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Diablo 2 Goes Gold
A number of people wrote with the press release from Blizzard that Diablo II has gone gold. I've been playing CowboyNeal's stress copy (Barbarian only) and it's really cool. (CT:Slashdot may be down the week those things hit the shelves ;)
And it was cool, but it's pretty much the same game as Diablo One. Looks better, and has some more stuff like skills and more items/magic/monsters, but it's still "Wander around and kill things" without much "role playing" or interaction.
Of course, in the beta, only the Barbarian was available to play, and only a small part of the first adventure. So, it could be alot cooler than the Beta was.
On the upside, it looks really good, and had no bugs that I could find after many hours of play. And Diablo One was a GREAT game, so you don't want to fix what aint broke.
-geekd
You don't notice the graphics after playing for about 15 min, Quake III Test also originally sent info back to id Software, as for console exploding with games, how many of those do you see on linux? We should all be mad at the consoles! Last time I checked, Looking Glass didn't exactly develope for Linux either. Flamebait...
Ah okay. I just hope they're not short ones like in Command & Conquer games :). I can't wait!
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
I don't know, watching the videos (I really wish they'd left them as a single file), I found myself saying "but, can we make new tilesets?" repeatedly. Sure, the editor is wicked cool, and looks very easy, but if we can't make custom tiles, everybody's content is going to look just like everyone elses' content.
Intolerant people should be shot.
As a closed beta tester who had lots of fun with it, I'd like to say it once and for all:
The stress test sucks. Bad.
The stress test is not the game. It is as representative of it as the demo to the original Diablo, with the first two levels of 16 and only the warrior. In fact, given that Diablo II has 5 character classes as opposed to 3, I imagine that the stress test shows even less of the game than the Diablo demo.
What do you have to look forward to in the actual game? Well, for one, you have not merely one, not two or three but four other classes, each one far more interesting to play than the barbarian--IMO of course! I for one am not going to waste my time with the barbarian--my first character will be a Sorceress, Paladin, or Amazon, all three of which have interesting skills and much more of that complexity of gameplay you speak of. (Curiously, I found the Necromancer a bit dull as time went on.)
The closed beta was good (particularly in how they manage multiplayer), but I'm sure the final game will be much better, with more places to go, more monsters to kill, (hopefully) more challenge, and more great items (which are after all the point of Diablo).
Oh, yes, I understand. I'd much rather have them take their time than rush and create a lower-quality product. We can still joke about it, though. :)
------
As someone mentioned earlier, the game is more like Diablo 1.5. I've been beta testing it for a few weeks now and although the graphics and gameplay are the same, we really can't say for sure what it is like until it actually ships.
<br><br>
Remember, this was the beta used to stress test the battle.net servers. We aren't beta testing the final product and as such we haven't seen half the quests, the areas, the monsters, etc. Just a small sliver of what is available. So until the game actually ships, to me anyway, it stays as Diablo 2 and I look foward to it.<br>
-Frijoles-
Pretty much everyone. From what I remember of the game, there were so few changes that they should have sold it as an add-on pack for Doom 1.
Charles Miller
--
The more I learn about the Internet, the more amazed I am that it works at all.
The actual code and executables take up very little space in relation to all the artwork you'd find in a typical PC game.
But isn't the purpose of the Doomsday machine lost if you keep it a secret!
> If you turn off hostile, they can attack you (they are still hostile with you)
:)
> you just can't attack them (since you are now neutral).
I never really tested it, but one time I went back to town and made the connection neutral, then I went back to a dungeon and the person actually went back to town to turn hostile back on...
Seriously, this game is gonna suck, just like that "RPG" that Blizzard released a few years ago. The only reason Diablo did so well is that there were few good RPGs released at that time. This year is looking to be the "Year of the RPG" with Neverwinter Nights, Icewind Dale, Vampire: The Masquerede Redemption, Deus Ex, and a whole assload of A-1 RPGs bent on ruining your real life forever.
