Hard drive autopsy and D3

I finally got throught to technical support for my computer this weekend. I don't really understand how they can say they provide 24/7 assistance and then just not pick up the phone, respond to emails, or have anyone available for their live chat service ever. I seriously called every day, multiple times, at different times of the day, and got put on hold by the automated system for ten minutes at a time only to have the call ended eventually. One time I actually got someone who asked me to hold, so I did...for half an hour before I gave up. Finally I got through yesterday, on Sunday of all days, and while I was still put on hold at first, the tech support guy apologized for putting me on hold, even though it was only for about 2 minutes. I explained the situation to him and he told me he was pretty certain my hard drive was dead. No wonder I couldn't do anything. Windows was copying files to it and then going to use those files to install but the hard drive wasn't actually storing the files, just sitting there dead. Luckily they give a 3 year warranty on hardware, so he said replacing the hard drive would be no problem.

At this point I was all prepared to send the computer in, but he told me it takes a long time for them to repair computers themselves and would be faster to send me a knew hard drive and I could repair it myself. Sounds reasonable, and it should only be about a week before I get the new hard drive, so while it's a minor setback, they do a pretty good job of resolving situations like this and giving you options to do it faster. Now I just hope swapping out a hard drive on a laptop is as simple as on a desktop. I guess from now on I better back up my files onto my external hard drive too.

On to more positive news, DIABLO 3 WAS JUST ANNOUNCED!!! In case you didn't know already, Diablo 2 was pretty much my favorite PC game ever...until WoW came out. Now they are going to release the next one, and it looks awesome. Once again you are slaughtering swarms of enemies at once, which I just love to do, and the fighting system looks to be much more sophisticated, with skills set up more like WoW, just not quite so many. I'm really looking forward to what the classes will be like. They have only announce two so far, but I'm confident they will at least bring the Amazon back, although with a choice between male and female I'm not sure they can use the same name (as Amazons are women only). I'm a little disappointed they will only have five classes to start out, but I can live with that. I know, I know, now that they've announced it we probably won't be getting it for at least another year, but just the fact that it's official gets me excited about it.

I am a little worried about some of the previous flaws I saw in D2, and I'm hoping Blizzard's experience with that, as well as with WoW, will change D3 for the better. One thing I've seen concerns about already is that D3 may use Battle.net like the others did, and in this case it would be free to play online and would invite everyone to play, which we all know consists mainly of idiots. This actually isn't too much of a concern for me because while the Diablo series can be played online, there isn't a lot other players can do to mess with your gameplay like there is in WoW, and you an make private games that only your friends who know the password can join to keep anyone else out. What I would be conerned about is how the item system works, including drops, trading, duping, and everything else that made D2 very problematic for players that just wanted to get good items without dealing with all those cheaters. WoW has implemented many good ways to deal with this with the Auction House, and it's pretty much impossible to mess with the code to give yourself good items or duplicate ones you have when you're on a Blizzard server. I know people will find ways, but it Blizzard implements some harsh rules at the beginning and enforces them like they do with WoW, I think D3 will make it without too many problems.

By the end of the week I hope to have my laptop fixed, my new TV, and I will be checking out all the news on D3 since I can't do it from my work computer. With the holiday coming up and a wedding to go to coming up this weekend (with an open bar) it looks like this week could shape up to be a good one.