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Inside Mac Games Volume 6 #3
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IMG 54 Vol 6-3.iso
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IMG Volume 6, Issue 3
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IMG Volume 6, Issue 3.rsrc
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TEXT_156.txt
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1998-06-12
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by Michael Eilers
On a cold winter’s morn three daymarches from Black Falls, I came across a
village of immense size. Weak, stiff and sore, my weapons more rust than
edge, I found myself in a dusty market square populated by wildly costumed
figures all talking loudly at once. Some were boldly proclaiming their feats
of valor; others debased themselves in foolish attempts to seduce or sweet-
talk others. Several spouted profanity and wrath as if stricken with madness
or a sorcerer’s curse. All talked at once, shouting to be heard over the din.
Occasionally people would leave the square, or groups of two or more would
collect together and then march out of the circle of light, toward the
dungeons beyond.
Out of this chaos and noise came two noble figures, known in this village as
Darius and Crash2. Befriending me, they gave me new weapons and armor,
and trained me in the arcane arts of combat. Protecting me from the serial
murderers (known, strangely enough, as Player-Killers) and showing me
ways to defend myself against such foul fiends, they told me tales (in short,
whispered sentences) of the land of Battle.Net. Without their help I might
very well have perished in this rough, unruly crowd. If you should meet
Darius or Crash2 on your journeys into this land, know them to be good and
honest men—a rare breed indeed in these dark times.
Welcome to the Land of Battle.Net
While Diablo is an excellent game (see the review in this issue) and
Battle.Net has the potential to be a great addition to Diablo’s replayability
and value, the manual is amazingly vague about what to do once you get there.
If you hit F1 while on Battle.Net, you get a very nice help guide displayed in
an annoyingly small window in an annoyingly italic font, but not much else.
So, to help Mac Diablo players get over that newbie curve, I’ve assembled
these tips and tricks. Take heed, lest the PKers take your ears as trophies!
If you have spent time on Bungie-Net playing Myth, then much of Battle.Net
will be familiar to you, though in general I find the Blizzard version much
more profane and chaotic, with more “personalities” and very few admins.
Poker with a Stacked Deck—All Aces
One of the many, many things the manual fails to tell you about Battle.Net is
that almost all of the players present at any given time are cheating, in one
way or another. Soon after Diablo came out for the PC, programmers began
to write “trainers:” small programs that run in the background while you
are playing Diablo online that intercept part of the information being traded
with the Battle.Net server. These trainers allow a player to modify their
attributes, duplicate items in their inventory, look at the stats and
possessions of other players, and even kill other players instantly without
even swinging a sword. The arcane programmers at Blizzard occasionally try
to find ways to block these trainers, but just as with writers of virus-
protection software, the hackers are always a step ahead of the anti-hackers.
This is all very bad news for Mac gamers, since we don’t have (and most
likely will never have) anything like that for our OS. We do have one
advantage over the PC gamers: we can save a backup of our multiplayer and
solo character files easily, while even the most legit player on the PC side
has to use a trainer to do so.
This, however, doesn’t really make up for the fact that a large number of
players on Battle.Net are basically indestructible, with nearly every value
maxed and weapons and armor that have been “hacked” to increase their
attributes far beyond what Blizzard had ever intended. While it might give
these cheaters a false sense of power, it is actually quite boring to play with
one, because they always kill everything in the room before you can even
swing your blade.
Therefore, here is my Survival Guide for Battle.Net. Take heed, lest you
make a mockery of yourself and your platform in front of barbarians!
Quick Survival Tips
• Find some friends, fast. Asking if anyone is a fellow Mac player will get
you flamed, but it is often worth the hassle.
• Don’t join games that aren’t password-protected (i.e. organized by you or
your friends) until you are up to level 10 or above and have decent weapons
and armor. If you get attacked by a PKer, you need to be able to survive long
enough to quit the game in time to escape.
• Leave your settings on “no friendly fire” (swords uncrossed) all the time.
If someone attacks you, you can automatically attack them back without
having to switch to crossed swords. More importantly, if someone kills you
while you are in friendly mode, all they get is half your gold (and one of
your ears)—you keep all of your items! If you are in combat mode they get
all of your stuff.
• Play offline (start an Appletalk Multiplayer game) to build up your
character and to find cool weapons to trade with other players.
• Try playing the same time of day/night every time; a lot of other players
do this, and it is a good way to “see” familiar “faces” every time you go
online, and build up a circle of friends quickly.
• Back up all of your “diablo multi x” files in your Diablo folder *before*
you play.
• DO NOT play “solo games” with a password that only you know! The reason
for this is twofold: it eats up bandwidth on Battle.Net for no reason, and if
you get killed in a dungeon online, the only way to recover is to have someone
else resurrect you! (or just quit and revert to your last saved multiplayer
file. You did keep a backup, didn’t you?) You can also back up your character
while playing by hitting command-M to switch to a windowed view.
Chat Rooms: All Talk
First, a few tips to save you from asking the dreaded Newbie Questions.
The colored bars to the left of the names in the chat-room window are
amounts of “lag” (dropped or missing packets of information) relative to
your own lag. A player with a long red bar next to their name would
probably not be a good co-op partner in a game. Similarly, a public game
with a long red bar next to it would not be a good one to join. If everything
you see has a red bar, then you need to contact your ISP about your
connection speed.
The red dots on players’ character portraits indicate the number of times
they have killed (or been with a party that killed) Diablo. The small number
is the level of the player’s character. If you see someone with a level 5
character and two red dots, beware—this person is a blatant cheater. Same
goes for a level 40 character with no red dots.
