TheEventOf…

What do you all think about the (not so new) but new to TheEventOf… Facebook comment box? I’m testing it out here on TheEventOf after having some difficulties getting it up and running over on my main blog Phogropathy.com.

I’ve been thinking about it for some time now and can come up with a handful of reasons for and against implementing the Facebook Comment functionality into your blog. I thought I’d take a moment here and discuss the major points here so have a read, think it over, and of course try it out for yourself and let me know what you think.

Four Pros for Using the Facebook Comment Box on your Blog

• Facebook is huge – They are closing in on 1 billion users and I see no sign that they will be stopping any time soon. Even with Google+ being really cool and all I just can’t see people leaving Facebook when it’s really not broken to begin with – sure the change something and people freak out, but they’re still using it right?
• It’s easy – It’s just like commenting on a post in your NewsFeed except its at the bottom of a blog post. If you’re logged into Facebook you’ll automatically see the box with your profile image ready and set to comment. Nothing gets easier. No filling out a name, email, captcha codes, etc. Just comment and go.
• It looks better – To be honest I love the look of the Facebook comment box. I find the typical wordpress box a bit clunky and unattractive, while this comment box is sleek and really works well with a white layout. I haven’t seen it in a black or dark layout though I do know they have the option. The WordPress comment box has always been my least favorite part of a website and I think that this streamlined box is really something that can change the way we comment on blogs in the future.
• You get more exposure – Everytime someone comments on your website there’s the chance that the “post to Facebook” box is left checked. When this happens their comment on your blog will show up in their friends news feeds with a link back to your blog. If this person has a lot of friends the chances of one of them being interested in what he or she just commented on and going to check it out is relatively high and not only that! But that person can actually respond to that comment right from Facebook and their friends will see that they’ve commented on your post and they’ll see the link and have the option to comment as well. Talk about viral exposure.

Four  Cons to Using the Facebook Comment Box on your Blog

• Your comments are locked into Facebook – As far as I can tell at this point in time you can not get any comment back out of Facebook onto your blog if you choose to leave Facebook’s comment system at some point in the future. This is only a problem if you have any reason to believe that Facebook will be dying or that your desire to leave Facebook as a traffic source starts to creep up in the back of your mind. Both of which seem unlikely at this point, but so did Enron’s collapse right?
• People may feel intimidated – I’ve heard that the contrary is true, but I’ve put this in here because I can see it being a possible draw back. People might not be willing to post their Facebook profile all around the web. When you’re leaving a comment on someone’s blog strangers will see and have access to your name and default image. Talk about a privacy issue for many people out there… we’ll see what this brings about however here on TheEventOf over the next several months.
• No more Spammers – Some people like getting spam comments right? It makes them feel loved and needed? Well at least the good quality spam right? The people that are just saying a nice thing about one of your headlines because it’s a quick link back to their site? Well I mean you may still retain them, but only if they really want to comment on the post. This could actually be a pro, but who knows.
• Limitations – While you have full moderation control over the comments that are left in your box you’re not going to have any fancy spam controls like captcha codes or the like. It’s up to you to maintain the order in your comment boxes and this can get tedious if you’re getting a lot of comments on a lot of different posts.

Dark Souls is an Action-RPG that has filled the hole while I wait for the much anticipated Diablo 3 game to be released. While Dark Souls is a good game, it’s extremely hard, and is definitely not for the casual gamer.

The gameplay is top notch with few bugs and some real cool mechanics for fighting. You have two main melee attacks plus the option to whip out a bow and arrow, throw knives, bombs, or even cast some spells. The story is well written and definitely will keep you engaged throughout the claimed 50-60 hours of gameplay and you’ll be lucky if you can beat it in that amount of time if you’re not a regular to console games.

My biggest gripe (and it’s not even that big of one) with the game is the difficulty and the punishment that you take for death. Sure death should be a large punishment, but with how often it comes, reaching a new bonfire is the greatest

experience of my life sometimes! This game will make you want to throw your remote through the TV, it will make you want to rip your hair out, it will own you day and night and you will die too many times to count, sometimes there’s no way to avoid death!

Overall I’d give the game a 9 out of 10. It’s well written story, good graphics, amazing gameplay and even the difficulty make it a great game. I’d much rather have a game that’s on the more difficult side than one that offers 10 hours of gameplay and then you’re over and down in less than a week. Dark Souls will be a great game for me for months to come and that’s great news because as we know Diablo 3 will not be released until sometime in “early 2012″.

