It's time for Shattered Soul Stone, featuring the latest news from Sanctuary and beyond. Each episode, a heroic party of Neum Band together to help keep you informed on everything in the Diablo universe. And now your Diablo Community podcast. Coming to you from somewhere in sanctuary. This is episode 4 0 2 of Shattered Soul Stone, your Diablo Community podcast. This episode is called D four Early Access Beta. It is March 17th, 2023. And this is Jen.
I've got some stuff to talk about in here and I'm just gonna get rolling, uh, so that I can play again later. I did get in, I'll talk about that in a bit. There's a tweet from Phil Spencer of Xbox, and he wrote this on Twitter, Microsoft and Uuss at Uuss with two Ks is their actual at a leading cloud gaming provider, have signed a 10 year partnership to stream Xbox PC games, as well as Activision Blizzard titles. After the acquisition closes, our commitment is to give more players more choice.
So there's where we're starting and then we have Tus KK who quote tweeted Phil Spencer's thing I just read, and they wrote, we're honored to establish a 10 year partnership with Microsoft for players to stream Xbox PC games and Activision Blizzard titles pending the acquisition. This collaboration enhances our library with high profile game ips. It also expands our library size to over 1000 titles.
They continue with a significant milestone for tus, keeping up our mission of bringing quality games to more platforms and players in more countries with our accessible game streaming solution. They are a cloud gaming enabler. It says over here, that's their description or a part of their description. So that's kind of neat. So, um, I guess Xbox is, you know, reaching out to as many gaming companies as possible to, you know, hopefully get the merger to go through. And then we have Brad Smith,
who quoted Phil Spencer. Uh, Brad Smith is the vice chair and president of Microsoft, and he wrote this on Twitter just another day of ensuring access to more games for more people everywhere, including Call of Duty once the Activision acquisition is complete. So that sounds all happy and working and, and whatever.
There's an article here from Polygon, which is written on March 14th by Ali Welsh and it's title, it's an opinion piece, it's labeled an opinion piece, and it says the Microsoft Activision Circus needs to be over and done with Microsoft. And Sony's squabbling over Call of Duty is an embarrassment. I'm gonna read you a little bit of this.
Activision Blizzard's outspoken chief communications officer Lulu Chang, er decided last week that it was time for the gloves to come off in the Battle of Words with Sony over Microsoft's proposed acquisition of her employer as if the gloves had ever been on in the first place on Twitter, she quoted PlayStation Chief Jim Ryan directly is saying, quote,
I don't want a new Call of Duty deal. I just want to block your merger. Er. And Ryan spoke these words on February 21st at the date of a meeting between the interested parties in the deal and the EU antitrust regulator. This was both shocking and not shocking at all, or not at all shocking. It was shocking that ER was willing to quote Ryan in this way, not the norm between business executives involved in a negotiation.
And it was shocking that if he was indeed quoted accurately, Ryan was willing to state his company's position. So Baldly Missouri is hardly a reliable witness as a senior Activision executive. She presumably has a large personal financial interest in the deal going through. She is also very much a post-Trump communicator, unafraid to look like a bad guy, and willed tweets like deadly weapons in the name of quote honesty,
says this opinion piece. As such, she is a useful attack dog for Microsoft, which can maintain the air of gentlemanly large s as it has attempted to project through its wrangles with Sony and regulators and leave it to her to go places. It would never dare itself. And here is the not shocking part. The words of Missouri put in Ryan's mouth are nothing if not an accurate description of Sony's stance.
A deal to protect Call of Duty's Place on PlayStation is on the table from Microsoft and it's apparently good enough for Nintendo and Nvidia. At no point has Sony shown any interest in negotiating to extract further concessions. It just wants to use its leverage with regulators to stop a deal that will greatly strengthen its competitor exclusives or no exclusives. It will fight tooth and nail to take its rival's legs out and cost them money.