Does Blizzard really think that they can compete with Vampire: The Masquerede (which just came out yesterday). I mean, this is one slick game.
AD&D:Neverwinter Nights::V:TM:Vampire: The Masquerede Redemption
Both these games have a multiplayer mode with a Storyteller (which is WoD speak, analogous to Dungeon Master for you AD&D people), so it's much more like playing your traditional pen & paper RPG, and it also includes, ahem, graphics that are not outdated (as in 3D).
I'm going out to EB first thing tomorrow to get Vampire, so if you need me, I'll be on Won.net playing a game that actually has more depth than Deer Hunter (which by Blizzard's standards is almost an RPG, since you click on Deer and you get to choose your weapons).
Hurqalya
Oh no! Not four CD's! Whatever shall we do?
Don't you people rememeber switching 10+ 3.5 disks back in the days when CD's were just being considered as a medium? I remember trying to play King's Quest 5, where there was one disk with the engine, and 9 disks with content. Every time you changed screens, it made swap disks at least a dozen times... (besides, there's been other games with more CD's, like BG. And lots with 3)
Intolerant people should be shot.
actually...i'm running a dual Celeron 500 with 128 megs ram and i'm getting tons of lag...(character speeding up a lot as it tries to catch up to the server, whenever multiple creatures appear on the screen)...does anyone know if the game uses dual CPUs?
me too, what a nice thing to come home to - better late than never. it looks cool so far, but i had to switch to direct 3d - 3dfx glide crashed my system as soon as i tried to walk anywhere
probably a win me bug, as all drivers are current - anyone else try this yet?
anyway, back to d2 - no sleep tonite....
The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers. Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part 2, Act 4, Scene 2
See? They learned. :)
I'm a game developer so I'd like to chip in on this one:
Most game developers aren't lazy about their code. At least where I work, we strive to keep it as clean as possible - start to finish. It makes it easier for others to work on your code.
Optimization goes in two phases. First and most important - is the planning / design before much of the code gets written. This is the chance to figure out what's going in your game and what algorithms you might need; that sort of thing. Second, you optimize after you're almost done - this usually has limited scope.
What things contribute to bad performance? I'd say bad or overzealous design, tight deadlines, and 3rd party tools that are out of your control. Diablo 2 made the design decision to use a 2D engine. This helps performance in those large fights with hordes of creatures. They decided to limit the game to 640x480 which also favors slower machines. I would say these two choices account for a large portion of their good performance (although they've done some good work on reducing area-load times). Blizzard is not one to push a game out early, but I'd say this is more for gameplay reasons, and less for performance.
Other games may decide to go with a full 3D engine, or whatever. You weigh the pros and cons of each design choice. When you get to the end of the project, sure - a little extra time helps with optimization. But I strongly believe that good design is the key to good performance. At the end of the project, you are fairly limited in the optimizations you can make, regardless of your deadline.
Best regards,
SEAL
he was playing someones else beta!
bad taco!
bad cowboyneil! back to cuba with you!
*hugs*
,
faeryman
That's pretty cool that you'll go ahead and take a week off from telling everyone how cool linux is, how cool people who use linux are, and making money off of a lot of people who use linux - to play a fucking game that's only being released on windows/mac. I appreciate your support, Taco. Thanks, man.
Attention Blue Lang: this is internal support. We have detected a malfunction in your Humor Module: stand by for repairs.
We have also determined that you require updated versions of "Lighten the Hell Up" and "Don't be a Zealot". We recommend you download these into your Soul Kernel at your earliest convienience.
Slashdot is not a linux-only site. Every day you'll see articles about science, movies, books, laws, and other stuff. IOW, "News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters." Of course, linux is a big part of slashdot, but it's hardly the only part.
Am I seeing things : 950 Mb of HD space..!!?? You must be kidding my win98 & Linux installations are not even as big as that!
