Filed under: Diablo 3

After years of keyloggers and trojans from unsafe browsing, unsecured computers, or just plain bad luck, WoW players should be pretty used to the concept of a compromised account and how said compromises happen. Unfortunately, Diablo III players don't appear to be as familiar with them, which has resulted in some pretty maddening discourse on the official forums and across the internet.

Just like WoW accounts, Diablo III accounts are worth real money. Blizzard has had experience dealing with compromised accounts for years. This is why it introduced the Battle.net Authenticator, a second level of security that makes it very, very difficult to get your account compromised. Authenticators don't make it impossible to get your account compromised, but they do make compromising your account much more trouble than it's worth in the face of mass keylogging, which is how accounts are normally stolen.

Some people who haven't had a WoW account before but bought Diablo III were undoubtedly surprised when their accounts were compromised, which is understandable. An editor at Eurogamer had his account hacked and responded with an article suggesting that players were getting their sessions hijacked by joining public games and that people were getting compromised with this method even with authenticators attached to their account. Unfortunately, sites all over the internet picked up the story and also reported the session hijacks and bypassed authenticators as fact.

The problem is that neither of those things were correct. In fact, Blizzard says it's actually impossible to do with Diablo III due to the way the infrastructure is set up.

It's been two weeks since Diablo III was released, and if you've got some time to spare, I've got three new transmogrification outfits that might interest you. If you'll recall, two weeks ago we learned how to recreate the witch doctor, barbarian, Leah, and Deckard Cain in WoW. As promised, this week we'll be taking a stab at the monk, demon hunter, and wizard, starting with the wizard.

Making a convincing wizard outfit in WoW is surprisingly easy, provided you keep a few things in mind. First off, you need to be very aware of your character's silhouette. Bulky gloves, spiky helms, and big shoulder armor are essential, and fortunately, they're all in ample supply on Azeroth. Knowing that, you just need to keep an eye on colors. If you look at the sample outfit, you should notice right off the colors don't quite match; the golds are different hues. Let that serve as a lesson on why it's important to leave yourself a lot of options when selecting the right piece for an outfit. Mismatched hues can sometimes break an outfit if it's not balanced right.

Sometimes, you'd like to know that there are other MMOs out there, right? It's not all WoW, all the time! Our sister site Massively can provide you with everything you need to know about all of the other MMOs around -- past, present and future.

	Five top tips for your first few days of Diablo III Most of us are hip-deep in Diablo III already, but if you're one of the holdouts waiting for a rainy day to get started with the game, you might want to store these tips somewhere precious.
	ArenaNet: Guild Wars 2 a 'reaction' to sluggish MMO design Do you believe that the MMO genre has been stuck in a rut over the past few years? So does Christopher Lye, the global brand director for ArenaNet, who publicly denounced the post-World of Warcraft trend in the industry as stagnant.
	DCUO's Last Laugh features Hamill as the Joker Sony Online Entertainment is bringing out the big guns for its next DC Universe Online content patch. The Joker is set to return for The Last Laugh, and fortunately for everyone, his voiceover duties will be handled by none other than Mark Hamill.
	EVE talks smack about Diablo III's login woes EVE Online is letting the trash-talk fly at the newly launched Diablo III by displaying the message "37...3007...315300." It's code for "Play EVE. Servers are up, login is fine" on the game's login screen. This, of course, is making reference to the myriad error codes that Diablo III players experienced over the course of the game's launch.
	Massively's week in review Don't let WoW Insider do all of the talking when it comes to Massively's best content of the week. The Massively staff themselves have picked out what they think is the best content their site has to offer in their own weekly roundup.

Every week, just at the start of the weekend, we catch up with the WoW Insider staff and ask them, "What are you playing this week?" -- otherwise known as: WRUP. Join us to see what we're up to in and out of game, and catch us in the comments to let us know what you're playing, too!

Diablo III, man. Diablo III.

Diablo III Diablo III Diablo III Diablo III, Diablo III. Diablo 3? No, no, no: Diablo III.

So, Diablo III -- What aRe yoU Playing? This week's Diablo III: What's your preferred Diablo III class?

Bashiok took some time off from being a Diablo III miniboss to hit the forums and provide some insight into recent issues with the servers. (And by "recent issues," I mean "more popular than free drugs in a crackhouse.") The sheer number of players trying to stay logged in has kept Blizzard working overtime to try to keep the servers stable. These problems have largely been ironed out, but we'll see continued maintenance in each region to make sure that stays the case. The North American servers had one such maintenance period for an hour this morning at 5:00 am PST/8:00 am EST, so it probably won't be too long when it does happen.

Two additional points of interest (you'll find the full post past the cut):

• The launch of the Real-Money Auction House on May 22 has been postponed.
• They're looking for potential fixes for early achievements that either weren't being recorded or were being lost between logins.

And Blizzard -- this is just throwing suggestions out here or whatever -- did you ever try making a game that sucked?