As any business in its position might, it would be naive to think that Microsoft wouldn't do the same. This is all broadly fair enough by the rules of the game. That's capitalism exclamation point. The trouble is that the regulators, the European Commission, the UK's competition and Markets Authority and the US Federal Trade Commission have allowed their own political interest to drag them. Sony, Microsoft, and Activision Blizzard into an unseen spectacle that is only doing reputational
damage to all involved. That is wa wasting vast amounts of time and money. And that is actively harmful to the game industry that it is supposed to be protecting. The political climates in the us, UK and EU are generally aligned on a need to curb the enormous power of the tech giants, Google, Amazon, apple Meta, and Microsoft. This is hard to disagree with. There's understandable regret that deals such as Meta's. Then Facebook's acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp were allowed to go
through. So Microsoft has a target on its back and the enormous 68.7 billion price tag it put on Activision Blizzard has inevitably drawn the regulator's attention. But the case that this deal will greatly reduce competition and gaming is a weak one and relies on a very narrow conception of the global game industry.
As powerful as Call of Duty, Warcraft and Candy Crush are there is no world in which acquiring them makes Microsoft any kind of monopolistic threat in an industry where Titans like Epic Games, Tencent and Sony itself can reach the top of the revenue charts using completely different strategies in different arenas. Parentheses now, if Microsoft had moved to buy Epic makers of the dominant game engine, unreal, as well as one of the most popular games Fortnite,
that might have been a deal worth examining. End of parentheses, regulators didn't understand this though, so they have allowed themselves to be unduly swayed by Sony's arguments about Call of Duties influence in the console market, which are at best a distraction from more valid concerns like Microsoft's early lead and subscriptions and cloud gaming. It goes on from there if you'd like to hear the rest of it, but that's a pretty good start. It's a very long opinion piece.
It's probably got more to say, but that's all I'm gonna add for right now in this show. The Verge posted this little tiny thing on its website on March 14 written by Tom Warren, and it says this Microsoft Signs third Call of Duty deal. Microsoft has signed a 10-year deal with Booster Roy to bring Xbox PC games and Activision Blizzard titles like Call of Duty to the Cloud Gaming Service.
The deal rests on Microsoft's proposed Activision acquisition being approved by regulators and comes weeks after Microsoft struck similar deals with Nvidia and Nintendo. Microsoft President Brad Smith says more deals will follow in the coming weeks. And there's a link to the entire story about Booster Roy, which they did do a deal with. IGN says Microsoft is signing deals to bring Activision games to even more services.
And it's talking about the tweet from Phil Spencer and the, there's a little bit in here that wasn't mentioned before. Microsoft corporate VP Sarah Bond added to giving customers more choice is core to what we do. Thrilled to partner with utas to give gamers yet another option for how they play Xbox PC games. And uh, yeah, utas is known for working with many publishers on cloud versions of games for Nintendo Switch, including the Forgotten City Control,
a Plague Tale Requiem and Resident Evil Village. Earlier this week, Microsoft announced that it's signed a 10 year deal with Booster Roy, a cloud gaming service based in Ukraine in order to bring Xbox and PC games to more streaming providers. This would include Activision Blizzard games if it's merger with Microsoft. Goes through on the 16th, the Verge wrote Microsoft isn't happy with the UK regulator's math on its Activision Blizzard deal. This is from the 16th of March.
So yesterday as I'm recording this, it's a crucial time for Microsoft's proposed acquisition of Activision Blizzard and it's getting messy with regulators. Here's a little bit from this article from the Verge. Microsoft's proposed Activision Blizzard acquisition is at the messy stage after recruiting Nvidia Nintendo and two other cloud gaming companies to help convince regulators to approve its 68.7 billion deal.
Microsoft is now criticizing the UK's competition and market authorities CMAs math calculations. The CMA published a financial model that calculated Microsoft could turn a profit by withholding Call of duty from PlayStation to draw former Sony fans to Xbox basing its calculations on profits and losses from Xbox hardware subscriptions and games. Over a period of five years, Microsoft argues that the CMAs financial modeling is flawed.
The CMAs model compares gains on a five year basis to losses on just a one year basis. And Microsoft says this quote massively skews the results and quote in its response to the cma, there's a PDF attached to this article if you want to go dig that up.
