When I finally returned into this alternate world, I called for Eberlin, the necromancer who once commanded an army of skeleton warriors and mages. Eberlin, who augmented his troops with the reanimated corpses of fallen enemies. I missed the sights and sounds of exploding corpses, the high pitched whir of a spirit projectile tracking down its target, and the distinct gurgling noise that only a golem made of coagulated blood could make as it loyally walked alongside its creator. I called for Eberlin but he was not there. This alternate world has done without necromancers.

In their place were the witch doctors. Alkor from old Kurast must have found his friends. Though not as mighty a summoner as the old necromancer, the witch doctor was a fun class in its own right. Pierre was able to summon zombie dogs along with a seemingly limitless supply of bats, spiders, and frogs. One can assume that he has a well-worn discount card at the New Tristram pet store.

A wizard came forth, and presented himself as Eberlin. He had long dark hair and a confident swagger that almost seemed like what a necromancer in his youth would have looked like before the call to study necromancy deprived him of sunlight and empathy. He, too, was a formidable hero, thanks to a new system that provided ample, though definitely not over-abundant arcane energy to cast magic missiles and lightning bolts.

Though there were other classes, the wizard and the witch doctor drew most of my attention as I attempted to fill the void left by not having a necromancer available in the game. Within the limits of the beta, the spell choices fell into two offensive weapon categories: the sniper rifle (deal heavy damage to one enemy) or the shotgun (deal smaller damage, but to more enemies at once). Having to deal mostly with mobs of cannon fodder, the shotgun method was the best approach. Spells that hit multiple enemies, or explode for area-of-effect damage were more efficient at clearing out multiple attackers. The one exception was when dealing with special enemies where a strong, focused attack was needed on a single target. Even then, explosive splash damage had proven to be very effective.

The leveling system seemed nice, no longer having to worry about wrongly allocating stat points and suffering the consequences for the rest of the character’s life. Spells can be reconfigured and the runes that augment their effects can be swapped out. The artisan crafting system seems like a more controlled version of the old merchant “gamble” options but from my limited experience, constantly gave better items than most anything I had picked up from adventuring.

The storytelling, as expected from all things Blizzard, was intriguing and well done. The ability to quickly join a friend’s game is great, and the banner system which transports friends from town to a friend’s location in the adventure area is a hazardous, but welcome work-around to the new teleporting dynamic. My biggest issue to multiplayer is that there is no built-in voice chat. I had to yell across the room to the wife who was wearing headphones to ask for help from her barbarian. How analog is that? Yes, I know there are canned num-pad voice cues, but I don’t have them memorized just yet. Yelling “this is for you” when I meant “help me!” is a very “uh, oops” moment.

Overall, if the beta gameplay is any indication of things to come when the full game is released, Diablo 3 will be another amazing, lengthy trip into the Diablo universe. Hopefully the high amount of traffic we generated and the fires we set during the open beta were helpful in uncovering and ironing out any issues Blizzard may have had with their servers.

How Deckard Cain managed to survive through catastrophe while necromancers did not is a story I’d like to hear. Maybe it is a story Mr. Cain will share, in time, to the new Eberlin as they face new threats in the new chapter of the old Diablo storyline. It will be fun to fight evil once again. It will be fun to don magic-find items and do loot runs again. It will be fun to stay awhile and listen again.

To celebrate, El Techno found himself a photographer as he reminisced through his early days in and around Korthos Village and Stormreach Harbor. Afterwards, he commissioned a dance video featuring his guild members and the beats he himself came up with, “El Ritmo de El Techno”

Hey, Mr. Napier, don’t die
Hey, Mr. Napier, I know why
but hey, Mr. Napier, please don’t die on me.

Well there’s a piece of my parents in every criminal sting
and the price of a memory is repaid by the justice it brings
but there’s always one more murderer to take down and one last batarang
and the last one out of the city has to lock up everything
or the inmates will get out and fill all of Gotham with dread
while Harley’s sorrowful sobbing is still lingering in my head
and the goons and the junkies disbelieve whatever they’ve read
What’s left for a sequel when my favorite villain is dead?

Hey, Mr. Napier, don’t die
Hey, Mr. Napier, I know why
but hey, Mr. Napier, please don’t die on me.

All the blue ice reflections that color Vic’s mind when he sleeps
and the business-sense distractions that accompany the company I keep
Nigma’s razor-wit taunting that cuts just a little too deep
Hey I can dream as well as anyone but Dr. Crane can’t help me sleep
So I shoot my grapnel gun into the air and it catches some beams
for a brief interruption of a question-mark grabbing scheme
Well I can’t say I knew that you weren’t quite who you seemed
So I was surprised to find out
that Karlo played Joker on that final movie screen.

Hey, Mr. Napier, don’t die
Hey, Mr. Napier, I know why
but hey, Mr. Napier, please don’t die on me.

When the Clown Prince of Crime shattered the antidote on the floor
there wasn’t another
and I wondered what he did that for
I still was not sure because he had been dead before
but I carried his body with grief as I walked out the door.
You once lived on a desert planet featuring a pair of stars
and drove past Jabba’s palace to be disliked at some seedy Spaceport bar
and you followed Kenobi after selling off your uncle’s old car
and after taking down the emperor, you became a great voice-acting star
and after taking down the emperor, you became a great voice-acting star

Hey, Mr. Napier, I’m quite touched
but hey Mr. Napier, it’s too much
so hey Mr. Napier, please don’t sing to me.
Hey Mr. Napier, please don’t sing to me.
Hey Mr. Hamill, stay for Arkham 3?

