenery dissipates and the vibrating stops and you find yourself back in the room. The next button is that of a whale. You press that one and the room is transformed into a section of ocean deep under the surface. You see whales as big as basketball court swimming by.

Then a third button has lions on it. You press that one and...the wall displays a 2d image of a lion and it roars at you then disappears. You think something is wrong so you press the button again only to replay the same dull animation, again and again and again, until you almost go mad. The panel is made of material and craftsmanship so great, it must be VERY expensive. The way they made the floor vibrate and all the amazing effects, why go to all the trouble to make such a quality simulation and leave so much of it unfinished?! It makes no sense!

This is how I feel when I play Diablo 3. A lot of it just doesn't make any sense, at ALL.

Their budget was bigger than any budget. Their team worked on the game for a DECADE.

I played two classes primarily during my experience of this game, a Wizard and a Barbarian. I played from 2.1.1 to 2.1.2 post ROS release. I did not play prior to this, I did not see the RMAH or any of the problems players used to have back in INFERNO or whatever you call it.

My experience as the mage was pretty fun initially. The combat in diablo 3 is TOP quality. The simulation is great, the effects are great, the physics are brilliant, the animations are perfect. Every interaction you see on screen is brilliant. These are well designed SYSTEMS. A SYSTEM is a set of rules that define an interaction. For example, we have a leveling SYSTEM. You gain XP and get to the next level which gives you more stats and opens up new skills.

Design within a system is not just fine tuning math, but making sure as well that some events and experiences happen at regular intervals or happen at all, to ensure the player gets to experience these things. An example of design is for example the careful coding and design of the camera controls in God of War. If you've played God of War, you would know the way in which the camera displays things to you plays a big part in framing the action, in suggesting to you where to go next, and in subtly hinting to you special areas that contain valuable power ups.

Back on topic, what I see in Diablo 3 is a game whose systems are in place, but whose game is not yet designed. To use a metaphor, its like mixing the best ingredients known to man into a dish and half cooking it. You can still sense the quality of the components, but because it has not properly meshed together, you find it somewhat lacking in several respects.

You see, once I hit max level on the Wizard, I began to acquire the best end game set for the Wizard, firebird. Eventually I had a ring of royal grandeur and enough pieces to enjoy the six piece set bonus. Suddenly I found myself doing way more damage than before and was able to clear up to GR 35!! I felt GREAT, I was mastering my class and the style of play, AND I was progressing and learning.

Along the way lots of items were dropping that were interesting for other potential builds, but because there was no set with a super powered six piece bonus to fit those items (that suggested playing a cold Wizard), those choices were severely sub optimal and basically useless. In other words, if you are playing a Wizard and want to progress and enjoy the end game, you are going to play a Firebird Wizard or you are going to have difficulty clearing content and progressing at all.

Further, you need a weapon in this game that has good damage (physical dps) to deal good spell damage, a role playing purist would find this abhorrent to say the least. Back to the loot for another second, you see because the firebird set is top, you have to mostly wear those pieces, and your OFF pieces are mostly going to be those that provide +% to elite damage, because all other mods are worthless compared to this, causing the pool of items you actually want to be very small.

Most of the items that drop are very very generic and do not feel legendary, have basically no flavour at all.

My experience with the barbarian was worse, because while I enjoyed playing the Raekor set, I am an old school player who loves whirlwind. What I would frequently do when an item dropped that was good for whirlwind is I would try the build out, then after 10-15 minutes of seeing my kill speed cut to 1/3, I would go back to using Furious charge and the raekor set.

Essentially, Diablo 3 is unfinished. 3 years later, millions of dollars later, the game is largely unpolished and lacking in actual design outside of the SYSTEMS. The items need to be designed, they are NOT. The builds need to be designed, they are NOT. The end game content needs to be DESIGNED, instead they have automated systems that generate random dungeons.

I decided to do what I used to do in Diablo 2, which is BOSS runs. So in adventure mode I went ahead and killed Diablo and then Malthiel or whatever his name is. They dropped crap loot, I got no bonus experience and the entire experience felt pointless, like I had pressed the lion button but the developers had left an IOU or TODO sign there instead of actual content.

If I had to compare Diablo 3 to a dish of food, it would be sweet and delicious pork ribs that were mishandled during cooking and as such not enough meat was left on the bones, so Im sitting there sucking at these bones for scraps of meat and occasionally getting a nugget in my mouth, but mostly just hoping there was more meat on the bones.

There isn't enough to do, the items are not well designed, build diversity was killed by set bonuses (Which could be solved if they had actually shipped with sets for a wide variety of builds that were all endgame viable, but that did not happen). And the endgame consists of doing the same thing over and over. Why not just let the player go to a particular dungeon or environment they LIKE with a specific set of monsters they LIKE and let them grind for loot there? There is no CHOICE, there is no DESIGN, there are only systems that you must accept, its quite brutal.

The Greater rift system for example is quite stupid in its design. Eventually the monsters deal so much damage that you have to have a tank and CC and dps to clear, in other words solo is impossible beyond a certain point unless you spec a VERY limited and stringent way. The game essentially forces you to play a certain way. While I would love to play whirlwind, not only is the damage far too low, but the survivability sucks. Furious charge continuously stuns all the enemies around you, and without constantly stunning them in greater rifts, you would die over and over VERY quickly.

In other words, the game systems were put in place and no design or attention to detail was put into ensuring the player could try to solve the problem in different ways. There is often only one way to try and overcome the challenge. All that money you guys paid went to shareholders and Bobby Kotick's fat ass. Attention to detail an quality design are not the concern of a multi billion dollar company, they know you will buy their game on reputation alone, so they don't even need to deliver you the good shit anymore.

Funny thing is, the game itself is classical conditioning and it is no different than buying the game. You kill monsters and get upgrades over and over until eventually even if you don't get upgrades, you keep killing the monsters HOPING to get upgrades.

You play blizzard games over and over because theyre good, and eventually, you keep playing and buying them HOPING they're going to be good.

And now we come back full circle to the empire analogy I started with. Blizzard got too big, too bloated, so successful it things it doesn't even need to finish its games anymore before releasing them. The indie developer it once was, with attention to detail and quality has become the very thing it was running from, big corporate and unpolished.

I would wager they are at the end of their cycle as the tier 1 developer. Some barbarian horde is ready and waiting to take their territory.