It's a link. Here's a piece from it, quote, unfortunately, there are clear errors in the figures being used to value the small number of Sony customers who might move to Xbox in the absence of Call of Duty parenthesis, c o d quote says, Rema Allali, corporate Vice President and Deputy General Counsel for Microsoft in a statement to the Verge quote, as we've always said, any realistic modeling of the true cost of removing C O D from PlayStation
players clearly demonstrates that there is absolutely no financial incentive for us to do so, which is why we have repeatedly said we won't. Our actions demonstrate that we want to bring more games to more people,
not less. Sony has also filed its own response to the cma, once again, reiterating its fears that Microsoft could strategically or incidentally degrade the quality and performance of Call of Duty on PlayStation, withhold Call of Duty from PlayStation consoles, or raise the price of Call of Duty. Sony also argues that Microsoft's promises of Call of Duty remain remaining on PlayStation, don't match the company's behavior with its Bethesda acquisition.
Here's a quote from them. Quote, it is about the impact of Microsoft making New Call of Duty releases, which are launched every year, exclusive as it has done for the new releases of Starfield and to Elder Scrolls following the acquisition of zenax in 2020. One says Sony in its C M A filing and there is a link to that in this article too. These Rele releases were announced in 2018 and were not expected at that time to be Xbox exclusives.
It was only after acquiring Xenex that Microsoft's Phil Spencer revealed that along all along the deal had been about delivering great exclusive games for Xbox. While Starfield is an Xbox and PC exclusive launching later this year, Microsoft has not yet confirmed its plans for the future of the Elder Scrolls franchise. Sony also responds to Microsoft's comparisons between Call of Duty and Minecraft, where Xbox Maker regularly makes the point.
It hasn't removed Minecraft from rival platforms after it purchased Mojang for 2.5 billion in 2014. Quote, Minecraft is a single release game that is already in user's hands. Unlike Call of Duty, there are no future releases of Minecraft, says Sony, the CMA found that Minecraft's monetization model of a one-time fee for lifetime access and updates differs greatly from Call of Duty, which has a new edition every year that players have to pay for.
And it goes on from there if you're still interested. But this is bickering back and forth between two gigantic companies that just can't seem to get along in my opinion. There's an article from Windows Central and that was posted one day ago, so yesterday, probably the 16th I would think. And it's titled The UK publishes seven responses to the Microsoft Activision Xbox deal. Only one company opposes. This is written by Jez Cordon.
It says the regulatory process continues. So here's from this article, the drama around the Activision Blizzard deal continues with UK regulators, the CMA publishing a raft of responses to its questions over the deal. Microsoft is embroiled in a bitter battle to get 69 billion Activision Blizzard acquisition through, or get its, I missed a word. Uh, regulators worldwide have been approving the deal one by one with notable outliers in the UK and the United States.
As we approach various decision making deadlines, it's ultimately, it ultimately falls to the UK cma, the European Union, and the United States FTC to decide whether or not the deal will go ahead. As you might guess, the primary detractor against the deal has been Sony PlayStation. Sony seeks to preserve the status quo of the $70 retail games while undermining the possibility that Xbox Game Pass or even its own PS Plus
could become a primary way Gamers acquire title access to titles. Still, Sony and Microsoft aren't the only players in the industry by a long shot. To that end, the UK C M A has been reaching out to publishers and studios across the industry to get their responses to the deal ahead of its final decision. It seems that of all the studios asked,
almost all of them approve the deal outright. The only detractor is, you guessed it, Sony one anonymous publisher stated quote, the acquisition will not all of a sudden make Xbox the dominant platform. It's far more likely that it may help to create a level playing field between Xbox and PlayStation, which at this point in time is sorely needed.
Another noted the threat from China with Tencent, which wields an unfair advantage in the gaming industry by preventing Western companies from doing business freely in China, while taking advantage of the more open UK market, quote, Chinese publishers in our industry benefit from an unfair advantage due to the fact the Chinese market is closed to Western companies through various regulations letting Microsoft and Activision consolidate their businesses in
light of this fast-growing competition would not be against the interest of UK consumers. Sodi once again responded with claims that Microsoft may seek to raise prices on Xbox Game Pass or Call of Duty as a result, presenting emotional arguments without evidence.
Sony claimed that Xbox Game passes far ahead of PlayStation Plus in subscribers and that Microsoft may use the popularity of titles added to Xbox Game Pass as a way to raise prices on consumers, despite the fact that Microsoft offered Call of Duty to Sony to include NPSs Plus as well. And it goes on from here, there's a sort of a, a take on it after that, but that's the main idea from this article.
