So after having been a proud and Monster Manual carrying member of the HS geeks, running a Commodore 64 (Kilobytes that is) (300 baud MODEM, Compuserve and 5.25″ disk drive) and “Bard’s Tale” in 1987 and then part of the MMORPG thang with MUDs in 1993 text only but with a computer far far away…and then in 1999/2000 getting into Diablo and Diablo II…suffice to say I like to game…
Video consoles were never my thing…sure I conquered SuperMario on NES…a rite of passage and a must for any true geek, however it wasn’t MY NES…it was a pals…I wanted a laptop…and so in 1999 somehow I managed to get a hold of a Mac “Wallstreet” black as death 300 MHz powerbook, I think 64MB of ram, and a DSL connection…stereo audio connected to my (still owned) Altec Lansing speakers and subwoofer and I played the shit out of that MF! Me and some pals would hook up, I on the Mac was always the slowest of the gang…and the most eager to steal the little goodies that dropped from the challenges my pals would kill…and it was a lot of fun…but I soon realized that I was spending like a work week a month playing that game…and as fun as it was…I had a girlfriend, the 2000 presidential election debacle and fast and agile sperm to deal with…needless to say things changed.
Blast forward to 2007, I’m working for a top flight non-profit helping to design a game scenario for tweens…when the original Warcraft came out, and down to a reasonable price, (while still single I had paid $54.99 for the original Diablo II) I gave it a try…but competitive online strategy that isn’t hack and slash but rather turn based seemed tedious…so I left it alone…my friends kept at it…and I lost at least one of them to Blizzard…never to return…
Then I started seeing the numbers on the revamp…2 million, 3 million and then Blizzard was getting how much for the box and $12 a month in subscription fees? Fuuuuhck…that’s a lot of dough…they must be on to something…so when standing in my local Best Buy, just looking…I saw the Blizzard World of Warcraft $1.99 demo CD…so I mustered up the $1.99 and signed on for 14 days…that was it…I was hooked…the game is awesome…3D version of Diablo II…basically the same game, better graphics…but w/more to see and faster procs blah blah…easy game play…logical problem solving…all the hallmarks of Blizzard…except for the damn subscription fee…which I still refuse to pay…so having no suitable hacks…I picked up my beloved Diablo II discs…to see if anyone still played?
Sure as shit…33,000 people on Blizzard’s Battle.net servers…I guess I’m not alone in my not wanting to pay for what amounts to the same game…quick reward and advancement, the enlightened communalism of working with total unknowns toward a shared progressive goal using solid, fun software. Pretty cool…got my fix…all of which is preamble to what could be an amazing or damning merger…one would hope that these two companies will be able to produce top flight console and MMORPGs with now better economies of scale and increasingly higher quality…all I know is that I hope they don’t shut down the Diablo II Battle.net severs anytime soon…my level 9 Paladin needs to stretch his legs! For at least another work week anyway… 