My personal tip? Keep your mouth shut. Don't brag to everyone that you are
using a Mac, unless you want to see a lot of “MACS SUK ASS” posts in a
hurry. Do what Blizzard intended: use the chat room to organize a co-op
game and get out. I never found a reason to linger in them, though a goodly
number of the folks there seemed to chat all the time and never enter a game.
Just like any other chat room, these places have an extended, arcane social
life all their own.
Avoid talking with those who have provocative character names, like
“~~KiLlNeWbY~~” or “^^PULLmyEAR^^”. Use the “whisper” button very
rarely, and chose your message wisely—most people find whispered
questions very annoying, especially newbie ones.
Learn the following shortcuts: Double-clicking on someone’s name types that
name into your text field. Typing “/squelch” and then the character name
will block that person’s messages or whispers until you leave the
chatrooom; “/unsquelch” reverses the block. Squelched players have a
special icon in the player roster.
Beware of “bots”: automated chat-room participants that are designed to
respond to certain comments or situations. They often have a special icon
next to their name in the player roster. Extra special elite tip: Squelching a
“bot” also squelches the owner, so you can always find out who is
controlling/hosting the bot. Bots cannot join a game.
If you chose a female character name, like I did, prepare to get hit on by
“male” (you can never be sure) characters pretty often. Explaining that
you are actually a guy almost never deters them; they consider this a
common stratagem that genuinely female players use to protect themselves.
On the upside, you can often goad a more testosterone-laden fellow (look for
a fighter, level 30 or above) into trying to impress you, which often
includes copious gifts of gold and weapons. I must admit that I hoodwinked
Crash2 by these means, using my character named Alexia; but hey, that’s
what role-playing is all about, right?
Even though we don’t have Mac “trainers,” you can often convince a PC
player to give you almost anything, because to them—especially the level 50
ubergods—everything is equally worthless. When everyone is a millionaire,
what’s money worth?
 
In the Dungeon
Unfortunately, there is no way to tell exactly where your fellow players,
friend or foe, actually are in the large play area of Diablo. Town is always a
neutral area; you can’t attack or use any spell but Heal, so this is a good
place to quiz anyone joining a game as to their intentions. If you ask someone
if they are a PKer after you are already in the dungeon together, it will most
likely be a fatal mistake.
Chose a leader (logically, the strongest character overall) and try to stick
together. Sound is a great tool for locating your companions, so turn off the
music and turn up the sound effects volume; wear stereo headphones if
possible, as the 3-D sound will tell you where the center of the fight is
quickly. Always make sure you have enough Resurrect scrolls to go around,
at least one per player, and enough heal potions to go around. A Heal Other
staff is a great asset, and will make your fellow players into life-long allies
if you use it with good timing.
If someone joins a game and instantly everyone experiences lag, it is a good
idea to politely encourage that person to quit the game and then re-join it;
this seems to improve the problem about 50% of the time. You have no way
of “kicking” a person out of a game besides killing them, and you can’t kill
them in town, so a “lagger” can be a real pain if everything was going just
fine before they showed up. I’ve abandoned several games I created just
because some jerk with a 14.4 modem connection showed up and decided to go
shopping in town.
Finally, be very careful with magical spells in combat, especially those that
generate walls of flame, lightning, or elementals—you can quite easily kill
all of your allies, if you are a high-level character. My favorite stratagem
is to announce my spells first, and be the first into a particular room: “Wall
of flame south room! Look out!”
If You Are Being PKed
Most Player-Killers will just kill you the very instant you get to the bottom
of the stairs, where they have been waiting for people to fall into their trap.
If your character is strong enough to survive the first blow, just hit ESC and
quit the game quickly, and you shouldn’t lose anything. If you do get killed
and your status is on player friendly, then they will get half of your gold and
one of your ears.
Don’t bother taunting, chiding, pleading with or threatening Pkers; they
have heard it all before. Just quit the game at your earliest opportunity and
get out. It also helps to go back to the last chat room you were in and see if
the Pker appears; if so, scream his name out for the whole room to hear.
Enlisting “bounty hunters” to kill a PKer for you is just as hypocritical as
it seems, and won’t get you your gold back. Don’t bother. The price Pkers
pay is just as painful as death: social ostracism.
If you do have a seriously amped character after a while, you might want to
try to kill a PKer or two; the secret here is to leave your status on player
friendly and wait for them to make the first move. They will be on “attack
mode,” so if you kill them with your return fire you will get all of their
stuff, whereas they will only get half your gold if they triumph.
Item Management
Finally, here is a tip I picked up from Crash 2: if you have a very loyal
friend, you can both use this trick to keep lots and lots of stuff in your
inventory without being forced to sell or abandon it. The trick is to first
create a “dummy” character with no possessions. Create a game and have
your friend join the game also. Dump all of your stuff on the ground (or the
stuff you want stored, at least). Quit the game. The key here is that your
friend *stays in the game* and keeps it open. Then, join the game with your
dummy character, and store the stuff you want in his/her inventory. Quit
the game again, and re-join with your original character.
I hope Mac gamers can feel at home on Battle.Net; it is our world too, and as
non-cheaters we have a chance to bring back the moral high ground to a
largely corrupt world. Don’t let the cheaters and trash-talkers deter you;
for every scumbag I’ve met someone noble and wise. Look for me in the
evenings, as Alexia the fearless Rogue; I usually start games as “Mac Only”
and use the version number of Mac Diablo (1.04) as the password. See you
there!
 