Games Industry Biz wrote an article titled four four J Studios and five others argue Microsoft's bid to Buy Act division. Blizzards should go ahead in the uk, this is written by Christopher Ring. The acquisition may create a more level playing field between Xbox and PlayStation, which is sorely needed. Here's a little bit from this one. The UK regulator, the CMA, has revealed the responses to its provisional findings over Microsoft's plan to 68.7 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard.
The regulator believes the deal would pose a risk to competition and has called on Microsoft to offer remedies to counter its concerns. The regulator prefers structural remedies such as selling off the Call of Duty ip. However, Microsoft has proposed behavioral remedies, specifically offering Call of Duty to multiple platforms over the next 10 years.
Microsoft Sonian, Activision Blizzard's response to the findings have been revealed in full and repeat many of the arguments that the companies have made already. Microsoft insists that the deal will not give it the power to foreclose. PlayStation highlighting the console's popularity and arguing that Call of Duty isn't sufficiently big enough to cause a large enough shift. It repeats its pledge to keep Call of Duty on PlayStation regardless.
It also believes the CMA has made a fundamental and obvious error in its calculations over the deal. So do meanwhile points at ways that Microsoft could honor the proposed contract while undermining Call of Duty on PlayStation platforms. This includes by raising the price of the game, encouraging players to subscribe on Game Pass or lowering the quality of the PlayStation version. See, that's the part I'm gonna jump in here on this one.
That's the part that really kind of mystifies me because Call of Duty is made by Activision, part of Activision Blizzard King, right? So why would Microsoft decide to buy Activision Blizzard King and then say, Hey, all of you coders in there. Could you screw around with the version we're giving to PlayStation, but not all the other companies leave those be? I can't imagine that, first of all, that would be legal. Uh, secondly that the coders involved or whoever makes the code of the game.
I'm not a coder. I'm kind of, you know, making this simplistic for everybody else that doesn't understand it as well. Like me, I don't understand this entirely, but I don't think if you ha, if you were working now for Microsoft and they said, yeah, you know, screw this one up so that they can't really have a good time on PlayStation. Like I think that would be like entering a lawsuit at some point if that was found out.
So I can't imagine that Microsoft is actually actually gonna do something like that, but this appears to be all that PlayStation has in for in, in terms of its arguments, which is confusing as hell. I mean, whatever all these other gaming studios are like, yeah, cool, give us this, we'll, we'll take it, you know, that kind of stuff. And, and here's, you know, 10 years, that sounds great, you know, and here's PlayStation just being a stick in the mud about it.
And it's just weird. It's really weird. It's like this is not an adult way to behave, you know? In any case, um, alongside the three companies at the center of the situation, six third party developers and publishers operating in the UK have also responded to the findings. Each one of the six companies believe the deal should be allowed to proceed for various reasons, ranging from the need to offer more competition to PlayStation, to improving the working conditions of Activisions employees.
And that's really valid because I've talked about this a lot on this show that Activisions employees and, uh, concurrently, you know, sometimes Blizzard employees I would assume, um, get kind of abused or they've been abused by coworkers and nothing happens for decades about it, you know, this sort of thing. So yeah, let's improve the working conditions for that group of people.
I think that would be appropriate. You know, the only company that was comfortable making its name public is four J Studios, which worked on the console versions of Minecraft both before and after the game was acquired by Microsoft in 2014. Here's a quote from them. During the phase of Microsoft ownership of Minecraft, we have never been under any pressure to favor Microsoft owned platforms.
Indeed, we were actively encouraged by Microsoft to develop unique contents such as the Mario Mashup pack for Nintendo Formats, says the studio's boss, Chris Vander, call Microsoft, have also brought significant stability and rigor to our contractual and commercial relationships and have been both fair and professional in all our dealings with them. Goes on from there for a little bit, but you get the idea.