Thanks for reading! Have you played Dark Souls? What do you think comment below and let me know!

Hello everyone I’ve been doing a lot of reading on Diablo 3 lately and one thing I keep coming back to is the whole Real Money Auction house thing.

For those of you that don’t know a few weeks ago when Blizzard came out and informed the community that Diablo 3 will be including an in game real money auction house that can be connected to a PayPal account or linked directly to your own Blizzard account for future Blizzard spending needs the eyes of every D3 gamer lit up… and collectively they all said….

I can get paid to play Diablo 3 – Saweet!?

However, I must be the voice of reason here and say…

Not so fast there my little over eager Diablo 3 Auction house entrepreneur… this ain’t going to be easy money!

7 Key Reasons Making Money on the D3 Auction House is a Pipe Dream!

1. Insane amount of Competition – You’re just not alone here.
2. No way to leverage your sales – You can’t promote your stuff
3. Takes LOADS of time – You’re gonna be farming nonstop
4. The Economy will forever be changing
5. Auctions are not the same as stores
6. You must account for those pesky fees
7. And Taxes if you do make a large chunk of money

I’m still going to try and My Target is…

$500 made on the D3 Auction House One Month after Level 60.

How am I going to accomplish this? Well you’ll just have to wait and see!

So….

Are you going to try the RMAH or are you more into the idea that the in game currency should be the only currency used? I can definitely understand both points of view so feel free to discuss it in the comments!

Been a bit wrapped up in the Diablo 3 coverage that I completely forgot about this recent trailer released last week!

Recently we’ve gotten our first look beyond the teaser trailer (which was awesome) for one of my personal most anticipated movies of 2011. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

Watch the Full Length Girl with the Dragon Tattoo Trailer

My Thoughts?

From this trailer if you’ve read the book you’ll probably be very happy with the look and feel. I had a feeling that the David Fincher adaptation would be fairly accurate to the story and this trailer really leads me to believe that to be the case.

Even in the original teaser trailer you get a sense as the various scenes flash before your eyes that this movie has the bulk of the text captured, this longer, more in-depth trailer definitely proves that point.

What are your thoughts on it? Do you like Rooney Mara as Lisbeth? Daniel Craig as Blomkvist? I think that these two have great potential in these roles. I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below!

It appears that as of 8pm last night Pacific time Blizzard sent out the first official opt-in invites. You can see this thread on their Diablo 3 forum for confirmation.

What does this mean for Diablo 3 Fans?

This means that if you haven’t done so yet you should go check your battle.net account for an invite to the beta. If it’s there… congrats to you! If not…

You’re stuck waiting like the majority of us for the continued release of more keys.

On the bright side the beta in general is fairly small resulting in only about an hours worth of content, something that once level capped, can be done in under 15 minutes.

Just sit tight and we will all get to be playing the full game ‘soon’!

“Soon” Was Too Soon

That was all that it really took to kill the dreams of many fans hoping for a happy holiday season filled with slaying monsters on their way into the depths of Hell.

Blizzard had different plans unfortunately as earlier today they announced, to the dismay of millions of fans, that they will be unable to hit their rumored target of late 2011 for their flagship Diablo 3 video game release.

We commonly use the term “soon” when referring to Blizzard releases, because we know that no matter how hard we’re working to reach a target, we’re not going to compromise and launch a game before

it’s ready. For Diablo III, we were aiming to launch by the end of 2011. As we’re announcing globally today, our new target for the game is early 2012.

While this news might not be a complete surprise, I know that many of you were hopeful that Diablo III would ship this year. We were too. However, this week we pulled together people from all of the teams involved with the game to decide whether we felt it would be ready before the end of December, and we grudgingly came to the conclusion that it would not. Ultimately, we feel that to deliver an awesome Diablo sequel that lives up to our expectations and yours as well, we should take a little more time and add further polish to a few different elements of the game.

The upside of today’s announcement is that we will be running the beta test longer than we initially planned, which will allow us to invite more of you who have opted in.

For those taking on the Diableard challenge, we salute you — and now fear for your well-being and personal hygiene. We hereby issue an official reprieve to all Diableard participants, including Blizzard employees, if you want to trim or otherwise manage the lower half of your face. We’d still love to see your beardly achievements, and we look forward to seeing more of your efforts as we move into 2012, but not to the detriment of your workplaces and significant others.

