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Blog Computer Games News & Announcements

Diablo 3 release = EPIC FAIL

So Diablo III was launched at Midnight yesterday after one of the biggest game launches in history rivaling the MMO World of Warcraft. We’re talking two million pre-orders (the most ever for a PC game) and eight thousand launch events worldwide. Over 1000 fans were queuing for the game in Oxford Street alone.

So what happened? In short: The launch was an abject failure. The high traffic from so many players logging on all at the same time not only crashed the server but also the gaming forum battle.net as players flocked to it to find out what the hell was happening!

Diablo 3 Error 37: Epic Fail

The problem was caused because Blizzard – in an effort to combat piracy – required everyone to log into its server, even those who wanted to play a single player game, in order to authenticate. Unfortunately this meant that all most players got when trying to play Diablo 3 was Error Message 37: ‘The servers are busy at this time; please try again later.’ This upset millions of Blizzard fans some of which had taken the day off work for the game’s launch.

Surely Blizzard should have been anticipated this kind of traffic and made sure they had the capacity to handle it. But no. This was a total and complete Epic Fail: all that hype over the game only for it NOT TO WORK when it was launched!

One tweeter said: “Diablo 3 is super hard. I’ve been playing for 30 minutes and haven’t even defeated the login screen!”

Boy am I glad I decided I’d play through Diablo 1 & 2 before moving on to Diablo 3. Will they have their problems sorted out by then do you think?

Categories
Blog Computer Games News & Announcements

Diablo III Release Announced

WOW! I can’t believe it’s over a decade since the last Diablo game came out, but we finally have a release date on Diablo III which is *Drumroll* May 15th!! Two days before my Birthday! *hint hint* Preorders are open now and you can choose either a digital or physical version.

Diablo II was the most popular game of 2000 and it has been predicted that Diablo 3 will sell 5 million copies this year. Diablo is a Dark Fantasy gaming series with many aspects of horror, lots of undead, and Demons playing a major role. It’s the ultimate dungeon dive descending into the depth of hell itself, and the ultimate monster mash with literally hoards of monsters going after your character (you’ll be racing for those choke points)!

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Blog Epic Fail Related News & Announcements

2012 News

Okay there’s a number of subjects covered in this post so I’ve used subheading.

COMIC CREATORS FOR FREEDOM

Good news everyone! The Comic Creator’s for Freedom Wallpaper raised a staggering $7,500 for charity. If you participated in the fundraiser give yourself a well deserved pat on the back for striking a blow against human trafficking. Did you spot Amuletts amongst the snowball throwers yet?

Comic Creators For Freedom

By the way posters of this years wallpaper as well as those from previous years is available here with 100% of the proceeds going to charity.

SOPA/PIPA BLACKOUT

Some of you might have noticed that Epic Fail blacked out last month on January 18th along with over 200,000 other sites including Wikipedia as part of the ‘Stop SOPA and PIPA’ protest. Sorry for the inconvenience but it was to demonstrate the devastating effect these bills could have on the internet if they were passed. Well it had a big effect with senators dropping their support for the bill like a hot potato!

stop SOPA PIPA

In case you didn’t know the big thing about the ‘Stop Online Piracy Act’ and the ‘Protect Intellectual Property Act’ was that websites would only need to be SUSPECTED of supporting piracy or infringing copyright to be SHUT DOWN. Which totally goes against the principal of innocent until proven guilty! And the definition of ‘supporting Piracy’ was very broad, such as TALKING about it. It would have given the American Government the power to just take down sites it didn’t like, implementing political censorship and denying our freedom of speech. Thank GOD the protest was effective because there was a great deal of support for the bills beforehand. We must continue to be vigilant and fight to protect our freedoms.

VALENTINES DAY SEX DRIVE

Now Valentines Day will be here soon and I along with several other webcomic artists will be participating in the ‘Valentines Day Sex Drive!’ Started by Stef of Sarah Zero in 2005 all the VDSD involves is drawing a nude picture of one of your original characters and posting it on Valentines Day. So I’ll be doing that and linking to the others so that all you perves can look (don’t worry, it’ll be behind a cut to protect innocent eyes).