Video Games Chronicle has an article from March 15th titled FTC Lawyers What More Info on Microsoft's 10 year deals with Nintendo and Nvidia. The government body also wants more information on Microsoft's exclusivity plans. So here's from this one, the Federal Trade Commission. FTC wants more information regarding Microsoft's recent agreements with Nintendo and Nvidia, as well as its exclusivity plans for content from both Zemax and
Activision Blizzard. That's according to new documents filed yesterday, of course, this was a couple days ago, which outlined issues the FTC has with some of the information Microsoft has presented to the governing body. Amid Microsoft's proposed Activ acquisition of Activision Blizzard, the FTC has requested that Microsoft produced details of these several arguments, sorry, agreements, that it's recently touted and has alleged that Microsoft intends to use these
deals as a means to justify the acquisition to regulatory bodies. Quote, despite clearly intending to use these agreements in its defense, Microsoft has refused to produce underlying internal documents related to these agreements or communications with third parties other than Nvidia, Nintendo and Sony. It wrote, Microsoft should not be permitted to introduce or rely on these agreements
without producing the requested underlying discovery. On Wednesday, the Xbox owner announced it had signed yet another 10 year ac uh, agreement to stream Xbox PC games, as well as Activision Blizzard titles after the acquisition closes with Japanese gaming company Uuss, this follows a quote binding 10 year legal agreement and quote to bring Call of Duty to Nintendo platforms, which the company's committed to last month, as well as Microsoft's announcement that it plans to plans to,
there's a word missing here, 10 year partnership with Divid to bring its Xbox PC games to GForce. Now Microsoft appears to be using these deals as a linchpin in its messaging, justifying the deal, including claiming that should the 69 billion deal go through Xbox will be able to offer Call of Duty to more than 150 million additional players thanks to offering the games on other platforms. The FTC also seeks all documents related to exclusivity of content.
Microsoft acquired from zenax and exclusivity of content. Microsoft proposes to acquire from Activision Zenax, the parent company of Fallout and Elder Scrolls developer be Bethesda was acquired in 2021 since the purchase titles that were previously at least planned to be multi-platforms such as Starfield will now only appear on Microsoft consoles. And then we have this, this is a brand new company and uh,
there's a pressor here about it. It says, Diablo and World of Warcraft developers revealed new studio features, top industry talent, and new A R P G. Jay Wilson, game director of Diablo three and Lead designer of World of Warcraft Legion and Julian Love senior combat designer on Diablo Mortal and Diablo four are revealing their game development, studio Gas, giant games, Jay Gas Giant Games.
His design director explained his interest in launching the new studio with Julian by saying quote, Julian and I have together and separately delivered some of the best action R P G and strategy games. Strategy systems the game industry has ever seen. I felt we could create new outstanding game experiences if we teamed up, gathered the best developers we know and applied those skills to games and game
genres that we're passionate about. Julian, the company's creative director, added gas giant games starts with a, a core understanding of what players value in the games we make. Then we focus on delivering the, and it has an s with a line in the middle and then a t out of that. So, you know, they didn't wanna write the word, you know what the word is.
Action r PPG and strategy systems are building blocks that can enhance just about any genre of game and the past work of gas giants growing team shows they have the experience to know when, where, and how to use them. Surrounded by the best talent in the industry, Jay and Julian have brought in veterans from massively successful titles, including Kingdom Hearts, company of heroes, Overwatch, dragon Age two, space Marine Cyberpunk 2077, dying Light Gears of War and More.
The team has spent the past two years developing several game concepts to find the game they most want to build. Jay expanded on their progress. Each of our concepts had to pass the test of showing that it would not only be a good experience to build, but a great game to play. We all agreed and we had found the game. We had to make an action RPG with survival elements that we think players of both genres will love. Julian continued a development, or Julian continued with this paragraph.
It's put in one paragraph so it kind of threw me off. But Julian said a development team's time is a precious thing and there's no justification for spending their time on anything other than games they want to make. And man, do we want to make this game based on a new IP developed by Gas Giant Games. The game is being developed for PC and consoles with mobile platforms to be evaluated.
Today's announcement announcement comes in preparation for the studio's presence at the Game Developer's Conference in San Francisco, California on March 20 to 24, during which it will give private demonstrations of the game to interested publishers and investors. Quote, while we're not ready to reveal the full details of our in-Progress project to the whole world just yet, we can say that fans of our past games will be stoked about what's to come.
