Achievement Accomplished

A Snapshot of The Great Event has been recorded!

It’s very ironic that the same technology that barely allows me to connect from the jungle to the rest of the world also permits me to play Diablo 3: RoS on an aging HP 435. Considering this, its quite a feat that I was able to accomplish 7710 Achievement Points and a temporary #90 spot on this Season’s leaderboard. (The topmost players have scores about 7840.., but they have better machines and more civilized internet connections). Phew!

Believe me; this may sound as a frivolous way to spend my time but sometimes it’s the only way for me to keep my sanity when it’s 3 AM in the morning in the rainforest and the words for my next book refuse to come at all.

It’s also proof of my steadfastness (some might say “stubbornness”) as the experience was far from pleasant. With 900+ milliseconds of lag, playing online was a choppy experience at best and the equivalent of walking on a bed of red hot coals… at a slow pace.

Playing online with others to get some of these achievements (a few require that you play in groups) was something akin to that… with the added incentive of shredded glass added into the mix. Sometimes my characters froze in place… sometimes they got permanently killed in Diablo 3’s Hardcore mode, which meant I had to start from scratch several times.

And yet, I still managed to get into the top #100 players… at least for a while.

I won’t be able to get the last few remaining “cheevos” (as achievements are called in many an online gaming community) due to my craptacular hardware (game crashed twice during the few occasions I tried to get the Sprinter achievement… a deranged game mode that asks you to finish the game in 1 hour, when the average time to do it while starting is about 4-5 hours!) and Malthael kinda freezes my PC when I try to kick his butt at Torment IV, so I guess I won’t be able to manage those few. Sigh.

I may still try to get the 500K kills while doing rifts (I suspect it’ll pop up during the next 10 days or so) and perhaps the elusive Ancient Device one, but that’s about it.

Damn… I know it’s just a silly thing… but I’m quite proud of this small feat

Edwin Stark

Signing Off