Fred didn’t have a cool hacker name like “El Techno” or “Digital Mage.” He didn’t need one. He was happy being Fred of the Uplink Corporation. He was happier with the steady flow of cash infusions willingly transferred by other corporations into his account for what he calls “subcontracting” gigs. Fred enjoyed his gigs very much, and he enjoyed this batch of gigs in particular.

Corporations who need to appear wholesome to the public sometimes require Fred’s confidential industrial services. That is, industrial espionage, sabotage, creating and falsifying identities, and making certain individuals’ lives miserable. From the list of jobs in Uplink’s internal services machine, he had gathered a list of names that needed police attention. Well, they would need police attention after he was done altering their records, anyway.

Well, an abrasive gentleman before me
missed a num lock cue and concluded
that the keyboard was busted.
Deep within my soul, I searched –
Do you have any Nice?

Fresh out, my friend.
You used it all two hours ago
and you forgot to get some more.
Low on rest and patience, too –
I suggest you find a bunker.

Impossible, I thought,
but memory betrayed me,
sneaking bitterness in my grocery bag
when I had procured some Nice.
That vengeful bastard.

Can you make some Nice instead?
Brilliant, Fukui San
but the secret ingredient is trout –
I suggest you slap him with it.
Memory has been reading IRC logs again.

Hell-o! I said your keyboard is BUSTED.
Are you deaf or just retarded?
Calm blue ocean shark infested
hiding sunken ships and bodies –
scumbag pirates. Calm, peaceful ocean.

Hey! Your keyboard is busted!
And your machines are damn slow
I am wasting my time here
and you are no help –
Sticking to his talking points.

Peaceful meadow, quiet breeze
with soft sunlight on my face
and pollen triggering allergies
with sneezing and discomfort.
Face it, kiddo — out of Nice.

Sir, I suggest knowing number lock
lest you find me busting that keyboard
by typing qwerty on the back
of your thick skull. I asked my soul
and he said I was out of Nice.

Definition of indignant stupidity.
Yes, the machines are slow
Yes, you are one ugly moron
and it seems neither of us
can remedy either situation.

Instead I walked over, pressed a key
enabling numlock and quietly stepped away,
scraping on the pantry shelf for
a grain or two — the only thing to do
when your soul runs out of Nice.

Recently, the upgrade process has been less glitchy but still, I had issues.  The install asked me about a config file which it wanted to overwrite.  No problem, I said, and clicked the option to make it so.  Then the machine stopped responding.  Hey, alright, I thought, no choice but to hit the reset button and face whatever demons await after the reboot.

After rebooting, the machine spun and spun.  I hit ctrl-alt F-something to try and get a command prompt, which I got.  Logged in, tried apt-get update/upgrade and it suggested I do sudo dpkg –configure -a instead.  Doing so made the machine do its thing and continue its installation.  Another reboot and I had upgraded to 11.10.

Now the annoying part: kmail migration is borked.  SERIOUSLY?  Yes, it’s a known issue and yes, there were instructions online on how to manually backup files and re-import them into the new kmail but again, SERIOUSLY?  Someone really decided to release Kubuntu with the main e-mail application upgrade process broken?  This isn’t some obscure app or game that very few people would care about…this is e-mail.

After having gone through the process of doing the manual migration (is migration really the term for upgrading to a new version of the same application?) I had to deal with kwallet to store my e-mail account information.  Now, after I log in with my username and password to get to the desktop, I have to type in another password so kwallet knows that it’s ok for kmail to access my e-mail account information.

In the end, I’ve upgraded.  Everything seems to be working, and I’m hoping that just a little more digging around would help me figure out the extra password entry annoyance.  Rant completed.

Yes, seriously, why does some equipment have a guild level requirement?  This belt is really members-only?  Is DDO run like my old high school with its own clothing police?  No sports-related clothes, no hats (I’ve got the hat bug so none of my hats are visible), and apparently they’ll need to see my ASB card if I want to keep wearing my crafted belt.

The problem was that I was quite fond of my gear.  The same went for Eberlinz Evil Twin and Estocean.  The easiest solution to the issue was to create my own guild.  Without any fanfare, the Guild of Estoceans was born with barely any members and hardly any renown.  We are nothing like The Renegades.  We are nothing like the Fabulous Killjoys.  For one thing, we can’t stand in V formation.  However, on occasion, I may hum the Batman theme while descending upon an unsuspecting mob and disposing of them with a wand of blasting.

To show my more sensitive side, however, today we are using these same hands to knit a cozy cloak for Eberlinz Evil Twin.  You see, Ebbie’s a human ranger with a little bit of a problem staying on his feet.  He wields twin khopesh blades (also designed by yours truly), which I’m sure he’d love to swing around and hurt people with if only he weren’t so easily tripped by his enemies.  Because of this little issue, he asked if I could make him some sort of Cloak of Balancing.  “Sure can,” I enthusiastically exclaimed, “I just need to gather some materials.”

The first step is to decide on exactly what we’re going to make.  For Eberlinz, I wanted to give him something a little extra so today we’re crafting him an Unbalancing Cloak of Balance which not only makes him more surefooted; the cloak is so awesome it has a chance to knock enemies off their feet.  After deciding on that, we gather the necessary essences and collectible items to create the magical shards that would go into the cloak.  For our purposes, we have created an unbalancing shard and a shard of balance.

Shards in hand, now we look for a used cloak.  It is a good idea to keep a few old cloaks around just for crafting purposes.  Any will do, really.  We take the cloak, find the designer tag, rip said tag, and replace it with “Hecho De ElTechno.”  We then use a hot glue gun to secure the shards into place.  A little bit of cleanup and here we have a lovely cloak, hand-made and ready for the rigors of combat.