Said Jay, I can tell you this, our game will deliver insane, visceral, combat, engaging progression systems and a unique survival experience all wrapped into a new and original world that we're sure you will love to explore. And then if you wanna join them, you can. And there's some information on that in this, uh, PDF here or, well, there is a PDF and there's a couple of things on the Blizzard forums here. Um, this one is titled Diablo four Collectors Box giveaway number one,
written and posted by Filthy Rich Community Manager. And uh, this basically from what I'm understanding is uh, if you participate in the Diablo four collector's box giveaway, number one, you agree to be bound by these official rules that are all in here. But, um, basically what this is, the start date is March 13 and the end date is March 14.
So this one's already done, but they had all these rules in here about, you know, how you can enter and 35 winners will be chosen at random by the sponsor, which is Act Division Blizzard, I guess, um, from all eligible participants who submit an entry, uh, you have to, uh, winners will be contacted via Twitter direct message. Your Twitter account must be set to public, not private in order to successfully complete your submission via Twitter. Yeah,
I'm not exactly sure. I think the box is, it's a D four collector's box each with an approximate retail value of $96 and 66 cents. I'm not sure what's in it, but I think it might be, it's either gonna be the one that got sent out to all the streamers a while back that they had those like red hoods that I assume some of them, you know, wore while streaming Diablo for today. Or it could be the one that's in the store, basically the Diablo store.
It could be that which has different things in it. Um, not sure, but they had had one, so if you missed it, uh, I didn't even know it was there. So that's, that's all right. Um, , you know, things happen. There's uh, an article here from ign. It says Diablo four director says no plans for Xbox Game Pass as beta approaches. Activision Blizzard isn't part of Xbox just yet, so it can't go in there.
And I'll read you a little bit of this Activision Blizzard executive Rod Ferguson has confirmed that Diablo four will not launch on Xbox or PC Game Pass and encourages players to try out the early access beta this upcoming weekend quote, it's awesome seeing the excitement around the, around the Diablo four beta and our Wolf Pack puppy. We've been getting some questions about D four on Game Pass and I wanna let you
know we have no plans for that. Ferguson explained on Twitter, see you in sanctuary during the beta early access weekend starting on March 17. While some may have expected the game to launch on Microsoft's subscription, it also makes sense that it won't all of xbox's first party games are put on the service on release day, but Microsoft's merger with Activision Blizzard still hasn't been officially approved in places like the EU as such.
Activision Blizzard isn't part of Xbox first party lineup quite yet. Both Sony and Microsoft are still battling the merger out. We already know that. And it goes on from here. Um, Diablo four s early access beta goes from March 17 through 19 and the open beta goes from March 24 to 26. The game launches on June 6th for PC PS four, PS five, Xbox One and Xbox series x slash S. And uh, yeah, so that's, that's a thing. There's another thing here posted by Filthy Rich Diablo four beta contest prey
to Lilith. Okay, that's what this one is. It's got another thing with all these terms and things. You must agree to the start date. It was, uh, March 16 and the end date was March 17. And there's all this eligibility and whatnot in here from different countries. So this thing is done at this point and how to enter, this is kind of interesting how to enter and win this one. This is what had to do. Eligible participants must make a public post on Twitter.
Which one is a response to a specific post about this promotion from the Diablo Twitter account, and two, contains an original poem or prayer to Lilith. The central antagonist of Diablo four prize recipients will be chosen by sponsor and sponsor Soul de discretion based on the creativity, passion, humorously and or uniqueness demonstrated by the entrance submission. Winning participants will be contacted via Twitter dm, please ensure your dms are open to receiving messages.
Limit one entry per person and there's gonna be 10 winners of that. So whoever got that, I suppose maybe they tweeted about it at this point. I don't know. And there is a thing in a written on March 13 that's been updated on March 13 about your guide to the Diablo for open beta. So I'm gonna talk a little bit about that cuz I did get to play for a while
today. So the open beta started March 17, that's still today at 9:00 AM and it concludes on March 20 at 12:00 PM p d t. The open beta shows up on March 24 at 9:00 AM p d t and concludes at March 27 at 12:00 PM pd d t. Um, so I played it for a while. I made a barbarian, I named her Zeta, which is one of my Diablo three barbarians. I probably still have her somewhere in, somewhere in the game. And I just jumped in and I got in. And you can customize your character.
