This is the other major bit news out of Blizzcon.

Diablo III is offered free!*

*If you subscribe to World of Warcraft for 12 months.

If you had an active or inactive subscription on the 18th October 2011. New accounts can’t get it. More details on the deal are here.

Beta access to Mists of Pandaria is also part of the deal.

Oh you get a free World of Warcraft in-game mount too : Tyrael’s Charger

I view this as a smart move from Blizzard. It looks generous and it holds up flagging World of Warcraft subscriber numbers.

But it’s not so generous as it might appear.

Blizzard can clawback any ‘losses’ via the long 12-month subscription and the extra pressure get the World of Warcraft Mist of Pandaria expansion, since you’re paying for the subscription anyway. There will also be opportunity for making money from purchases of Diablo III expansions and other merchandise (digital or otherwise). This will also increase Blizzard’s profits made via the real money auction house in Diablo III.

Still it’s a deal which will appeal to many especially those already committed to World of Warcraft.

Blizzcon is on and there’s basically two bits of important news.

The first is the new expansion with a new Chinese styled continent. Now this might be a smart move but from here it all falls apart into a dreadful series of cringes.

The continent is called Pandaria. Oh-kaaaay. To fit the new race, the…. Panderan… and a new class the.. uhm Monk. Groan. Yes this is Kung Fu Panda cloned to hell. One waits to see if there is a commercial agreement or a pile of litigation coming.

There’s a 5 level increase to level 90 and new content including a vanity pet battle system and challenge modes. They want to renew Horde vs Alliance but I rather suspect they will shake it up instead. The expansion is titled Mists of Pandaria and 5 year olds will probably love it.

You’ll be forgiven if you think this video is a joke or hoax at first, I certainly did.

Humble Bundle is on again this time with Humble Frozen Synapse Bundle. More a single game than a bundle but if you decide to pay more than the average (currently $US4.56) you will also get the Humble Frozenbyte Bundle.

If you’re not familiar with Humble Bundle it’s a great value way to get good games, including on Mac and Linux platforms at a price you can decide for yourself.  The games are DRM-free.  It also supports charity.

Update: Trauma has been added to the bundle.  It a title new to my knowledge which seems to be about a young woman’s experiences.

Update 2: SpaceChem has now also been added to the bundle.

I am quite a fan of the Gothic series of role playing games. Or perhaps it should now be called the Risen series, we shall see. Gothic is wonderfully gritty, deep, exploratory and very much encourages actual role play. The Gothic series is very much up in the air at the moment and quite possibly dead. Arcania, dubbed Gothic 4 for marketing purposes, was not a Gothic. It was a barely passable action game. The expertise seems to have moved over to the Risen team so hope is hardly dead, it just has a different name.

I greatly enjoyed Gothic 3, indeed I still enjoy it although I admit it has plenty of flaws and is certainly aging now. With the Community patch 1.74 of course. Without it the rather numerous bugs, which long plagued the series, are quite a pain.

I was looking around the World of Gothic site which is pretty much the go to place for the series and discovered there existed an ‘enchanced’ edition of the disastrous Gothic 3 – Forsaken Gods game. Reviews caned it very badly and for good reason I avoided giving it a go. But what if this enhanced edition lifted it into the good enough level? The enhanced edition is done by the same people who did the Community Patch for regular Gothic 3. That’s quite a good thing and GamersGate had it going cheap last weekend so I grabbed it and gave it a go.

Oh boy.

Haven’t finished. Possibly never will.

Barely started. I will grant the experience was pretty much bug free. I shudder to imagine what the game must have been before the patch. It’s so very sloppy. The voice acting is enough to induce cringes and the attitude of your avatar in conversations makes you wonder if he’s off his meds.

So then I must mull what I have until Risen 2 – Dark Waters and hope to hell it is at least as good as the original Risen. I saw there was an extended mod for Gothic 3. Perhaps that’s worth a go.

Really liking the look of Legend of Grimrock. Having played the old Dungeon Master and Eye of the Beholder series this is pure nostalgia to me but comes with much more polish and beauty. You can see what they have done with it so far:

Basically a fantastic dungeon romp. Out sometime this year they hope on Windows and later on other platforms.

I found an abandoned mine shaft! Expanded my original world past the 1.7 creation zone to spawn fresh new dirt and found one fairly soon. As luck would have it I popped right next to a lava spout and chest. No zombies will get me from that direction. But the chest beckoned so I cut the flow of lava and had a look. A lot of bread and a lonely iron bar. Stairs led up into what really needs to be emphasised as a labyrinth of tunnels and shafts. As one expects the shafts let things fall down. And spiders can climb up too. There’s a lot of nooks and crannies for you and the mobs to get stuck on and hide. That makes exploring pretty risky especially with those spiders. Did I mention the cave spiders?

left of the breakthrough flows antimob glowy stuff

This particular mine shaft is split in two by a modest ravine (for a ravine).

Here and there a bit of light shines through from the few torches that are placed as part of the mine and the lava flows. There’s quite a bit of ore mostly of coal, iron and gold. Broken up lines of rail are also on some of the tunnels. Later, I will reap those resources. Later because the first thing to do is make it a bit safer. More torches can reduce the problem with all the usual spawn-in-the-dark mobs (three creepers very nearly got me) but there were two cave spider generators near each other and possibly more especially on the other side of the ravine. They do spawn those little 1×1 monsters pretty damn quick. The real problem is the poison which means you have to keep well fed and try not to attract another one soon after a bite. I destroyed one of the generators but would like to keep the others for a spawn grinder. Somehow.

many views look much like this...

I wonder if I could find a stronghold now. From what I gather that might take quite some doing or cheating.