...sue Blizzard for contributing to the delinquency of a minotaur?
Ceci n'est pas une sig.
Supposedly it will be out by July 3-5. This is not news from Blizzard, but in their advertising contracts they are set to put out ads on the 5th I believe and they have no option in them to move that date. Of course they could always just advertise and not release, but at least it's a day to look forward to.
So you guys are actually using something other than Linux to play a game?
That may shatter the foundations of reality...
BlackNova Traders
I've been saving up weeks of vacation for this....
Hehehe...
-Vel
In addition to being a Linux user (my desktop at work, my server at home), I have been a Mac user for 12 years. Mac users have struggled for years with the issue of getting games ported, the same issue that Linux users are now facing. There is no market for the games, because there are no games to build the market.
:)
The iMac changed game publishers' perceptions that there were not enough Mac users. The users were already there, but the perception was not. At some point, there will be an end-user Linux revolution, when Linux is easy enough for regular people to use. The Linux user experience has improved 100-fold over the last two years, but it's still not something I would give to my wife or my mom to use. When that happens, the games will come.
You'll all be happy to know I deleted a big rant about computer users that was here and replaced it with this sentence. Have a nice day
- Vincit qui patitur.
As a player of the original Diablo, which at the time was fun and rather novel, and a battle.net stress tester for Blizzard I have to say I am rather disappointed. Yes the graphics are better, and there are a few more customization options (skills, etc), but the gameplay is pretty much unchanged and the graphics aren't THAT good. I'd like to know why it took a company 3 years to revamp a game,IMHO, so poorly. Blizzard is veering from the right track since the leaving of some of its top programmers which founded triforge. Gameplay is more important to me than graphics, and the gameplay is unimpressive....so much so that it would take Q3+ graphics to make up for it, and they ain't that good. Just my two cents of disappointment in a company I used to really like.
Do people want to play it on their web servers or something? Why would Blizzard port it to a primarily based server OS? Doesn't make sense to me. No, this is not a troll, this is serious. I have yet to meet anyone who uses Linux as a desktop OS. They all use it for servers (Including myself).
I eat the flesh off the living, and I vote!
Heathen! How dare you mock "Lemonade Stand", the greatest game of all time! Oh, the intrigue (How many lemons should I buy?); the excitement (How much money did I make today?); the pain (No more free sugar Mom?). Lemonade Stand had it all! I, personally, don't see what all the fuss about Diablo 2 is about, when clearly the sequal we are all waiting for is Lemonade Stand 2: Electric Boogaloo. It should be out any day now. Really ;)
when I see it on shelves. But I must say, it seems more like Diablo 1.5 than anything else.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
Stuff that matters to you?
Get over it.
"I got a half gallon of Jack, and 2 dozen Ant Traps. I'm about to get wild." -me
Diablo II on battle.net over IPMASQ works great. If you check the website, they say that the battle.net code for their older games has been updated in the patches to work properly over battle.net too. When was the last time you tried it?
I hope it's better than Daikatana
People say Diablo 2's system requirements are really special. "I can play this on my I-opener!" you hear them explain with glee. "Wow, Blizzard rocks!"
Yeah they did a real nice job making sure all the sprites stayed non-CPU intensive. Hell, Doom's sprites just killed my system. And don't even get me started on limiting you to a 640x480 resolution! That's two times higher than Doom. Take that ID! Genius, sheer genius.
It's like having my cake, and freakin' eating it too. Here's an excerpt from a conversation I had with my friend while playing the stress test.
Me: "Damn this game sure looks like hell."
My Friend: "You suck man, it's about the gameplay."
Me: "You mean like when I'm frantically hitting the left mouse button in an attempt to 'battle' my enemies?"
My Friend: Stares blankly "It's got depth."
Me: "Yeah, so does my left mouse button. You should hear the stories it tells. Hey button, remember that time I got that new weapon, you know, the one with bigger stats and stuff? Remember, it caused more damage when I pounded on you?"
