Thorun

Is this clown really posting propaganda from cuttingedge.org, really? That article on plasma stealth was a hoax. Yes it is a theoretical concept that is being explored by Russia, as well as several ongoing DARPA projects in the US on it. The issue though is that plasma is essentially superheated gas. Using such a system turns the plane into pretty much an infrared beacon in the sky. You have the added issues of increased fuel costs, and requiring an absolutely enormous amount of energy to sustain any sort of plasma stealth implementation. You'd need a sizable nuclear reactor on board the aircraft to be able to reliably use it. It wasn't a 40 minute response time, simply because it didn't happen. The only way the response time would be that long would be if they didn't want to risk an international incident, though even then they'd still have an interceptor in the sky long before that, just as an escort. So seriously, stop with all the useless propaganda and garbage information. Yes, Russia does have some pretty solid technology. They've stolen tech from the US, while the US in turn has also stolen tech from Russia, it's an ongoing cycle. The issue that Russia had was that they tried to make the best equipment possible with the money that they had in WW2, but ultimately didn't have enough to go around. You had people making some of the best rockets in the world, that were forced to wrap their feet in cloth to keep their toes. Your country's economy was so completely pitiful purely because of that single-minded focus on the military, with all the corruption bogging everything down, that the only things going for your country were the olympics and the military, nothing else. Oh, and for the record, the only advantage Russia has militarily over the US is the Spetsnaz, they're arguably tougher than the various special forces branches that the US has.

I'm not entirely pleased about the online only thing, as I do get a lot of service interruptions in my suburban community in Massachusetts, mostly because the lines they're using are 15 years old and just in terrible condition. But anyway, there are some fairly valid reasons why D3 should be online only. First of all, take a look at Diablo 2. Anyone who played the game probably heard about d2jsp, mousepad, c3p0, etc. The reason all of those programs were able to work was because of the sheer amount of work that was done client-side. Random maps were generated by the client, so all the information was there for maphacks to extract and display everything. Since all the map stuff was client-side, d2jsp and other bots were able to work by interacting with waypoints that were created in the client-side data when the map was formed. If the maps are generated server-side, the server load isn't significant as they're basically just text documents that hold all the information, even if there are a lot of them. Storing that information, the random map generator, and other stuff server-side basically breaks most implementations of hacks and bots, while also allowing Blizzard to actively monitor such programs, rather than them being practiced and perfected offline before being implemented online. If they did want to have an offline available singleplayer, it would take a massive code overhaul for that singleplayer game, as all the drops, map generation, and everything else would have to be handled client side. Maybe in a future patch they will have it as an option, with a slightly different version of each mechanic so that offline play isn't just a testing ground for improving bots. Whether they think an offline singleplayer is worth the time needed to implement new code though, remains to be seen.

Personally I think I'll be playing around with the barbarian or monk first, both seem pretty appealing to me. A lot of people are definitely pissed about the real money auction house (RMAH). I personally don't mind it, as long as a couple things happen. First, Blizzard needs to take an extremely aggressive stance on botting and account hacking, to stop it before it gets too far and prevent it from happening in the first place. Second, there have to be some really solid gold sinks implemented in game for the gold auction house to even be remotely competitive to the RMAH and to make gold still desirable. If gold is barely worth anything, real money becomes the official currency of the market. I'd guess that Blizzard will push for a very late 2011 release if possible, even if it is just to prove Max wrong. I disagree somewhat with Max Schaeffer's assessment though, they really won't be spending that much time analyzing beta results and feedback, since the entire point of the D3 beta is for stress testing, and not for bug-testing as only the first act is available. As for that whole zerg argument, zerg is actually in a pretty good spot right now. Idra says zerg sucks and that protoss is OP every time he loses, but that's just who he is. Smart use of infestors is absolutely key for crushing any opponent, with an eventual transition into broodlords and corruptors with that infestor support and a roach cushion to help protect the broodlords. Smart use of fungal growth and neural parasite absolutely dominate terran opponents. For protoss, getting those fungal growths off on the stalker group is vital so they can't blink under your broodlords to focus down a kill.