You get a choice at the beginning if you want to make a male character or a female character with what looks like most of the classes in the game. But I just wanted to play a barbarian, so I picked that one. And you can change their hair color and their skin and tone and their eye color and what kind of jewelry they have and what kind of like painted tattoo type things they have and the face makeup kind of stuff, which goes the full range.
Like you can be, you know, mine had the option of, and whoever else made a barbarian, I guess has the option of having like the dark, uh, colors around their eyes, but they also can do like full glam makeup almost. And I'm like, well, that's a bit much for sanctuary, right? So, um, I did that. I got in, as you may have seen on Twitter, there was an example of a video with a character riding a horse.
And um, one of the developers, Joe, something with an s I think, um, was saying that your character will be that character when you play Diablo for, and of course my briber was riding the horse instead of the one that they showed in that video. Uh, that's kind of neat. I have never seen a Diablo game where you customize your character to whatever you want it to be and then it's right there in, in the, uh, cinematic just right away. I mean, that was pretty cool. I like that.
I have had a little bit of trouble with it, however, because I have fibromyalgia and if I play with a console device for too long, my hands lock up. So I couldn't play in the game as long as I wanted to. And in addition, I have allergies. I've talked about this a thousand times with thought pollen count was ridiculously high today. So I was struggling on a number of levels with that, but I did get to play for a while and then the game crashed. Now,
there was a disclaimer in front of this for those of you that didn't get in. Um, and this is what it said right at the start before you could even make a character. It's, uh, it says this users may experience a cue while logging into Diablo four during early beta or early access beta weekend. Please note the countdown may finish and go beyond the queue times. Do not leave the queue. Do not as in all caps as this will re restart the queue.
We will have more accurate timers in place for the open beta weekend. Okay, so the first queue I was in was 87 minutes long, 87 minutes of waiting in a queue. Hardly touched the game, you know, so, um, I'm like, okay, fine, let's just see what this does. And I watched the countdown go by and it finished to zero, but it didn't actually let me in the game, it didn't,
it just didn't let me in the game. And then it did for a minute or so, maybe two minutes, and I had just enough time to try to, you know, make another character. You can if you want to, uh, just choose from randomized names like you would in like Warcraft or something. So I did that and I tried to get into the game and I was there for like a little tiny bit of time and it knocked me out again.
And this time it was a 120 minute cue and I was not pleased, you know, , it wasn't really that great at that point. And so I'm waiting around, waiting around and you know, it was kind of annoying. But then I did get in again and the game, like I did do, like I said, I picked a, a random name, like yeah, that's fine, great. Go. And there was like, you have a certain number of character slots. So at the bottom of that list was the character that I named Zeta.
And at the top was duplicate copies of the name I randomly picked out before the game crashed on me , you know, so I'll probably have to like delete those or something like that. But it was fun. The thing I'm struggling with the most, other than the game crashing, it's, I mean it's, they warned us it's gonna happen. I'm not upset about that. It's a little annoying, the 87 minute wait time and then 120 minute wait time after
that was not really fun at all. But when I got in, I'm still kind of learning how to use the little, you know, controller and uh, figure out what it does. So I just started, you know, started over basically and did eventually get to play for a pretty long time without getting kicked out of the game. Now why did this cue come up like this?
Well, uh, there's a number of reasons and I'm just speculating here, but one of the reasons is that if you pre-ordered any version of Diablo four, you automatically got into this, um, you know, this early access beta weekend. So I think a lot of people did that to get into this. And also, uh, there was the K ffc promotion that was at least a, uh, allowed in the United States.
I have no idea if any other countries had this going on, but it was a double down chicken sandwich where instead of having a bun, you just have two large chicken, you know, breaded things with like cheese or something in the middle or bacon, I don't know. Um, and if you bought that, uh, then you got access to the, uh, early access beta weekend. And so there were a lot of people, you know, trying to get into the queue and stuff like that. And I presume they're going to learn from this.
The people you know that put this together are probably gonna learn from this so that they can make adjustments for the, the open beta later on, hopefully. Yeah. So I started over with the same character and went through some of the stuff I'd already done. I'm just starting to learn how to manipulate the character to hit things. I am a little unnerved that your weapons as a barbarian
can completely wear out. And then you're like, well, you know, , I mean, I grabbed every weapon I could find and hoped it would like switch off and stuff like that. It kind of did. Uh, as soon as one was broken, it's, uh, I got to level seven, can't remember the name of the town, but I've been going from one to the other.
