I call upon the WP team to do a bit more testing in the future. Hell maybe I will help with the next upgrade scripts… Yeah, we will see if I ever find the time to donate to projects like WordPress.

Now that I’ve lost my categories, it is nice to see more effective use of AJAX in the admin user interface. It speeds up the adding of tags to my posts. I like tags better than categories anyway.

More on WordPress 2.6 after I have had time to play with it more. Oh, have I mentioned that I am posting this from the wordpress iPhone App? Outstanding!

I can’t afford to spend too much time away from my work and my family. Within the past few years the only games I have allowed myself to play are short and quick flash games. Recently my friend Kevin purchased a Chicago Gaming Company arcarde system that features many Atari titles as well as many Taito titles. I have been playing many of the classic Atari® games on it. Many of which for the first time. I find I enjoy the ability to start and stop easily and without losing anything. My favorite is Skydiver. I’ve gotten a high score of 4900! ;P Yeah, I know it is somewhat weak.

World of Warcraft®, WoW®, and Diablo®, are registered trademarks of Blizzard Entertainment. Atari® is a registered trademark of Atari Inc.

The most exciting things about Diablo® III is that they have vastly improved the game engine. Among the improvements is kinetics and handling of character movement. Which is a problem that plagued Diablo®, and Diablo® II. Primarily because — I think — the World of Sanctuary was based in a two dimensional plane in terms of the game’s map, at least. Then everything other than the backdrop is a pre-rendered three dimensional object placed at specific coordinates on the map. Including your character. According to the official FAQ, however, Diablo® III’s engine is capable of displaying your character, the environment and all of your enemies in full three dimensional glory.

Another great advancement is that all items have class-specific visual renderings when displaying on avatars. The beauty of the fully three dimensional engine is that you can add this type of feature. The models look like they have much more detail and are visually interesting. I’m very much looking forward to discovering new item sets and unique items.

One gameplay enhancement that I’ve seen is that there may no longer be health potions. Slain enemies now drop health orbs. Upon contact with an orb you instantly “use” it so to speak. So walking into a health orb replenishes one’s health meter. From the gameplay trailer it may also seem that walking over dropped gold automatically adds it to your purse. If this is so, I’m happy about it. It was annoying walking around picking up gold.

Blizzard has decided to add a few more character classes in the new title. However, expect to see some of the old “faces” so to speak. When Diablo® II was released I recall that the Amazon replaced the Rogue from Diablo®.  The Barbarian took on the power characteristics of the Warrior. The Paladin took on the more rounded characteristics of the Warrior and melded the Sorcerer with the Warrior in a balanced set of skills and stats. The Necromancer was new to Diablo® II and concentrated some of the more dark scrolls and spells into this class as well as earth elemental. And the Sorceress is the female form of the Sorcerer focusing their spells and skills on elemental fire, wind, water, and lighting.

In reference to the above paragraph, I must post this disclaimer. Yes I know the Barbarian existed in Diablo®: Hellfire expansion pack. I never played Hellfire and therefore cannot speak for it. And also, the Barbarian was merely a hack as was the Bard. The character classes that were added in Hellfire are as follows: Monk, Bard, and Barbarian. Monks are the only offical character type that was added in Diablo®: Hellfire. One might compare the Paladin of Diablo® II with the Monk. However the Monk didn’t have too much ability in terms of magic.

In Diablo® III so far I’ve seen two classes. Both of these classes feature a female and male character model. The first being the Barbarian that we’ve come to know and love from Diablo® II. The first thing that I noticed about the Barbarian class in Diablo® III is that the Leap skill has been greatly improved. Not only does it deal a great amount of damage, but it handles the plotting of where you’ll land in a much more precise and realistic fashion. The effects when you land are beautiful as well. Slash appears to be quite an affective skill that will slash in a wide arc in the direction of your click.  For those that are wondering, Whirlwind is still a staple of the Barbarian skill set. The animation for Whirlwind looks much more refined than that of the Diablo® II rendering.