Left Mouse Button: Whimpers "Please God let the frantic clicking stop."
And so on for hours. I can only imagine the full game - I can frantically click with two new characters on my 133 megahertz Celeron with 8 megs of RAM. I look forward to being player killed on such a low end system and replacing my mouse due to wear every couple of days.
Congratulations Blizzard, you're only 2 years past schedule and current technology. Kudos.
No. That is completely misguided.
The purpose of the stress test is to hammer the servers with waves of people.
Blizzard just sent out the Third wave of emails, and with their latest revision (very stable) of the server, and given the current number of people playing, it will give them an excellent idea of how to scale up their servers.
After the stress test is done, they will know how to handle the current loads, and adding more servers to anticipate more loads will not be a problem.
1.5 million people preordered the game thus far. This means they will have to scale their servers about 10-20 times (20 would be a good bet) in order to handle that many people.
I doubt blizzard will have a problem with that.
100,000 is a lot of people.
There's nothing in the press release about a Linux version.
Is one planned?
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
Everything in this post is false.
I just got invited to join the stress test, and they are going gold. Good timing there.
Diablo 2 better come out sometime this summer, very soon. Otherwise, I'll have another fiasco on my hands (per: Diablo 1) as to where all my work, school and other, was completley disregarded, along with all friends, while I stayed home and played battle.net for somewhere around 3 months. Hmm...maybe I can sue Blizzard for contributing to the delinquency of a minor? -evel aka matt- "Are we not me? No, we are DEVO!" -"Jocko Homo", Devo
I'm putting the shipping date in quotes, since it's not in stone, obviously, but I've read of certian web sites (you know, the kind with the rediculous 1-click patents) that are promising shipping on June 30th.
Blizzard has said they will have the game ported to Linux as soon as there are sales figures to support it ... How can you argue with that?
I can ask: if Blizzard is really sincere then why don't they cut a deal with Loki to do the port at Loki's expense, in return for which Loki gets a cut of the royalties? I don't know exactly how Loki's business model works but I imagine it's something like that. No risk for Blizzard. Hardly any risk for Loki either, because they know their market and their programming abilities very well.
--
Life's a bitch but somebody's gotta do it.
Hmmm ... time to go see if Babbages has charged my Visa yet.
RLJ
While I will no doubt purshase and lose many hours playing Diablo II, I find recent RPG offerings very lacking. None of them has the depth, or "feel" of Angband/Moria/Rogue/Nethack and all of them suffer from the horrible bane of a linear story, if I'm going to get into a character, I want to play that character my way, not a do a, then b, then c. What if I want to do c then a then b? or skip a altogether? aside from the obvious increase in enjoyment from a non-linear method, it makes the game more challenging. nothing takes the fun out of a game like encountering a difficult puzzle and being able to wander around until you come to the spot you're supposed to be at, and only that spot "does something" FF7 and up suffer from this worst of all,the closest to a "good" modern RPG I have found was Fallout and Fallout 2, hell you could wipe out an entire town, or most all of them and still finish. It had some wonderful depth of play. Diablo 1 was boring, almost like it was trying for the involvment and game play of Angband with graphics, but failling miserably. .) It's almost like game designers and developers today have gotten entirely lost in the graphics and "story" and forgotten about the most important aspect: Gameplay. Either that or they've started coding for the highest profits, which is most likely, unfortunately the highest profits often coincide with lowest common denominator quality-wise, especially in a game genre which is supposed to require some kind of thought, creating it for the "average person" is simply going to get you that an "average game" sure it may sell well, but it won't have the staying power or appeal of its better crafted, perhaps worse selling, games. The most memorable games, among those of us who acctually played them, are the ones that took the most thought. HHGtG, Adventure, most any of teh Infocom text based games, while lacking in even the simple graphics of the Rogue derivitives were games one could get involved in, and largely more addicted to than any of the recent "flashy graphics and long cinematic sequences make for a good game" genre of RPGs. *sigh* I guess I'll just crawl back into my hole and back to an era where quality RPGs meant something.
