Good Morning Everyone!
I would like to personally thank each and every one of you for entering and spreading the word about this contest.
This is by far the most comments we’ve ever had in a 2 day period.
Now to disappoint all but one of you!
I’ve selected the winner of the Diablo III Beta Key.
The entry struck a personal chord with both myself and my brother who had similar gaming experiences with our father growing up.
If it wasn’t for our dad bringing home a PC, we may not be where we are today in life.
Without further adieu, the winner(s) are Eric and Jonathan
My son and I have been playing co-op videogames together ever since he could grasp the concept that the “pictures” on the TV screen were moving according to his button presses.
We’ve played everything from Battletoads to Gears of War 1/2. While I didn’t have a father figure to take me fishing or hunting I initially lacked a lot of knowledge on a father/son relationship. However, I can easily say that co-op video games has been produced a great bond and source of entertainment for my son and I.
He is now 11 and has never had the joy of playing a Diablo game at it’s initial release. Unfortunately, while he does enjoy visiting Diablo II, games that have been produced during his generation have offered considerably more hand-holding. Because of this, his initial response to Diablo II was that it was not designed correctly, afterall what games during his generation would intentionally require the player to spend all 100+ possible skill pts into only 5-6 skills??
After much skepticism and a slow start he began to love Diablo 2, not for it’s “strange” game design (from his PoV anyways), but for it’s unique immersion and story.
My son and I finally finished D2 and LoD last week and he has been absolutely ecstatic for Diablo 3! We would both be very appreciative of obtaining early access to what will surely offer us thousands of hours (and possibly dollars, go RMAH!) of fantastic Father/Son bonding time!
Beta or not, this game is going to trump anything else we’ve played together! I hope everyone is as pumped up as us for this! Good luck!!
Thanks to everyone who entered and emailed, and sent us messages on Twitter. Stay tuned to this space, as we are going to try and work with our contacts at Blizzard to see if we can work out more invites to get out to you guys!
Congrats Eric and Jonathan! Enjoy the Beta!
Andrew Goldenberg
Andrew Goldenberg is a technology blogger, a technophile, a graphics design enthusiast and a web design and social media expert.
Andrew grew up in Ottawa, Ontario Canada and has always had a passion for technology! A large portion of his time is spent learning about technology. What makes it tick, and what makes it popular!
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26 Comments
Congratulation to them, I hope they’ll enjoy the beta.
Congratulations =)
This makes me think about my old man who i haven’t seen in over 14 years. Due to distances of living in USA/Europe. We do keep in touch…
But i still remember to this very day… when my father and i were playing Killer Instinct, Zelda, Mario RPG, and many other games together on SNES either to compete or co-op.
=) thanks for bringing back those memories.
Well, I should have thrown in baby dogs. Who can beat a father/son story
Nah, have fun with it, and when I read your post, I was thinking back to out good old private LAN parties.
4 dudes playing through the whole weekend without any sleep to discover the skills and acts.
In fact: Diablo 3 makes us to reunite and do the same eleven years later
grats, ben
really enjoy, because now i’ts official by words of mike mohaine Diablo 3 only Early 2012 . because have some bugs in beta – no more finish 2011. nooooooooooooooooo
Wow!
What fantastic news to wake up to!!
We were just about to head out the door so I could take Jonathan to school until I thought to check out who won the contest.
Words cannot describe how happy we are right now!
From both of us: THANK YOU NERDYBLOG.COM! I will spending much of my morning texting my gamer friends, coworkers and family this website so they can see your generosity!
Eric & Jonathan
Enjoy the beta guys! We hope to have you join us in New Tristram!
Congratulations to Eric and Jonathan. Enjoy the Beta!
Awesome. I think you picked a worthy winner! I found this blog yesterday via IncGamers. I was all set to share my story of D2 memories, but then I red the 70 something responses that were there at the time and realized something. I didn’t deserve the beta key more than many of the people that were posting here. So, I didn’t enter the contest and share my story. Of course I really wanted one, but some of these stories actually made me teary eyed.
I thought I was one of a few out there that got all sentimental about Blizzard’s Games, and Diablo, but I see there are others out there who were emotionally effected by the Diablo franchise and Blizzard.
I saw lots of common themes….that playing the Games were a source of family bonding. I see that looking forward to the new Game makes people feel nostalgic for the time in their lives 11 years ago (or less depending on when you first played it) when they were playing D2, and who they were playing it with. I see folks hoping to recapture those good times of D2, and replicate them with D3.
