Month: June 2024

Enlarge / Do you have a few hundred hours to hear the good news about our lord and savior, Diablo? (credit: Blizzard)

Longtime fans of Diablo II are deeply familiar with the extreme timesink that is the late-game grind for the very best loot. But when the creators of Diablo IV tried to re-create that style of grinding for the latest game in the series, they found that their players' tastes had changed quite a bit in the intervening years.

In a wide-ranging interview with Windows Central, Blizzard's general manager of Diablo, Rod Fergusson, said that they launched Diablo IV under "the assumption that D4 was meant to be more D2-like." That meant, in part, increasing the length of time required to discover the game's most valuable items after post-Auction-House Diablo 3 made rare item drops much more common.

"One of the assumptions was that people were going to be okay with the long grind for the Unique or an Uber Unique in particular, because in Diablo II, it can go years," Fergusson said. "You can go three years before you find the Uber you're looking for... and so we were like, okay, this is what people love about the progression of D2, that idea of that very long chase."

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images)

We're heading into summer, a time when some people get a few half or whole days off from work. These can't all be vacations, and there's only so much shopping, golfing, or streaming one can do. A few of these times off are even unexpected, such that people with kids might even have some rare time to themselves.

I have a suggestion for some part of one of these days: Declare a Tech Guilt Absolution Day. Sit down, gather up the little computer and phone stuff you love that more people should know about, or free things totally worth a few bucks, and blitz through ratings, reviews, and donations.

Note that I am using the term "guilt," not "shame." I do not believe any modern human should feel bad about themselves for all the things they have failed to like, rate, and subscribe to. The modern ecosystems of useful little applications, games, podcasts, YouTube videos, newsletters, and the like demand far more secondary engagement than anyone can manage. Even if you purchase something or subscribe, the creators you appreciate, swimming upstream in the torrential rapids of the attention economy, can always use some attention. So I suggest we triage as best we can.