In honor of the release of Diablo III earlier this week, I've decided to dedicate my next two transmogrification articles to recreating the cast of the game. We'll start with the barbarian first -- but before we dive in, I have to tell you a quick story.

I used to know a mage who wore an enchanted Chef's Hat during raids. The first day he wore it to raid, someone asked him to take it off, but he wouldn't; it was his new favorite hat and he intended to wear it. This annoyed several people in the raid, who repeatedly told him to take the hat off, so the mage told them this: "When someone does more damage than me, I will put my other helm back on."

That day never came, so the hat stayed until he got bored of it.

I mention this story because you'd think with all the plate bikinis and mail hot pants in WoW, the task of assembling a barbarian's costume for a warrior or paladin would be simple. Alas, loincloths don't seem to be that popular with plate wearers, so you'll either have to put on some pants or convince your raid leader that you don't need pants to do your job.

Method, one of World of Warcraft's top raiding guilds, has decided to take their thirst for world firsts into the world of Diablo. A three-man team from Method scored the world-first Skeleton King kill on Inferno. For those wholly unfamiliar with Diablo, that means they killed the first boss of the game on the most challenging difficulty level available.

A WoW raiding team moving into competitive Diablo is something we found surprising. Dedicated gaming is in the blood of these players, so maybe it really shouldn't be surprising.

What we're really curious to see is how many hardcore WoW raiding teams will jump on the Blizzard All-Stars bandwagon when that game launches, too. Will Blizzard All-Stars support that sort of competition when it launches? Will we see a real e-sports scene grow from it, like League of Legends currently supports? And if so, will the World of Warcraft community latch onto that, or will it be an entirely new audience?

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I've been waiting a looong time for Diablo III -- over a decade, in fact. Blizzard announced the game in 2008. That's four years since the announcement alone! Needless to say, I'm excited.

But I'm also prepared. When I start playing tonight, I'll have a bevy of online resources available to help me out, and I've compiled them for you! Well, for me. But for you, too.

• D3DB is the ZAM Network's answer to Wowhead for Diablo III -- an exhaustive database of items, abilities, bad guys, and more.
• DiabloFans is the Curse Network's answer to MMO-Champion for Diablo III. Lots of datamining, blue posts, and all that jazz.
• The official Diablo III site has the fantastic Game Guide, which has everything from talent calculators to skill videos. Blizzard knocked it out of the park.
• BlizzPlanet will keep you abreast of all the latest Blizzard news, going beyond blue posts.
• ForceStrategy has you covered for Diablo video, which might become pretty necessary once you roll into higher difficulties!
• Our sister site Massively will be covering Diablo III as part of its daily online gaming coverage.

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Evil has returned! 1.2 million WoW players are getting Diablo III for free thanks to the Annual Pass. You can get prepared for the evil with WoW Insider's launch coverage. From the lore of Diablo, to the important blue posts and the basics of Diablo gameplay, we'll get you on the inside track for the return of evil.

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GAME Australia (a large video game retailer) is entering voluntary administration, which is the same as going into bankruptcy in the United States. Included in this fact is that GAME will not be giving Diablo III to all those who preordered it. To add salt to the wound, GAME will also not be offering refunds for Diablo III preorders -- or rather, it will, but only after practically every other person under the sun is paid back, and only then if people specifically file as an unsecured creditor, of sorts.

Essentially, if you live in Australia and you bought Diablo III from GAME, you're screwed. But wait -- Blizzard to the rescue.

In what has to be one of the classiest moves I've seen from a gaming company, Blizzard is offering a solution for those who have gotten the short end of the stick. Those who preordered from GAME can buy the Diablo III digital edition tonight, submit their GAME Australia receipt to Blizzard, and get refunded from Blizzard whatever money they paid for their preorder.

It's rare that anyone gets to report news of a company going out of its way to do something like this, let alone a multinational as huge as Blizzard. Huge kudos to Blizzard. Check out the full post announcing this, along with key dates, after the break.

Since Diablo II was released 12 years ago, it's safe to say that Diablo III will be the first Diablo title many people will have ever played. When we first mentioned that we would be providing some coverage of Blizzard's point-and-click dungeoneering action title, one of the first requests we received was a guide to Diablo basics. How do you play the game? What does it have in common with WoW?

We have you covered.

The core of Diablo gameplay is the mouse click. You do everything from combat to looting to movement with your mouse, and your interactions with your keyboard are extremely minimal overall. On Twitter recently, I noticed many people mentioning they were buying a new mouse specifically to use with Diablo III -- and that's not a bad idea. No, we're not talking a brand new $80 Razer Naga; we're talking some $10 to $15 thing you can pick up off of a department store shelf. You want a mouse that you're not going to mourn when your buttons inevitably give out from the mountain of abuse you're about to unleash upon them. Grab something cheap and disposable so that when it dies, you will consider it a victory -- just another technological corpse for the bone pile.