Thank you everyone for your support and anticipation for Diablo III. We’re still moving ahead at full pace, and we’ll be keeping you fully informed of any news and developments here at Diablo3.com, including the specific release date when the time comes, so stay tuned.

-Mike Morhaime

Quoted text from – Blizzard’s Diablo 3 Page

While this may be bad news to those hoping for a speedy beta test and sooner release of the final game, in all honesty, it’s for the best. Blizzard tries very hard to release their games without major bugs and extremely polished. They have a reputation to uphold and opt not to go for the sure fire holiday sales scheme to bump up sales only to release a product that will make people unhappy.

Honestly, I can’t help but be a bit torn, as I’m dying to get my hands on a copy of this game, and hope that soon the beta invites will be sent out to the general public, myself included. Until then I’ll be watching Youtube game play commentary and wishing I had started reporting on Blizzard games back in 2000 when I might have actually qualified for a media pass!

How do you feel about the delay? Do you feel that the extra time will help make a better game and a better launch or are they spending too much time perfecting every little detail? Comment below!

Angry Birds has been nothing short of an incredible success. The game itself is extremely addicting and for anyone with an iPod Touch or iPhone I’d highly recommend the 99 cents to download it. However, would you have thought about dressing up as one of these lovely, pissed off birds?

I was alerted to these homemade costumes by a tweet from @TechCrunch who found a site which collected a bunch of homemade Angry Bird costumes created by their readers. The Clock Blog has definitely gone above and beyond motiving their readers to create these epically awesome costumes and by sharing them with us maybe those of us without costumes for Sunday can throw something together!

The game itself has seen more than 10 million downloads and maintains nearly a 5 star review on the App Store. It has seen many updates including new levels and story lines. There is also a Halloween Angry Birds which you can also buy for 99 cents. These developers probably had some idea that they’d hit gold when the downloads started pouring in but, you never truly know you’ve made it until you’ve been made into a Halloween costume!

UPDATE: 9/23/2011

The world has gone crazy with Angry Birds since the initial post of this article which I wanted to update further as this year it seems like being an Angry Bird for halloween is actually going to be an even more common costume than it was in 2010.

The Ravio game has sold more than 10 million copies and is creating a huge marketing push in other realms as well, just going into stores like Wal-Mart and Target you’ll be able to buy yourself an Angry Bird to have and own for yourself now.

However, the costumes for halloween are now more mainstream as well and you’ll be able to out do the photo posted at the top of this post pretty easily by shopping at any major retail store for halloween, of course, if you want to make your own Angry Bird halloween costume I’m sure there are steps to doing that as well…

Or if costumes aren’t your thing – maybe you could try making an angry bird jack-o-lantern like this one!

Are you going to be an Angry Bird for halloween? Or maybe an Evil Green Pig? Comment below!

So we’ve gotten the official word from Blizzard that Diablo 3 is open to the public for beta invites! Just a matter of waiting, hoping, and a little bit of beta rain dancing for that key to show up in my inbox.

I hope that I can bring you all some footage, screenshots, and most importantly my own opinions on the first third of the first act of this sure to be awesome game.

I have been watching some of the gameplay footage that has been hitting Youtube, and from what I can tell the game looks to be what I’d expect it to be – very reminiscent of the previous two games in this series.

While I wait I’m trying to determine which class I’ll jump into first… Part of me wants to go for the Wizard, I’ve always had a tendancy to lean towards spell casters in my previous runs with these games and within World of Warcraft I was a Mage. However, the Barbarian looks like a lot of fun, and so does the Witch Doctor.

If I get into the beta I’ll be sure to run through the beta on all five characters to kind of get a feel for them before the official release (hopefully sometime in 2011).

But… here’s a poll for you to take, what will your first character be in Diablo 3?

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What are your thoughts on it? Have any of you gotten your own beta keys yet? Would love to hear your thoughts if you have!

I just had the pleasure of watching a blurry and out of focus Drive courtesy of Showcase Cinemas, but hey they gave me a readmit pass to come back another time on them so I’m a happy little movie going patron!

