zircon

Not sure that really answers my concern, honestly. I'm not disputing that the auction house is nice, but at the rate things are going I can imagine in a month or two that the most powerful items in the game will be available for very, very cheap. That to me would be a shame. With all of Diablo 2's problems, it had a decent enough economy for a LONG time - even with the dupe problems. You had to work pretty hard to get something like a Windforce. Generally, you'd manage to scrounge up a few decent items you could trade for SOJs over the course of all 3 difficulties, then you could trade the SOJs for other items and work your way up from there. It was (and still is, AFAIK) reasonably hard to gear up a character unless you're spending real money. If we had, say, 10 or 20 auction houses, with each account only able to access one at a time, it might mitigate the problem. This also leads into the data I've seen on set + unique items, which evidently are not nearly as good as rares or even blues. There seems to be a bias toward raw damage on weapons, for example, and blues tend to get the most of that. Other modifiers are just not as valuable. In D2, there were a variety of modifiers that were sometimes more important than damage, something I would like to see in D3. If it were up to me (and obviously I will need to play the game a lot more to really confirm that this would be a good idea), I would generally buff unique and set items, and make SOME of them untradeable, ie. bind-on-pickup, but only those you can actually equip. This would make finding them a bit more special as opposed to just going to the AH and buying something for a few thousand gold. Likewise it might provide more meaningful choice. Overall though, I really love this game. It is every bit as addicting as Diablo 2 was, and the stat/skill system is an enormous improvement. Balance in general seems amazing right out of the box. In D2, there were serious and prevalent balance issues for years, with some classes being obviously far better than others unless you had very specific items. For example, WW barb, Bowazon (w/ buriza's/windforce) and orb sorc were all incredibly mindless but very effective compared to, say, martial arts Assassin, melee Paladin, nature Druid, summoning Necro, etc. Though keep in mind that Uber Tristram was added very late into D2's lifespan when the economy was chock full of dupes and easily-accessible high-tier items. They sort of made it with that in mind. Hell difficulty was doable without runewords or anything like that, though you definitely wanted a party, and only certain builds worked.

That's a little bit of an exaggeration Plus they changed things so that rushing is harder, at least as of last time I played. Back in the day, a solid run from level 1 to hell was like 4-5 hours. Then you stayed in the Secret Cow Level and could get to level 70-75 in an afternoon. On a side note, I do worry that the auction house makes the item finding part of the game a little... easy. You can basically type in any stats you want and get a custom-made blue or rare for generally reasonable prices. I haven't been to Inferno yet (and I hear it is indeed very hard) but at least at the lower levels, using the AH is almost always preferable to using items you find yourself. I would be interested in seeing Blizzard split up the auction house into randomly-assigned zones. Your account is tied to a specific zone (there would be a large # of them). Thus you would not be seeing the ridiculous variety and low prices that you see now, something that will probably get way way way 'worse' as time goes on. I do love the concept of the auction house though!

I agree with this. Internet access is so prevalent these days that having everything go through an online server simplifies life immensely. In Diablo 2, you had to have two sets of characters; one for offline, one for online. I think I played the offline mode once. You'd never be able to port between the two due to people hacking the offline characters, so what's the point?

I visited Japan for two weeks in 2011. Some of the things I really appreciated about the gaming culture included: * Much easier to find older games and consoles. I went to a store that was reminiscent of a Best Buy in Shinjuku and they had Super Famicom games new in box. Crazy! And of course, in Akihabara you can find several stores with tons of classic and rare stuff at *REASONABLE* prices. * Arcades are more common and quite well-populated. I had a blast playing various versions of Street Fighter there.

Gario: 1. I'm not customizing the survey for each person, I'm using a 3rd party website that randomizes the question order. So, I can't think of any way I can remove one's own remixes from that list. I guess the only option is to create a custom survey link for literally everyone, and then a generic 'public' survey link... I'll see about that. 2. ANYONE will be allowed to vote. I definitely want to open it up to the general public. Also, I'm thinking the voting period will be two weeks to ensure people have time to sit down and listen to everything. Again, seems like the most fair way. DRUMJ8: Interesting point on whether to make the full rankings public or not. However, if I (a) put them on a separate site/document so you don't HAVE to look at them, and ( remove the point totals from the rankings, that might help mitigate the problem. But also, hey, there's a lot of talent here. If you put in an effort, you should feel proud of that regardless of how you place. When I first got to OCR I made about 12-13 remixes that were absolutely terrible. 4 got rejected, the others I didn't even bother submitting... DDRKirby: 1. Yes, it will take some time to listen to everything, but that's the only fair way! 2. Good point that we don't want the scores to be 'inflated'. I'll point out that giving out 1s, 2s and 3s is fine, as long as you're not doing that for literally everything. GallenWolf: Ultimately, it's impossible to design any kind of numerical scale or score that can perfectly encompass your feelings on a piece of music. The best I can do is suggest criteria to use as you listen. If an entry is enjoyable but has poor production, I would expect that to impact your rating, likewise if it has amazing production but no 'soul'.