As we all sit around our Basic Campfires, caught rapt by breathless anticipation, let's take a moment and celebrate the upcoming release of Diablo III with a funny machinima.

Olibith created the Gigolo Witch Test using the the first custom machinima tool made for the game. While that might not sound like a big deal, that makes this Gigolo Witch Test the first full-blown, tooled machinima for Diablo III. (That's why we featured it on WoW Moviewatch back in the day.)

So here's hoping we won't be so sad and lonely for much longer, and we all get to enjoy the silky-smooth launch of Diablo III.

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Evil has returned! 1.2 million WoW players are getting Diablo 3 for free thanks to the Annual Pass. You can get prepared for the evil with WoW Insider's launch coverage. From the lore of Diablo, to the important blue posts and the basics of Diablo gameplay, we'll get you on the inside track for the return of evil.

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As Diablo 3 installers start running today (even though you can install the game, you can't play until midnight PST), a host of issues have cropped up. Most of these can be solved by commonsense troubleshooting techniques, but some others are a bit more evil.

We'll keep this post updated throughout the next couple of days with the latest problems and info on how to fix them. We'll also include non-Blizzard sources when appropriate (but in general, Blizzard is pretty on top of all these).

• ATI 1.24 Catalyst graphics issue
• Compatibility mode
• Digital download yet "Disc Ejected" error
• Error 108
• New downloaders required for EU English and German
• Nothing happens when running the installer
• Overlay programs crash Diablo 3
• Removing beta files
• Tome error
• Unexpected decryption error

For more information on basic troubleshooting of the installation, check out Blizzard's thread with tips on what you can do with your computer to fix most issues.

This special edition of Know Your Lore presents an overview of the lore of the Diablo games and their setting, the world of Sanctuary. Each week, Matthew Rossi and Anne Stickney make sure you Know Your Lore by covering the history of the story behind World of Warcraft. Enjoy this week's diversion into the world of Diablo III.

The Diablo games are very different from anything in the Warcraft setting, a far more black-and-white morality played out in endless cosmic war between absolute forces of order and righteousness opposing evil and chaos. This war, the Great or Eternal Conflict, is so massive in scale and scope that it can almost be said to be endless. The war predates the world of Sanctuary, the realm where mortal men and women are born and live out their lives. Indeed, Sanctuary itself was created by a rogue angel and his demonic lover and ally as a place to find an end to the war.

But before the conflict, before the universe itself existed, there was only Anu. Anu existed as a pearl, a central point which contained all evil and all good, all possibilities and all dualities contained within its mirrored surface. Yet Anu felt imperfect in its duality and sought purity in the rejection of its negative aspects, casting them aside to become a being of glittering diamond -- a perfected warrior. Yet what Anu rejected, his cast-off impurities themselves became perfection of a dark bent, forming the monstrous Tathamet. This seven-headed dragon declared war on the glittering Anu, who in turn sought to destroy that which he had cast out of himself.

At the end of days, the first sign shall appear in the heavens. Justice shall fall upon the world of men.

At midnight tonight, Diablo III launches in North America. Other regions aren't far behind (or ahead, as the case may be). The number of World of Warcraft players who will be playing Diablo tonight is astronomical; more than one million Annual Pass subscribers will be receiving the game, and countless more will be purchasing Diablo III on its own simply because it's a good game.

The Real ID and BattleTag systems have brought these games' audiences closer together than they have ever been. With all of that in mind, we here at WoW Insider feel that we would be doing our readers a disservice if we didn't provide content that will help all of you ease yourselves into your brand new game. For the next two days, you're going to see a number of Diablo-related articles and guides here on our site mixed in with our usual WoW stuff. In the long term, we plan to continue to cover major general Blizzard news from all of its games as we've always done (see our recent Blizzard All-Stars news), and the next 48 hours or so will be a little bit heavier on it than you may be used to seeing. We hope that you'll enjoy what we have to offer.

However, if you're the sort of person who has absolutely no interest in Diablo, if the mere mention of the game makes you sick to your stomach and you don't want to see anything on our site but World of Warcraft, we have a solution for you. For the next two days, all of our World of Warcraft content will be tagged "not-diablo." To filter out all of our Diablo content, just go to this link here for the next couple of days for content that's 100% Diablo-free. Treat that as our front page for awhile. Come Wednesday, though, make sure to come back to our real front page -- we won't use that tag forever, just during this Diablo blitz.

If you have any feedback on our Diablo III coverage throughout the day, please feel free to email me your thoughts at alex@wowinsider.com. Did you like what you saw? Is there something we could have done better? I won't be able to respond to everyone, but I assure you that every email sent will be read.

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Evil has returned! 1.2 million WoW players are getting Diablo III for free thanks to the Annual Pass. You can get prepared for the evil with WoW Insider's launch coverage. From the lore of Diablo, to the important blue posts and the basics of Diablo gameplay, we'll get you on the inside track for the return of evil.

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