Even the MMORPG's are largely lacking in the depth of some of the better MUD's (which I must admit I never really got into either . .
--Akeru
Let's hope that there's intelligent life somewhere out in space 'Cause there's bugger-all down here on Earth.
Diablo was tons o' fun until everyone used a trainer and became a super-powered PK (player killer) or PKK (player killer killer). No challenge at all, just who had the most ears ...
Us lucky Stress Testers get to play pretty much right up until we have the retail version. I must go play Diablo II Stress Test now...
--
Dear Battle.net Stress Testers,
We wanted to personally notify you that Diablo II has gone gold and the master CDs have been released to manufacturing. We
expect the game to begin shipping to stores worldwide as early as the end of June.
Even though the game has gone gold, the stress test will continue throughout the next couple of weeks. The optimization of
servers is completely independent from the game going gold, so you will continue to see network improvement up until
launch. We also will be sending out access keys to European and Asian gamers shortly, so we can fully test those local
servers prior to the game hitting stores as well.
We encourage you to continue playing over the next few weeks to help us test the servers as much as possible before the
game ships. We will email you prior to the stress test ending.
Thank you for the hours you have committed to playing Diablo II on Battle.net. We hope that you will enjoy the game.
Blizzard Entertainment
In my experience, it has seemed that the Battle.Net Beta servers have been up alot more recently than they were at the beginning. Which is promissing.
Either their servers are getting better, or people have just been getting bored with the small game and poor server uptimes....
While I thought it was cool to get to be a tester, the game didn't impress me much. The servers were down a bunch and even now it's not uncommon to get booted off a game.
:)
:(
The lag is terrible (even with dual-channel isdn), although funny to watch. The thing that might change my mind is if they make it so "going hostile" has to be done by both parties. Once you hit level 9, you can go out in a group only to have some level 14 person come in and go hostile and you have to decide whether you want to back to town and turn off hostile or hope they don't find you
(And lag really hurts here, I once got killed and never even saw the guy who killed me, he was off the screen one second, and I was dead the next, never saw a single swing...
3 CD's?
Isn't it abut time things like this got a DVD release?
I am already playing with the stress test and WINE. I don't have Windows on the machine, will someone who does use a windows installation test it? The installer works perfectly, but it fails to load up the opening screen of the actual game.
One on Starcraft/Brood War, one on Diablo.
Not all of us use it just for servers. Yes I run a few servers with it, but I also have it dual-booted on both my personal desktop and my laptop. I know I would buy Blizzard games for linux. I would love to wipe out my Windoze partition. Only if I could get Creative to support my Dxr3...
-Elendale (and yes, I'm going to pre-order again)
IANAT (I Am Not A Troll)
Oh wow. SLashdot: I'll pay to rent a room, chair, few square feet of space, anything that gets me but 2 hops to battle.net!
=)
No reasonable offer of rent will be refused!
=)
OMG that's a cool page! Gonna hafta give it a try...
There is much cruelty in the universe, John.
Yeah, we seem to have the tour map.
Absolutely, I was one of the closed testers also (look for Seth Bokelman in the game credits :) ) and it was a much more enjoyable experience than the stress test. I've been telling all of my friends that the game is easily worth buying the day it comes out, I wasted numerous hours just playing as the Paladin character class, I never even had time to get into the other four!
There's much more that varies between the character classes than there were in the first game. The skill trees have some really unique stuff to them, I can't wait to see the really high-powered spells that the sorceress and necromancer classes have.
This is a sequel, much like Microsoft's Age of Kings, which is truly much better than it's forebearer, it's not simply a glorified expansion pack, or a couple new features, but a completely new experience, using all of the elements that made the first game a giant success, yet improving every aspect of the gameplay in a logical and much-appreciated manner.