So, now that there is no pressure to win anything….I’d like to share my sappy story.
Diablo 2 was the Game that got me into PC gaming. Prior to that i was a console gamer. It’s also the Game that was being played while I was falling in love with my Husband, and the father of my four children.
I met my husband in May 2000, and we were only dating for a month when D2 came out. I remember him saying he wanted to buy it. Our relationship was moving pretty fast, and we were living together by July. He came home with the game sometime that month and started playing it practically every night.
I wondered what captivated him so much with the game, and started watching him play. The game looked very interesting to me, and I loved the storyline. One day he offered me to try it. I sat down in that computer chair, and I never looked back. I was instantly hooked.
He would let me play on the desktop, and he bought another copy of the game for his laptop. We spent many late late nights playing the game, talking, and laughing and falling in love.
We were married three years later, in 2003. I also became pregnant with our first child in 2003, and we were STILL playing D2. My Husband was playing it when I announced my pregnancy to him.
We started playing WOW when my first (named Jakob) was a baby. My husband got into the beta that year. It was the first and only Blizzard beta that I ever played. I announced my second pregnancy while my Husband was playing WOW one evening. I spend lots of pregnant evenings passing the time playing WOW. The night before I went into labor with my second (named Liam) I remember playing a level 23 rogue in the Redridge mountains.
By the time Jakob was 2 he was able to point and click the mouse. He started playing Wow. He learned how to read his own quests by the time he was 4. Him and his brother Liam play Wow together all the time. I proudly recall the time last year that Jakob at age 6 , with his Death Knight toon, got ganked by two Horde a few levels higher than him. He came back and killed them both! I always wondered if they knew they got killed by a 6 year old.
fast forward to 2008. I was still happily married, and just had our third child (a girl named Rowan) in April. I remember the announcement of D3 that June, and was over the moon about the prospect of me and my Husband fighting the denizens of Hell once again.
After that announcement, Jakob and Liam started playing D2, and they are thrilled as well about getting D3.
Blizzard Games have basically been a backdrop to our family life for many years, and have given our family so many great memories. Since 2009 we have a yearly tradition of watching Blizzcon together on TV. So around here Autumn for us is changing leaves, Pumpkin pies, candy corn, and Blizzcon.
So that’s my long sappy story. I hope to get in on Beta one of these days, but if Not i will patiently wait until the game gets released….which will HOPEFULLY be at the end of the year.
LOVE your blog Andrew, I’ll be bookmarking it to come back again.
~Kelly
Thanks so much for your comments Kelly! I really do hope you keep coming back, as we generally get in on Betas and 9 times out of 10 end up having extra keys.
Dear Eric, playing Gears of War with your 11 years old son is criminal where i live. If its not illegal at your place im pretty sure it a parenting fail. I had hoped to play d3 with my grandfather (i expect him to die soon), but oh well….
Congratulations to both of you
Congrats!
Congrats good sir!
:sigh: lol
Damn. Congratulations. Would have loved to get on. Just a few more months I guess since nobody is getting into this beta, lol. Damn Blizzard.
Congratulations!!!!!!!!!
<3
Congrats guys! Hope you enjoy the key!
First off, congratulations to the winners. Second… I hate to be that guy, but the person you just gave a key too doesn’t seem to want access to D3 beta very badly. I thought this was a contest to see who wanted it the most.
That letter tells me that early access means little to them, and that the actual release is what they will benefit most from. Not to mention, they play together, and you only have one key. I’m sorry… I’m just very disappointed in your choice(no, not just because I didn’t get it). I read MANY better submissions when I was browsing through the posts last night.
I mean, I offered to work for free and fly out and receive the key in person. I set a record at my university for graduation so that I could have more free time to play beta, among many other things. Apparently you guys thought I was joking. That’s great that someone was able to strike a particular chord for you, but I don’t understand what that has to do with devotion to the cause.
Sigh…
Oh yeah, to the guy who won. I’ll give you $300 to not activate the key and send it to me. Can buy you a lot more video games that you and your son could actually play together. Not joking.
My email is: [email protected]
Contact me and I’ll give you my phone number and we can chat so you know I’m not trying to scam. I’m deadly serious.
The contest was why should we pick you. Not who wants it the most..
Fair enough, I can’t debate the rules with the rule maker. I don’t want to be the poor loser here. Fact of the matter is, I assumed it was something it wasn’t, and this is probably my 4th failed attempt at coming anywhere near to receiving a key.