I'm not gonna give you any spoilers here, but it feels like a solo game until you get to this one particular town and then all of a sudden after you do part of the storyline with the character that you, you're, you will know this one's name when you find this character and you get to travel with that character sort of a little bit. Now, as I was traveling with the character sort of a little bit, we came out of somewhere and Ahead we're a bunch of demons.
So it was the, the Demonn that spawns little demons and they're all red, it's like that, but they look a lot, I guess more realistic or something. I mean, Diablo four was, or Diablo four is brand new. Diablo three has been out for a while. So of course they're gonna iterate, you know, from there. And, and they did and it was stuck like I could move the character I was walking with could not was walking in place behind me, stuck. And all of the demons ahead were just stuck in place.
And at some point there, there are deer in this game that are just out there running around and one of them got stuck within that group and was trying to run away. And I'm like, this is not gonna work, you know? And I don't remember if I, if I logged out and went back in or how I got out of this. And then when I was finally done playing for the day, cause my hands hurt so much, um, I tried to give Blizzard some feedback on, Hey, that looks like a glitch. That looks like it's stuck.
Something happened here. But you know, I, I tried but uh, the game actually kicked me out. I didn't leave the game. It actually kicked me out again and I was like, oh God, I'm gonna be in another queue. How long is this one gonna be? But it just put me back roughly where I was and then I got to fight those things
I think, if I remember correctly. So there's the thing, um, but you don't, from my experience, you don't see any other players in the game until you reach one of the, one of the towns and I can't remember the name of the town. It doesn't really matter right now, but, uh, yeah, um, there's a lot going on in the game. It was fun to play. I'll get used to the Xbox because I'm more used to playing like Diablo three plays on a Mac.
So I've been playing it on a Mac forever and now I have to adjust to something else, which I'll do. I'll get there. I did, you know, I bought, I bought one of the boxes of the game, so that should be good. I wanna get the Wolf puppy. But um, you have to hit 20 and I'm at seven and that's really all I have to say about it at this moment. It's, it's fun, it's a little bit scary at times or a little tense sometimes I feel like I'm getting more, uh, monsters than my barbarian can handle.
For the most part she can, with one exception, there was a, I'm gonna say a dungeon and the dungeon had this very large monster in it who was approximately maybe the size of the butcher in Diablo three maybe bigger and with a much bigger weapon. And he was spawning these like demons at me and there's a bar across the top of the screen showing how much life this giant monster had and how to like you, which button to hit to dodge his attack and all this stuff.
And it took me like four or five tries to actually get that monster down on my own. But I did it and then I felt a little better cuz I was like, I can't pr I can't make any progress here, you know? Um, but I finally did and I'm not sure exactly when, I don't know if like up through level seven maybe your gear is okay, but after a while it stuff happens and I had to find a blacksmith and there wasn't any in the towns that I'd encountered previous to the one I ended up in.
It is fun, I know there's people playing together. Um, I know you can get achievements and stuff because I was watching people who I've connected with on Battle net in the past have the game off in the corner at the bottom, pop up and say this player got this achievement and that sort of thing. I think I've gotten some achievements, I dunno how to, to look at them to see that I have it. Um, and all of this won't matter anymore after the beta ends cuz it just is gonna
disappear. And these characters that you make in this game for this, um, early access beta weekend are not going to go into Diablo four as is. You can make a similar character there, I assume in June. And that's really all I have to say for now. I'm gonna try again if I can later tonight or maybe tomorrow to try and get back in the game and see what else I can discover. And that's gonna be it for now. You have been listening to episode 4 0 2 of the Shattered Soul Stone.
Your Diablo Community podcast. Missed an episode. You can find the show blog and listen to the show archives at www.shatteredsoulstone.com. Come join us in game our in-game community and clan, both named Shattered Soul Stone, are open to anyone who would like to join. You could also join us on Discord for the ultimate team and community-based experience, find the Discord invitation link on our Twitter and Facebook page, as well as the Shattered Soul Stone website. Thank you for listening.