Go Blizzard, I've gotta order my copy now, it's too bad we closed beta folks didn't get a free copy, but TANSTAAFL...
I do wish they hadn't made the closed list public, I got e-mail from people I didn't know asking me if they could get my CD Key, etc.
---
When in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout. --Robert A. Heinlein
Like the other guys that responded, I use ZSNES. I've never had a problem with it on my P2/333mHz/64 megs ram PC, and it's very customizable.
It _is_ DOS though.
I haven't tried Mario Kart on it, however. Get it and all kinds of emulator crap at Zophar's Domain.
-JimThetaMy stupid web site
Pry out your mouse and head off to your local electronic store, buy a dozen or two of those switches, and stick the new ones in!
Perhaps someone should produce a mouse in a way that new switches could be inserted without touching those soldering irons. How about ZIFs?
.sigs are useless; it doesn't protect you from imposters.
"70-minute original score of ambient music"
Why did they bother with 70 min?!?! It's ambient music for goodness sake! It could have been 10 min and I wouldn't have noticed a difference.
I'm just going to be playing my mp3s anyway.
troll
Shine on, you crazy diamond.
The gold disk has been cut!
Cool!
So does that mean all the 31337 wARrez D00dZ will
have a copy by now???
Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, Illegal, or Offensive comments might be moderated up.
Good! Now that they have Diablo 2 out of the way they have more resources to put on Warcraft 3. I don't know how much longer I can play StarCraft. Anyone want to start a betting pool on the actual release date of War3? Blizzard says end of the year.
Have to find a mouse with super-heavy duty microswitches... :)
Well, I supposedly got lucky, and got an email saying that I could download 100 megabytes to stress test Diablo II. From what I saw, the game looks butt ugly! It looked like it was running in 640 x 480, in 256 colours. It probably was running in 800x600, but damn, I didn't buy a 19" monitor to see bigger pixels. The blood was the color of bright red lipstick and really stuck out... Not the usual dark red blood stains you get after chopping up a couple of neighbours, but bright glaring red. Didn't satisfy my homicidal urge like Half-Life or Counterstrike does... The only good thing I saw was this mention of a HardCore mode. This apparently makes Diablo a game where you don't get resurrected if you die. Apparently, this strikes the snobbish gaming community as new, but hey, Nethack, anyone? From what I saw of the player base, we can look forward to bouts of item farming when the game comes out. The player interaction seems to be limited to wankers starting a server described 'will pay 6k for perfect gem'. Well, I'm holding my bucks until something better comes along.
I tried it a couple of days ago. I have 1.07 for starcraft. Diablo 2 isn't out yet. Beta diablo 2? Can I have the URL that you heard battl.net code has been updated? On battle.net, mutiple people can play, but not in the same game. I'm also using the latest ipchains with ipmasqadm. So.... I don't think that sc is working with ipmasq correctly yet.
you give us a bad reputation. bah on you.
-Yarn - Rio Karma: Excellent
Preorder from a GAME STORE.
Basically, go to your local EB, Babbages/Software etc, Compusa, whatever, and put down 10 dollar deposit on the game, or pay for it in full (either way won't make a difference)
By doing this, you are GUARANTEED to get a copy from the central warehouse, and have it be reserved for you.
If you do mailorder, you essentially are in a large queue of orders, and first come first served is the rule!
Your local game-store can handle everyone that preorders, and you'll have your copy the very morning the game ships.
I preordered at EB and paid 10 dollars down. ANyone can do this. Just make sure you do it before it ships from warehouse (it ships and takes 1 day to reach the shop, in most cases)
Conclusion: I'm waking up the day it ships, calling in sick, going to EB at 10 AM, and will be playing by 10:30AM =). If you preorder at your store, you'll be doing the same thing.
