It’s a small movement but it’s unmistakable. The equivalent of a few feet to the left or right, sometimes a little bit back. We’re letting him take the lead while we shape the noise around him. The last player is a crusader, standing smack dab in the middle of the vortex, fighting toe-to-toe with the toughest monster he can find. The other players with me today are a wizard and demon hunter, hanging back and pouring attacks into the swirl of numbers and colors. Jump into a game with three other players who’ve gotten their characters to the level cap, who are interested in moving quickly and efficiently, who have very particular character builds, some of whom might be in Japan so you can’t make sense of their character names, some of whom have paragon levels in the triple digits, many of whom have those “Hey, I pre-ordered/have the collector’s edition!” angel wings on their back which makes them easy to pick out of the crowds. I was playing in a public group, which is an easy way to quickly whip this music into its outrageous crescendos. Something you can’t see if you’re not in the groove, if you can’t interpret the visual noise, if you don’t have an ear for this particular symphony and the discrete strains of my witch doctor’s character build. I saw something funny in the Matrix today. Where you see visual noise, I see a symphony of carefully honed character builds trying to play on torment level 2. Furthermore, my mind has been conditioned by the hours it took me to get this witch doctor to level 70. Show me a barbarian not using whirlwind and I’ll slow you a clown without big shoes.Īfter the jump, a funny thing happened on the way to Malthael.Īll this makes perfect sense to me because I’m in the groove. I can see him mainly when he does his spinning whirlwind. My friend’s barbarian is in there somewhere and I know it’s relatively safe to stand behind him. That large yellow blob is my target, but first I have to clear out the non-yellow blobs. The blue sparky patterns are electricity. The yellow circles are incoming mortar fire and I need to be sure not to stand there. The green pools are acid I’m vomiting onto the bad guys. The red blobs are zombie dogs, and they’re red because they’re healing me with their bites. The slightly bigger blue smudges are my mana generating toads. ![]() The little blue smudges are my mana generating locust swarms. But playing Diablo III - actually being in that visual noise and making it all happen - is a whole other matter. ![]() Flailing around, colors, effects, little numbers flying out of everything. When you watch someone play Diablo III, you see visual noise.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |