Diablo II Beta Sign-Up Monday

MimEnkode writes "Blizzard has announced the beta test for Diablo II. Only 1,000 beta testers will be picked. You'll be able to sign up here." This is not first-come-first-served; sign up at any time on Monday, and you'll have the same chance as everyone else.

Oh Well.

There goes my only chance at getting into the Beta Test. I figured, as long as Slashdot doesn't find out I might get in. But with only a 1,000 slots, oh well. If you make it in instead of me - please don't email me just to flaunt it.
Joseph Elwell.

Equal Chance?

You have the same chance of getting into the beta no matter when you decide to sign up during the 24 hour period....

...But now since the story was submitted and posted on Slashdot, the actual CHANCES you will get picked have decreased by 800,000%.

Good Luck!

-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?

Re:I'm noticing an interesting trend in beta tests

(umm, you want LESS people to sign-up, duh!)

For those of you that don't know, you must sign a NDA, remove Linux from your HD, and sign up for AOL to even *begin* to be considered for the beta. So it's not worth your while, move along please.

--
ba-bu-ba-ba-baaa, da-da-dum. Re-boot the ser-ver.
ba-bu-ba-ba-baaa, da-da-dum. Re-boot the ser-ver.

Re:Video games are for idiots.

You mean there's people out there using computers who don't even know C!?!

Quick! Get 'em off Linux, that way they'll never learn...

Where exactly do you think the next generation of developers is going to come from? Where do you think real innovation is going to come from? How can a generation possibly learn the real value of the Free Software Movement if you want to demonize them for having a good time? How many of them still dual-boot because Linux gaming sucks?

Thanks to those mindless teenagers I can *use* Linux, (since I have a voodoo3) I thought all you ivory tower folks used BSD (we certainly know you don't like new, fast hardware)

And how exactly is market pressure forcing you to code, I thought it was just a fun thing to do. Like the occasional blast-fest.

--
ba-bu-ba-ba-baaa, da-da-dum. Re-boot the ser-ver.
ba-bu-ba-ba-baaa, da-da-dum. Re-boot the ser-ver.

Re:Video games are for idiots.

I am:

• Obessessed by games like Half-life and Civilization.
• 34 years old.
• Have spent thirteen years developing professional C and C++ code.
• Made my first contribution to a (non-game) open source project two weeks ago.

Rearrange your stereotypes accordingly.

Your Name In Space, Or Somewhere Else...

A copy of StarCraft ended up aboard the shuttle [blizzard.com], orbiting earth 153 times. Now everyone Blizzard thanked for being a beta tester in their manual has had their name in space.

The same might happen with Diablo 2...Or (if StarCraft went to space), is there a more appropriate location to take a copy of Diablo 2 (think double hockey sticks)...

Re:Whats with the hype?

Go back into Torment and replay it. What's that? Everything is the same and its boring?

Replay value kicks a good games ass almost every single time.

Esperandi
Diablo's dungeons and all kinds of crap were randomly generated BTW in case you didn't know... personally I prefer real roguelikes, but Diablo was a good shot.

I'm noticing an interesting trend in beta tests...

From the Diablo 2 beta signup page: "You must have a valid e-mail address" This sounds straight forward, but in reality this statement is a bit deceptive. When most websites with beta tests say this, what they really mean is that you must have a non-anonymous email account. This means that accounts on hotmail, yahoo, rocketmail etc. are not honored. I think for most of the people reading these comments, this will not be a problem. However, I know a lot of people who don't know how to configure their outlook express or whatever client their using to get the pop3 account their local ISP provides. Because of this lack of technical knowledge, many are forced to turn to services like hotmail. I know your all probably pretty tech savvy, but I think that you should still know this before you sign up for this beta, as well as beta tests in general. One solution to this is to get an email account online at a lesser known place. A great example of this is http://www.hushmail.com This will give a free email account with 128 bit encryption (hence the name). Well there are countless other places you can turn if you have this problem, but I just wanted to inform everyone so that you can all have the best chance of making it into the Diablo 2 beta!!!

Only North America

You will have the same chance as everyone else, provided you live in the USA or Canada. The rest of the world will have to wait until the second phase beta.

Re:Video games are for idiots.

I'm going to have to take serious issue with this, even though it's blatant flamebait. As an adolescent, and a game developer, I see a wide variety of things wrong with your post... sounds like you're just trying to attract attention and get yourself moderated down. Here's my rebuttal.

1) The attempt to popularize Free Software has not been an unmitigated disaster. The fact that we do have, as you put it, "ten million adolescent morons" is an indication that we have succeeded. The computer in today's society, at least in the home-desktop market, is rapidly moving towards being a tool for entertainment.

If it wasn't for that "ten million adolescent morons" busy increasing Linux's desktop share up to 4.9% or whatever it is, Linux wouldn't have many of the new and wonderful features that I'm sure that you, as a man who seems to consider Linux totally unsuitable for anything besides hardcore server use and mathematical calculation, simply because not as many companies would have jumped on the band wagon.

2) Not all adolescents are morons. I am sixteen years old, and do know C, as well as C++, Perl, Pascal and x86 ASM. I've worked on and with a wide variety of open source software, from SDL to Mesa, doing everything from ASM hacking to documentation. My best friend, 17, spends his weekends fixing GNOME. And we are both avid gamers, programming as well as playing.

3) The developer pool has increased. Just look at Freshmeat these days... and look at all the people that I'm converting. Just a month ago, I ran into a guy at a bookstore (Chapters) happily reading a book on Graphics Programming with Visual Basic. We started chatting, and I asked him why the hell he was doing graphics programming in Visual Basic. Turns out he was actually writing a game in Excel, since that was all that he could afford. He was completely blown away when I said that if he just switched to Linux, he could enjoy free compilers, free GUIs, free debuggers, free everything. Another
developer, just converted like that.

4) Not just game obsessed morons play games. As a measure of this, I doubt very many adolescent morons would play "Eric's Ultimate Solitare", which recently got a Loki Software port.

5) Linux video drivers are NOT bloated. Mesa and Utah-GLX are extremely tight. You want bloat, go look at DirectX.

In conclusion, may you get your fingers caught in your server while replacing the case, and may they be severed at the joints so that you may never again post this sort of drivel to Slashdot.

(sorry if I seem grumpy, I've had a bad day)

Nicholas