We're ready to begin the voting process. Before we ACTUALLY begin, I want to explain the system we'll be using and get any feedback on it in case I'm really missing something. This will be discussed for the next 24 hours or so and NOT LONGER, so if you have something to say, please speak up! General Voting Info: * All tracks will be completely anonymized, though you will be able to see what source tune(s) were used. Why: To remove bias for or against certain ReMixers. * Track order will be randomized for each voter. Why: Again, to remove bias. Inevitably people will pay more attention to the first track they hear than the last one they have to weigh in on. Better to spread it all out. * All voting will be private; only I will be able to see who voted which way. Why: Public voting doesn't have many benefits that I can think of. Feelings can be easily hurt if you see a person voted unfavorably for your mix when you expected different. * The final results will be public. Why: Entrants deserve to know their final placement when all is said and done. * I will release all remixes in a public rar/zip properly tagged AFTER voting completes. Why: As mentioned earlier, I want to avoid bias by people downloading all the tracks and picking favorites before they start voting. I want people to listen as they go along and vote. Voting Process: * I will be providing a link to a SurveyMonkey survey with 33 questions, one for each remix. The question will simply be "On a scale of 1 to 5, how would you rate this remix?" * Voters will be asked to consider the production values, arrangement creativity and overall enjoyment factor of each remix when deciding on their rating. A rating of "1" means that they feel there are major problems with production and arrangement and the mix is quite unenjoyable, while a rating of "5" means they feel the mix is perfect (or near-perfect) and extremely enjoyable. * Voters till be expected to rank every remix after listening. Links to listen to the remixes will be IN the survey itself. You MUST vote on each remix! * Though it's expected that entrants will rate their own remixes highly, you must actually vote considerately and not simply give every other remix a "1". With 33 remixes, I will expect that everyone will find at least a few other remixes they really like. It's possible that you might really enjoy MOST of the mixes, and that is fine. * I will be scrutinizing individual votes to ensure people aren't BSing and just rating a couple of mixes with 5s and the rest 1s. And that's about it. In short, you will privately listen to all 33 entries, anonymized and randomized, and rate them individually from 1-5. This will be your vote. The remixes that get the highest total point score will win.

(x-post from KVR) I didn't design this one, but we're releasing it through Impact Soundworks nonetheless because it's absolutely amazing.

Thank you for all your entries! Here is the final list of remixers, double-check that you're on here: Meccaneer Anti-Syne Gallen Wolf HoboKa J Blom XPRTNovice jnWake Sahasrala88 DDRKirby(ISQ) mellogear Chernabogue Jack Menhorn Rexy, Brandon Strader Sole Signal DrumJ8 Brad Stark DJ T-MayN Cash and Change Brandon Strader Xarnax42 Mikeaudio Radiowar Zas Dosei Gario Jakesnke17 Some people had multiple entries, so in total we had over THIRTY (30) remixes. Wow! It will take me a day or two to set up a good voting system and guidelines.

Rexy Jack Menhorn Chernabogue Jon Delvaux DDRKirby Sahasrala88 jnWake XPRTNovice HoboKa jrokujuushi Gallen Wolf Anti-Syne Meccaneer TRY CCING TO AAVERSA@GMAIL.COM

Probably evening on the 25th or sometime on the 26th.

It's possible!

Depends on the project. If you have some specific examples/scenarios I can help give you some example figures.

Just got game and a battle.net account. zircon#1963

Besides some things that have already been mentioned, I REALLY like the music to Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles. Sarah's theme is just beautiful: Right up there with some of the greatest film themes imo.

Yes, you are free to polish and resub if you want, though I would appreciate if you marked it as such.

FYI I am out of country right now, will be back on the 22nd or so. So far everyone who has checked in with me about subs seems to be on the list of ones I've actually received. The exception is, oddly enough, Chernabogue... I am still not getting his, nor is it even in my spam folder. No idea what's up but yes, please PM it to me! Given the difficulties at least one person has had submitting, and that I won't be back until the 22nd, I'm going to extend the sub deadline to the 24th at 11:59PM EST - a total extension of 72 hours. You can feel free to polish your existing sub(s) if you want, I do apologize for the inconvenience. Once I get home I will look into the email thing.

Yeah, please do... I just don't see that email anywhere.

I did not get it. Can you confirm the exact email you sent it to, date/time, subject?

Add GallenWolf to the list of subs. Remember, you're sending to ff6@zirconmusic.com .

FYI, just confirming, I've only received two submissions so far: * Meccaneer * Anti-syne

I usually play a few matches a day, mostly solo or duo queue ranked with some normals mixed in if friends are on. Right now I'm working on perfecting my mechanics as ranged AD. I'm very disappointed if I get less than 70cs in 10 minutes, and shoot to have the best possible positioning in teamfights. Also have been doing a lot of research into ideal rune/mastery setups.

He didn't (and I didn't) say that we'd actually be including everything, just that everything would be considered - which is true. With the FF7 contest, some tracks/artists who did not place in top 3 were brought on board with the project and even ended up doing more tracks.

I splurged and finally got the 7-page rune page bundle. Makes champion selection much less stressful... I have like 5 ranged AD pages now.

Yes, I meant to say "on render". Omni does rely quite heavily on disk streaming in some cases, and if your computer/laptop/interface is having trouble with that then you will get problems with the sound.

Looking really good. Alien Hominid was pretty plain/boring - this looks to have a lot more depth, being a Metroidvania style thing.