That being said how was the movie? What’d I think of it? Was Ryan Gosling good as The Driver? Your questions are answered if you keep reading below…

Drive The Miss Marketed Masterpiece

This movie has everything going for it on paper – it’s filmed well, acted well, directed well and there’s a pretty strong cast, there’s really nothing wrong with it except for this trailer… watch it now.

Okay now that you’ve seen that forget everything you just saw

This movie is not like that at all!

Sure, the opening scene ropes you in and you’re all set for a pulse raising action packed movie with lots of low rumbling base from a strangely loud Chevy Impala. Instead, after the opening credits roll, the movie slows to a snails pace and you’re left flying through the windshield wondering what brick wall you just hit!

Admittedly, the movie does drag at points and it takes a while for it to catch back up to how fast you’re wishing it was going, but the suspense was always there for me, I wasn’t ‘bored’ persay, it just wasn’t an action movie and you have to understand that.

Once the pieces start to fit together there’s a pretty solid story and a lot of great acting to be seen so it’s definitely worth the recommendation that I’m going to give it, but be warned, this trailer is trying to fool you into believing it’s something that it’s not. Do not go into Drive thinking you’re getting the Transporter – you will be disappointed!

Drive is not a movie about heists or car chases or any of that, it’s about a man with a past who is trying to do the right thing, but everything starts going wrong and we are watching this happen until it ends.

Ryan Gosling’s character is a man of few words, but when he speaks he is precise and means business – you don’t want to screw with this guy he looks like he could probably snap your back with his pinky if he wanted to – he’s that badass.

It’s not just Ryan Gosling that does a good job in this movie though, every member of the cast pulls their weight, there’s really no weak link. All the characters are there for a reason, and they all are interesting in their own right, this is what makes Drive a good movie.

Drive the Art House Snooze Fest

Yes, Drive is a movie that takes time to develop, even the dialog is slow. There will be times that there might even be crickets in your theater. However, you can’t say that it’s a bad movie for taking time to develop characters, or because it wasn’t what the promotional campaign promised you. It might not be your cup of tea, but it’s not a bad movie.

You can call me an Art House fan boy all you want, but I enjoyed Drive for what it was… once I realized what it was of course… Damn marketing people!

Drive The Ending

That being said I did have one other issue with the film – how it ended – I mean I guess there wasn’t anything wrong with the ending it just isn’t how I wanted it to end.

That being said, I will not give this movie a perfect score or even close to one because of the ending of this movie, because I think it could have been better, but that’s a story for a different day which I will go into at a later date in a different post.

So anyways, that’s my review/rant, have you seen Drive what’d you think? Comment below and tell me what you thought and while where at it, what’s your favorite movie that involves cars, and car chases. Gone in 60 Seconds and The Transporter are up there for me.

Admittedly I’m a gigantic fan of all things Blizzard Entertainment. They just haven’t made a bad game and next up on their platter is Diablo 3 – a game that is almost sure to be one of the best RPGs in recent years.

I’ve spent a long time mulling over whether or not I wanted to keep this website up and running. I don’t blog here as often as I used to and part of the reasoning is my lack of a topic to focus on. However, this game, could change all that…

I know my current readers probably don’t necessarily care about Diablo 3 or Blizzard Entertainment, and that’s okay, I’ll still try my best to come up with movie and TV related topics to blog about as well – but the bulk of the posts for the foreseeable future will focus on the Diablo 3 beta and final release.

As of September 6th Blizzard has been running a closed beta test open to only employees of the company and their friends and family. This test will most likely end within the next couple of weeks (maybe as soon as Monday September 19th) at which point Blizzard will start giving keys away to those in the media and everyone else who is lucky enough to be selected.

Without a key – I’m going to do my best to cover the beta from the sidelines. If and when I do get a key I’ll be doing my best to share with you all everything I learn and find out – and potentially if I happen to snag extra keys I’ll be holding a giveaway.

Do you want a Diablo 3 Beta Key? Sign up for my mailing list and if/when I acquire an extra key I’ll let you all know how I’ll raffle it off.

There are a lot of cool places to focus on with this new game, from skill sets to items, to the auction house. I plan to focus on the auction house as a form of income for the average gamer… could you image making 100 dollars a day playing Diablo 3? It could be possible we’ll just have to see how the mechanics of this real money auction house works.

I plan to go into more detial in the coming days and weeks as to how I think all these things will work out and I hope you’re willing to join me in these travels.

Sign up here if you want to stay updated and for your chance at a key to the beta -