The second class I saw in action was the Witch Doctor class. This class is sort of what one might consider a shaman from World of Warcraft®. At their command are Fire, Disease, and other plagues which they use against their enemies. Witch Doctors can also summon underworldly pets to keep the battle out of arms length. The Witch Doctor can summon a swarm of locusts to devour the flesh of his enemies which spreads to nearby enemies. In an interesting twist Witch Doctors can hurl fireballs at their enemies. I’m not certain whether this skill is meant to be an elixir that is thrown. However, it seems that each class needs to have some sort of elemental damage adding skill or spell. It would make sense then that this was the only way they could give the Witch Doctor fire elemental damage. The Witch Doctor class also has a skill called — I believe — Mass Confusion that causes enemies to become confused and begin attacking each other. The more I think about it, it may be possible that the Witch Doctor is replacing the Necromancer.

This artist’s rendering is someone’s idea of Decard Cain who has definitely returned to the story. Blizzard has placed a narrated version of what they’re calling Cain’s Diary up on the official Diablo® III site. Cain’s Diary basically fills you in on the story up until where Diablo® III starts off. Starting with pre-Diablo® times. It is interesting to hear it narrated by Cain instead of seeing the cut-scenes that are shown at the beginning of Diablo® II.

In closing, I don’t care which character classes are added or removed I’ll definitely be buying this game. I can hardly contain my excitement. I always liked the Diablo® series much better than Starcraft® anyway. I can wait on the Starcraft® II release. Give me Diablo® III!

Starcraft®, Warcraft®, Diablo® and the Diablo® III logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Blizzard Entertainment Inc. All images copyright © Blizzard Entertainment Inc.

The processor that came with the kit was an Intel^® Pentium^® D 840 which comes clocked at 3.2 gigahertz. I found a heat sink that advertised that it would cool the processor. The heat sink purchased was a Thermaltake TR2 M21 RX which is part of Thermaltake’s bargain cooler line. However, the bargain line doesn’t dissipate enough heat. The M21 RX is advertised to dissipate 115 watts of heat. The 840 puts out a whopping 130 watts¹; which is nice if you’re looking for a small space heater. I didn’t realize at the time that the TR2 series is the bargain offshoot of Thermaltake. I previously had very good experiences with the Thermaltake brand and therefore had no reason to question this product.

The system is mounted inside a 3U rack mount case. This means that vertical clearance is limited. Most of the heat sinks I saw that said they’d cool an LGA775 processor clocked at 3.2GHz were much too tall with heat pipes galore. I’m sure they would have done the job, but that would have meant that I needed to either cut a vent in the top of the case or leave the top off completely. This isn’t an option because we need to keep dust to a minimum.

The 840 processor is based on Intel’s 90 nanometer fabrication process. It also happens to be the highest clocked processor in that line. This means that of all the other 90nm Pentium D’s this one is the hottest. The 840’s maximum operating temperature is 69.8 degrees Celsius. I have seen mine hit 72°C just by opening Internet Explorer. Anything above 70ºC and the processor begins to drag. It begins to modulate the core clocks, reduce the clock speed, to reduce power consumption and thus heat dissipation. Luckily, sharing files over a network requires very little processing power. However, rebuilding a RAID 5 array on the other hand requires a lot of processing. A 1.5 terabyte array requires roughly 20 hours to rebuild a single 500 gigabyte drive. Keep in mind that this is utilizing a soft-RAID controller and not a dedicated hardware RAID controller card.

Regardless of what I did a year ago, I am in the market for a good 130W or better heat sink. If you know of any that would fit in a 3U case, let me know. I advise that next time you’re in the market for a processor, check out the spec sheet and see if the cooler you chose can handle it.

1. Intel® Spec sheet for Pentium® 840

Pentium® and the Pentium® D logo are registered trademarks of the Intel® Corporation.