It’s devastating to say the least. Most people claim they would go to extravagant lengths to obtain a key, I am that guy who would ACTUALLY do all those things. I’ve been a hardcore gamer since I picked up Zelda on the original Nintendo system at 3 years old.
I have wonderful bonding stories involving gaming with my Dad too. When he bought me my own original Nintendo at 5 years old, we use to stay up past my bed time on school nights so we could kill the Red Falcon in Contra together. Every night for at least a year, we would play through Contra before bedtime.
Then came the Super Nintendo. We use to see which one of us could get further in Street Fighter 2 single player. It took us months to be able to get to M. Bison. One night, it was just getting way too late and I had to go to sleep. He continued playing, he seemed determined.
The next morning, he woke me up with this stoked look on his face. “I beat M. Bison!”, he said. Then he bought me NHL 94, a game that would eventually lead to my 9 year adolescent hockey career; something he was extremely proud of.
But I digress. The point I’m trying to make, is that you held a position of power that I don’t think you quite understood. While I agree that you have the right to exercise that power in whichever way you see fit, I don’t think you considered the implications or the responsibility thoroughly.
The question, “why should you get a key?” implies, “why do you deserve it”?. Not, “give us a story that makes us want to pick you”. The majority of the winner’s story was concerning the cooperative experience in gaming between a father and a son, it had very little to do with Diablo 3 and their devotion to it. Not to mention, you can’t experience a game together while one person is forced to watch.
One might ask, “Gosukusan, don’t you feel rotten/guilty for questioning this judgement”? I’m sorry but I can’t. This prize that so many consider sacred was doled out as alms. An altruistic act inspired by an emotional relation between the judge and the judged. Perhaps some will think I’m out of line, or that my failed effort to obtain something I value so highly has caused me to lash out. To that I say, this was VERY serious to some of us (at least to me), and I don’t think it was taken seriously.
I would have worked for free for 3 months for this website just to obtain that key, though, that wouldn’t actually be working for free would it?
I don’t think more than a handful of people could say the same and mean it. I’m not in the habit of accepting anything as alms. I will pay for what is “given” to me, one way or another. It’s a matter of relative and prescribed value. And the value I place on a key is more than most of you would consider healthy.
I’m a gamer though, the hardest of hardcore. I’ve owned just about every system since the original Nintendo, a gaming quality PC, and well over a thousand games in the last 20 years of my life. I’ve never anticipated a game nearly as much as I do Diablo 3, and that is saying A LOT. I wouldn’t be typing this overly-long and ultimately meaningless response if I didn’t have an extreme passion for the game. I don’t know what else to say, I’m just more disappointed than you can imagine. My girlfriend saw the look on my face this morning and almost started crying, it’s serious to me /shrug. I’m a nerd, and proud of it. Isn’t that what this blog is about?
Btw, I love MvC3 as well and I’ve got a beautiful fight stick. Hit me up if you want to play. XBL = Gosukuson
Gokusan: I’m sorry that we selected a winner in a fashion that you feel was not well thought out. We only had the one key and yes the story did strike a chord with myself and my staff.
It was never our intention to emotionally harm someone as a result of how we handled the contest.
I feel you are 100% justified in your feeling let down, and believe me before I started NerdyBlog, I was just like you.
We are always looking for new content contributors, and if you are interested in a position with NerdyBlog, I would be happy to talk with you about that path.
I have reached out to Blizzard about obtaining more keys to run perhaps a much better thought out contest for you hardcore diablo fans.
Please accept my sincerest apologies! I hope that we can somehow make ammends.
Truthfully, it means more to me than it probably should, and every failure in obtaining a key is a further blow. Thank you for your kind response, I was expecting to be flamed in some way, but please understand that I don’t think you owe anyone, including myself, an apology. I thought I had a winning submission, I was naive, and perhaps too hopeful.
I would absolutely love a chance to participate in some way on the site. If there’s any chance at all that you will be receiving more keys in the future, I will work my a$$ off for a better chance at one.
My email is [email protected]
Contact me whenever, I’ll be around
Congrats to you two guys Eric and John. Given the few entries I’ve read, it seems to be a decent choice from you Andrew.
Yet, I do agree with some to say that a 11 years old playing diablo is kinda out of place, enjoy your zombie smashing little boy, we’re totally jealous.
see you @ Sanctuary… in 2012 XD.
when your dad is not playing that is
congrats guys !!