This is the power of advertising, of creating a brand image and a loyal base of dedicated consumer-fans. If a critical mass is reached it even takes on a life of its own and consumers themselves become more effective advertisers than the sellers of the products. A culture of group think and peer pressure is created where identity and consumption are intimately linked.

I know there have been comments before here defending the practice of advertising, even arguing that it is necessary and indispensable, but personally if it was up to me i would have our future socialist states ban all advertising as it is a dangerous and socially unhealthy form psychological manipulation. There are instances in which it creates literal cult-like behavior.

I paid 90$ for D3 (base game + expansions later), from 2012 to 2023, got thousands of hours from it. There’s really no competition for Diablo 4 beside POE2 (not released yet), POE is not as polished and new, so as long as Diablo 4 base game is solid + there’s certainty in continuing supports then people will pay for it. I haven’t bought D4 though.

Also, we have mobile games + gachas in Asia so it’s more of the industry thing.

Oh boy, D4 is really mild compared to gachas. People spend > $1000 to max a character that gets powercrept next month. The model has been too succesful, every non-indie game is going to integrate it.

The Liberals need advertisements, especially on teh vulnerable children, to indoctrinate the consumerism mentality on the people because the Liberals think that the people cannot make their own financial decision contrary to their democratic slogan. The Liberals also think that wasteful spending will magically boost the economy, but they hide that the economic boost is from increased investment on con-artists to bankrupt countries into huge debt from ‘foreign aids’ and on military coercion to establish genocidal governments in former European colonies so they can violate property rights, loot from Indigenous groups, enslave the local people, and dump all their toxic waste into third world countries to create all the third world problems. They already use the Indian Residential fake Schools to enslave Indigenous children in North America and Australia and stop the abducted Indigenous children from invalidating the fake documents that will transfer all the inheritance of the abducted children to the European immigrants to sustain their wasteful spending although the residential fake schools become less productive beginning in 1980s.

The truly puzzling part is that it’s bad. I played the beta and it was boring as fuck, with incredibly slow and clunky gameplay. Blizzard learned 0 lessons from competitors like POE, or even their own successes in D3. No idea why people are shelling out for this all things considered. But they slurped up Diablo immortal too, so I’m not surprised.

Yes.

Also: there’s a battle pass? I missed that, just got the standard edition. What’s in the battle pass?

Honestly… I had no clue that this sequel was even announced until six days ago when I saw it on a paper cup. I really don’t care. It’s kind of sad how they poured so much goddamn money into its marketing and it’s popular to the point where even Whoopi Goldberg is talking about it. I never would have guessed that she played computer games until I saw news about it when I clicked a link to PC Gamer out of boredom.

Currently replaying Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura. It’s old, cheap, humble, little‐known, and works great on my computer: pretty much everything that Diablo IV isn’t, and I’m perfectly content.

I tried the demo/beta. My session lasted for a total of ten seconds. When I realised that the game was “lagging” even though I was playing completely solo and that there is no option to play offline like a normal human being with bad internet, I had to peace out.

I tried Diablo 2: Resurrected once. It is also always online but cs.rin had a crack so I thought it would be a decent game to just leave and forget on the steam deck and play once in a while. Turns out the game is about 40GB in size. As I did not enjoy the game I had to remove it to save space.

I played through the campaign in alpha or early beta a couple years ago. I don’t know how much they changed but that game was not worth anywhere near $70. I thought the story felt comical like a Mario game (‘ooh geez you just missed the bad guys, they went that way’ over and over until the end) and the world felt very dull. In D3 you got to at least go to different locations like heaven and hell. In this one it’s 95% on earth and you fight the same types of enemies throughout. The legendaries were better than D3 but still feel uninspired. When I got to the end game where it was a bunch of instanced dungeons, I was already so bored I stopped without trying any. Halfway through I already lost my will to play but I just forced myself through to finish it.

I ran into friends online who were playing, and I complained. $70? Cash shop? Battle pass? Ignore everything but the $70. The battle pass and cash shop shit is all cosmetic, so if you’re like me and can’t stomach paying for horse armor… just play the game. One time $70, and if you’re into this kind of game, you can get years of enjoyment. Or at least a few months. What really irked me though was having to install battle.net again, and the month it took to install that fucking client. The game moved faster (once I found the settings to uncap download speeds).

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