I’ll take “Things I haven’t had much of for a few weeks,” for $400.

So, I caught COVID for the first time recently, and it’s really taken the wind out of my sails. Even in the aftermath. I’d hesitate to say I have “long COVID” at this point, but I’ve been dealing with some stuff, not the least of which is that I seem to be getting tired more easily than I used to. Which brings us to today’s word.

vim, noun – energy, exuberance

Learned from: Diablo (PC, Mac, PS1)

Developed by Blizzard North, Climax Studios (PS1 version)

Published by Blizzard Entertainment, Davidson & Associates, Electronic Arts (PS1 version) (1997)

The first Diablo was a formative experience for me. I’d played a few roguelike games before (from Fatal Labyrinth on the Genesis, all the way back to AD&D: Treasure of Tarmin on the Intellivision), but Diablo was the first game of its type I played that A) Had real-time combat, and B) Told a cohesive story, with NPCs and everything. It was also much more of a power fantasy than anything that came before it; despite its grimdark setting with the forces of Hell rising up to take over the world, your lone rogue, sorcerer, or warrior would be slicing through hordes of demons like butter, as magic items fell from them like rain. Well, you had a lone hero unless you ventured into the lawless, buggy, cheater-filled wasteland of online play. That was fun in its own way, but you never knew when someone was going to use an exploit to steal that shiny new sword you just found.

And man, was that gear shiny. You never knew what any monster or chest was going to drop at any given time, any more than you knew what the layout of the dungeon was going to be. That skeleton could drop just another potion, or a Diamond Battleax of the Whale could come flying out of its pile of bones. The basic-tier magic items in Diablo had stats determined by (often ridiculous) combinations of prefixes and suffixes. In the example above, that battleax would have pretty good magic resistance from the “diamond” prefix, and would give you a ton of health from the “whale” suffix.

Vim was a lesser vitality-increasing suffix. Really nothing special after about the midpoint of the game, but certainly better than a garbage item with no traits at all–or worse, something like a Rusted Breatplate of Frailty that would actually lower your defense and strength. The first Diablo was a far less forgiving game than its successors, and I will always have a soft spot for it because of that. It was nowhere near as polished or feature-rich as Diablo II, or even the recently-released Last Epoch (which is really quite good, and a much better game than Diablo IV), but it had a lot of elements the later games did away with: outright harmful items, a random rotation of quests on each playthrough, shrines whose effects were unknown until you tried them, etc. I’d say it’s still worth revisiting today, if you can put up with a bit of clunkiness.

“I am here to destroy the world! And your free time!”

You should know this; you’ve been to court

The meetings we have at work are almost universally useless. This wouldn’t be so bad, if they didn’t occur first thing in the morning, before we even open for business. But every so often, something catches my ear, such as today, when one of my bosses didn’t know what the word “litigious” meant.

I work for very stable geniuses. But it does bring us to today’s word.

litigation, noun – the process of bringing legal action against an entity

Learned from: Descent II (PC, Mac, Playstation)

Developed by Parallax Software

Published by Interplay Productions (1996)

I played a bit of Doom and Quake, back in the day, but I was primarily a Descent guy. Sure, it pretty much required a joystick, and multiplayer was a pain and a half to set up, but not being bound by gravity was such a novel experience. And when you did get a multiplayer match going, it allowed for a ton of strategic gameplay, especially when you factored in the impressive variety of weapons at your disposal.

Descent II was the best entry in the series, by far, even if it had the weakest story. Not that “there are berserk robots in this mining colony; go destroy them” was Pulitzer material in the first game, mind you. But the sequel starts with your employer saying essentially, “Hey, you’re still under contract. Go kill these other murderous robots, or we’ll sue you.” At the time, I had no idea what litigation was, but when I looked it up, I realized that these games are really set in a pretty dystopian future–yeah, you just saved company property, but get your nose back to the grindstone and keep risking your life if you don’t want to be penniless and/or in jail. I didn’t dwell on it too much, because the gameplay was so fun, but a part of my 13-year-old brain still realized this was a pretty crappy situation for your character to be in.

My copy didn’t come bundled with 100 free hours of AOL. That would’ve saved my parents like, $50, probably. The early Internet was a a nightmare, kids.

Have fun storming the castle!

By now, you’ve likely heard about the…situation with Blizzard. If you haven’t, here’s the short version: Following a championship match of Hearthstone, one of the players used his post-game interview time to deliver a political statement advocating for the liberation of Hong Kong from China. Blizzard had a fit, took back his prize money, and banned him from competition for a year–and essentially fired the commentators that just so happened to be on the stream at the time, even though they tried to get off-camera when they realized what was happening. (These bans were later scaled back to six months, but still…) In the following days, things only got worse, as Blizzard delivered conflicting press releases to Western and Eastern audiences, failed to enact the same penalties to streamers who did the same thing (because they were on Western streams), went against one of their own company tenets that everyone should have a voice, regardless of who they are or where they’re from, and in general have just kept digging themselves a deeper hole.

And yeah, I get that they’re a company, and profits are quite literally the bottom line. And China is a huge market. But the undeniable message here, is that Blizzard (an American company, mind you), is fine with denying people freedom of speech, in favor of the promise of profits from an authoritarian regime. People are understandably angry about this, I’d say. You might even say that Blizzard is under siege by its own (former?) fans. Which brings us to today’s word.

ballista, noun – a medieval siege weapon in the shape of a large crossbow

Learned from: Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness (PC, Mac, Playstation, Sega Saturn)

Developed by Blizzard Entertainment

Published by Blizzard Entertainment (1995)

Once upon a time, Blizzard was a respectable company, making games full of heart, charm, and love of the medium. Warcraft II was a perfect example of this, with a ton of little details and Easter eggs (Christmas lights on the trees and buildings in the winter maps, units that would say funny things if you clicked on them a lot, etc.). And while the orcs and the humans had different looking units, most of them functioned the same. Goblin sappers and dwarven sappers both blew up the same amount of terrain; trolls threw axes and elves shot bows, but they had about the same range and damage; catapults and ballistae both flung heavy projectiles over about the same distance, etc. The handful of differences were in the magics wielded by each side, and that actually imbalanced the game pretty heavily in favor of the orcs, but it was still a fun game for its time…back when Blizzard actually cared about making things fun, instead of just profitable.

blizzard_china

I can’t take credit for this image, but it sums up the current situation quite nicely.