It's a saying that gets tossed around on a regular basis, an old anecdote with a simple lesson: patience produces incredible things. Granted, the Roman empire crumbled some time after some smartass spouted that sentence off, but the lesson still remains.

Looking at the Diablo forums and all the rage at Inferno mode, you would almost think that there isn't a single person in there that has heard of that saying.

Diablo 2 was the kind of game where people were playing it for a solid decade and still finding awesome things inside of its many intricacies. A little close to two weeks after its release, people seem to believe that not beating Inferno mode at this point is a goddamn world-ending travesty. They complain about how they HAVE to build this way or HAVE to build that way, and it's rather nerve-racking to see.

Then I have to tell myself the following: "for many of them, Diablo 3 is their first Diablo". Whether we all realize it or not, Diablo 2 is twelve years old. That would mean that most of the 18-year-olds and 21-year-olds that are picking this game up now, playing Diablo for the first time...there were 6...or 8...or 9. They don't understand how difficult it gets, how you have to look outside of the box when it comes to your build. They have lived through a time of gaming where entitlement is handed to them directly in almost every situation. They don't realize that you can't just stand there and hold the left-click, expecting everything to die.

Many people I've seen complaining are Barbarians, crying about how they are too gear dependent and they need to rely on buying items from the auction house rather than from pick-ups. For the most part, they are absolutely correct. In Diablo 2, we didn't have the convenience of an auction house available to us. Instead, we had to randomly just into games and hope that we could find people that would be willing to trade. We didn't have a chat option like we now have in Battle.net, where we could link items to our friends and say "hey man, is this better than what you have?".

"...but Josh, the auction house prices are over-inflated. It's bullshit."

Welcome to free market trade, where the community determines the price. The difference between this free market and a real life free market is that in-game gold is free to farm and endless to pick up. Real money is not. Moreover, if you think 300,000 gold is a lot...or even 1 million, then you've got a lot of Diablo 3 to play still. I've personally burned through 2.3 million on the auction house, and I'm sure that won't stop anytime soon. At the same time, I've made at least 1 million from the AH (as I lowball prices on things in order to guarantee a sell as well as offer up some decent gear to those needing it).

If anything, the auction house has now added a new meta to the game. I'll be interested to see how the real money auction house pans out, whether it will be a success or not. If it works, you could easily see things like this being implemented into free-to-play MMOs as a way to fight against the farmers and such.

However, people continue to complain. They will kick and whine and scream about how they aren't getting what they want right now at this second and that they have to practice patience, grind and farm, actually WORK for things in their game.

I'm currently sitting on farm status with Act 1 Inferno. I'm a sword and board Barbarian (as I'm always a pure tank in every RPG I play - it's what I love to do). My stats right now are something like this:

• 39k HP
• 7k damage
• 500 resist to all
• 26% block
• 13% dodge

My build: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/barbarian#WSRVkP!bVe!ccbccZ

I'm pretty sure I'm going to play around with that build a little bit more, try to work Rend/Bloodlust into it. Nonetheless, I'm enjoying myself. Act 2 is a steep brick wall, but I WILL climb over it.

No. Rome wasn't built in a day...and if I had to venture a guess, Diablo III wasn't built to only last two weeks.

I hope your adventures in Sanctuary have been as delightfully fun as mine. I wish the best to you all on your treks through Inferno.

Until next time, piece.