Evolution

My beta play has been slowed down by the mind-numbingness that is being asked to chair a search committee at work, and Diablo 3 will probably occupy my attention for a bit.  I'm a Loque'nahak kill from having finished Northern Exposure (Outland rares are being sneakier), and I've made back about 60k of what I spend on Poseidus (and then went and did Haris Pilton's bag achievement, and got a Kirin Tor ring, which was immensely handy).  I may break down and get a Traveler's Tundra Mammoth with account-wide mounts going in, because, let's face it, I can't be an engineer on every toon.  (Mostly due to the ore costs, really.)

So yeah, I've been in tying-up-loose-ends mode in WoW, and D3 isn't going to really change that.  What D3 does have me doing is thinking about the evolution in the complexity in game play in both the Diablo and the WoW worlds.

I mostly played a Rogue in Diablo.  I like playing an archer/ranged class, and you could still learn all the spells if you put enough points into magic.  I put a lot of points into magic.  Fire Wall was my go-to spell for practically everything, and I used Town Portal for extra light.  Yes, extra light.  I had the gamma turned all the way up, and I still needed more light.  The game was pretty simple: you just descend through increasingly lower levels of the dungeon.

Diablo 2, and its expansion, upped both the complexity of the story and the game play: you could enhance items with sockets via gems and runes; each class had unique skill sets and talents (rather than everyone learning the same magic spells); charms could further improve your character; and the game had a distinct storyline that wasn't just "get to the bottom of the dungeon and kill the big demon."  There was some flexibility (I had a stupidly huge amount of fun with a Barbarian dual-wielding throwing knives), and I could get away with things like stacking light radius or Charged Bolt procs on my armor.  (35%+ chance of Charged Bolt proc was a delicious, wonderful thing.)  I played several of the classes (Amazon, Mage, Assassin, Barbarian) that I immediately recognized the influence of when I moved on to WoW down the road.

So now we're looking at Diablo 3, and it's interesting to see just how much the evolution of WoW is influencing it in the same way D2 influenced the classes in WoW.  You can glyph skills to change their utility, and the quests and lore have been much more fleshed out.  The gameplay is a bit more... strategic?  Some skill sets work better for groups, some for single-target, and I've found myself basically trapping and disengaging with my demon hunter to kite bosses or groups around, much in the way I would with my WoW hunter.

Still can't rotate the camera, but I'd imagine that decreases the overall video/data load of the game by having a flat, if animated, canvas to work with.  Going back and forth between D3 and WoW (where I use click to move) is always an adjustment, as well.  (One of these days I'll give in and invert my D3 mouse buttons.)  I had to remap a lot of the default keybindings, as well, since I am a diehard qwasde user for in-combat movement.

Battletags were a nice addition, and through some experimenting with someone who had RealID disabled, but who I'd friended in D3 via battletag, we discovered that you can see someone you have battletag friended in WoW (that they're online, and what server they're on), but you can't see what character they're on, and you can't interact with them via the battletag/RealID communication or party invitation channels.  Also apparently it will tell people when I am in both WoW and D3.  Ahem.

Bottom line: I want Hungering Arrow in WoW. >.>

Surnames

So, yeah. I grew up with an uncommon surname. How uncommon? How Many of Me suggests that there are 115 or fewer people with it in the United States. Geogen suggests fewer than 50 in Germany, where it originated.

Which leads to the pondering. I changed my name when I got married, without really thinking much about it (other than, woohoo, my name will fit in standardized bubble forms now!). My married name (Brent, if you haven't figured that out) is more common than my maiden name, but not terribly common. (It is not, in fact, my husband's family's original name, nor was the name they had before that. A fascinating evolution in self-identity, but not one I was involved in. My great-great-grandfather, on the other hand, got pissed off at relatives and flipped two vowels in the name so that he would somehow no longer be related to them. Similar, I suppose, to how the Donner I am named after was from a family who pronounced it "Dunner" to somehow not be associated with the (reputedly distant cousins) Donners who met with misfortune in the Sierra Nevada.)

Anywho, nine years later, I ran into Blizzard's RealID/real names on their forums brouhaha (having, of course, a World of Warcraft account and occasionally posting on the forums). My name isn't terribly common - you wouldn't have to go through a lot of people with my name to eventually find me. But with my maiden name? You don't need to guess. And then if you know that I have relatives who play, they're not too hard to extrapolate.

So that leads to the thinking... how identifiable does one want to be, online or otherwise? If I'm going to publish, would it have been better to do so under my maiden name, which will be immediately and unmistakably identifiable? On the other hand, is having that buffer of a dozen or so people if someone psychotic tries to look me up more valuable? (And the flip side - which is more likely: publishing something, or having a psychotic stalker?)

*grumble*

*grumble* *grumble*

Stupid talent point changes.

*grumble* *grumble*

Stupid real names on forums thing.

*grumble* *grumble*

(Reduction of talent bloat? Awesome. Making you put 31 points into a tree before getting access to the others? Grr. I want my Hawkeye, Scatter Shot, and fast pet Revive before I want my 31-point Marksman talent, Blizz.)