NO CONS – ONLINE MERCH

In other news I’m kinda skipping the Small Press Conventions this year – my plan is to concentrate on my online audience which is, after all, a lot bigger than the handful of readers I get to meet IRL. And you’ve been missing out on the merch! So I’m going to set up an online store and start offering it to you along with some new stuff, then if I do rejoin the convention scene it’ll be with altogether much cooler stuff. Is there anything you’d like to see?

EPIC FAIL IN THE WAGON WEBCOMIC BATTLE

OnyxSparrow has invited Epic Fail to be part of the next Wagon Webcomic Battle deck of collectible playing cards – and I have accepted with great enthusiasm. WAGON is a battling card game where the players do battle against each other using the characters and plot devices from webcomics! I love gaming! We’re planning some completely epic cards so I’m really excited about it.

EXTRA BLOG STUFF

I’ve also started doing a few more Webcomic Interviews and am planning to make it a regular thing. So if you have a cool webcomic and would like to be interviewed by email let me know.

Another thing I’m thinking of doing for the blog is a ‘Fail of the Week’ where I choose my favourite picture that’s turned up under the Epic Fail meme that week. ‘Cos I did promise extra fail didn’t I?

ADVERTISING

I decided to try out Project Wonderful because my Palace in the Sky Ad Box (a webcomic traffic exchange thingy) broke. So if you want to advertise on Epic Fail – do it! It actually seems to be working pretty well so far and I’ve decluttered the sidebar a bit so if anything it should be slightly less intrusive.  But let me know if any of the ads are really irritating and I’ll give them the boot.

That’s all for now folks! Thank you for reading and supporting Epic Fail.

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Blog General/Webcomics News & Announcements

Epic Fail in Epic Snowball Fight! – Comic Creators for Freedom!

Epic Fail's Amuletts supports Comic Creator's for Freedom

This Wednesday (11th Jan) is National Human Trafficking Awareness Day. To participate I joined over 100 other comic creators in creating a fabulous wallpaper based on the theme EPIC SNOWBALL FIGHT! To get it you need to donate to Comic Creator’s For Freedom and the money goes to charities dedicated to the prevention of human trafficking and supporting its victims. Namely these are Love 146 and Gracehaven House. This is a very good cause so please donate and belive me when I say the wallpaper is EPIC and well worth it! If you don’t believe me just look at the preview below. The Donations Drive will last for two weeks, from Monday January 9th – 20th.

Comic Creator's for freedom wallpaper preview
The 'Comic Creator's for Freedom' wallpaper features female characters from all over the web, including Girls with Slingshots, The Dreamland Chronicles, Kukuburi, Earthsong Saga, Looking for Group, Love and Capes, The Dreamer, and tons more including Epic Fail! Donate today to download this unique, once-in-a-lifetime wallpaper.

You may not know it, but there are currently 27 million enslaved people worldwide- more than double the number of enslaved Africans during the trans-Atlantic slave trade. UNICEF estimates that 1.2 million children every year are sold into slavery, most of it sexual. The US Department of Justice estimates 16,000 victims of human trafficking are brought into the United States every year. Unlike slavery in the past, what is happening today is happening in secret. It won’t end until awareness is raised, and people like you and me take a stand.

To learn more about the CCA visit www.comiccreatorsforfreedom. To learn more about the problem, visit https://love146.org/slavery. (Note: contains adult themes and actual accounts of sex slavery.)

Amuletts of Epic Fail supports comic creators for freedom

Please donate & also feel free to share the content of this post (text, banners, etc) with others 🙂

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Blog Epic Fail Related

Yoru Plushie


Click on the tumbnails for full-sized image.

I made a Plushie of Epic Fail’s character Yoru! I made it using the ‘sit pattern  tutorial‘ by BabyLondonStar on Deviantart. It’s made mostly out of Felt with a short-shag fur fabric for the hair. I had trouble finding a light-grey fur for the fringe so I had to sacrifice a stuffed shark for it. Overall Plushie Yoru uses 12 types of fabric and 4 types of tread. The clothes are all made as separate pieces. The horns are just little felt cones.

It took a while, probably because I have never made anything like this before and he’s entirely hand-stitched, but I am really proud. He’s devilishly cute! I kinda want to make all the characters now!