As a fellow stress tester, I'm actually not just disappointed in the crashing of the servers and the lag (I have a feeling that the lag will still be there come live-day), but in the lack of complexity of gameplay. I've become a bit of an Asheron's Call snob of late (yes, I know its a M$ game) and I have to say the complexity gives the game a GREAT advantage over others IMHO. Diablo and Diablo II are just point, click and kill. While its cool because I'm leveling pretty quickly now, I'm sure that I'll tire of it soon enough, then back to AC.
Clinton made me a Republican. Bush made me a Libertarian. Trump is making me question reality.
I could not image 1 game making it worth my time to dig up a copy of Windows....I always thought I could by a Nintendo or something if I wanted to play games....Now if I see a message that says "Mozilla Goes Gold" I may be a bit more excited...(If nothing more than to see if it is faster and more stable than Netscape 2)
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
*cough*iD Software*cough*
...when Diablo II comes out, how many of us would even notice for at least a week? :-)
I think the terms are readily interchangeable... ;) On the same track, try reading it as: Mephisto := Microsoft Baal := AOL
I just want to take over the world...Why does that automatically make me EVIL?
Well I feel for you guys with Linux desktops and laptops... but Mac users will get it by third quarter 2000 (whenever that is really). On the plus side I guess I can finish my thesis first :)
FWIW, Bungie is still number one in my eyes.
Winton
Oh my god. I actually agree with Signal 11. Something must be done to remedy this occurrence.. quickly!
Bitchslapped? Give Rob a bitchslap from bitchslapped.com.
Oh boy, one of these again..
here's the problem, see Blizzard is a small company. They make what, one game a year at most? (Granted Starcraft was on the top 10 list for over two years which goes to show you how good it was, but ok...)
They don't have the kind of money to make linux versions of the game if the sales aren't going to be there to support it. They've said several times "Show us the sales, and we'll port it." No one to date has been able to show them anything even remotely resembling strong sales of Linux games. The market just isn't there.
A tiny but growing market is still a tiny market. As soon as they think there is money to be made by porting to Linux, you can bet they'll do it.
So far as the "well they never innovate" nonsense, well if you really want to believe that, thats just fine. Personally, I always try to figure out how truly godawful games like anything made by Westwood manages to do so well when stacked up against a masterpiece like Starcraft in the sales department. Of course Tiberian Sun totally died off after a month, so I guess in the end things worked out.
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
That's Dungeon Keeper II.
I made the stress test open under WINE, but I have never seen a blizzard game hit battlenet.. so single player will probably work, but no multiplay..
Diablo 2 goes gold
Oh, come on! It's not even April anymore!
------
Wacraft Adventures was canceled, the story line has been integrated into Warcraft III.
Rasputiin
but I have never seen a blizzard game hit battlenet :-)
Doh.. should say - i have never seen a blizzard game UNDER WINE hit battlenet
Come on ... they have GOT to know at least a week in advance when they aren't going to make a date. I can't cut them any slack for that.
And think of it this way, people wouldn't care that the date slips if they weren't so excited about the game. That's gotta be worth something.
Blizzard has said they will have the game ported to Linux as soon as there are sales figures to support it. Considering they're a small company and don't have free sources of income (ala Ion Storm), they probably can't afford to port the game if they won't make any money off the port.
How can you argue with that? Once there's enough Linux users who don't just go out and buy the Windows version but instead hold out for a Linux version to make the port profitiable, there will be a port.
Asking a Corporation to deliberately loose money to support an Operating System is pretty silly, you certainly can't expect them to do that unless they think there is PR to be gained from it that will outweigh the cost.
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
Actually, they have explained the woodpecker:
Begin quote:
Woodpeckers
Well-adapted to living in trees, woodpeckers have strong toes with sharp claws that enable them to cling upright on the bark of trunks and branches. They also have stiff tail feathers to prop them up vertically. Their hard, pointed beaks allow them to chisel into wood in search of insects and sap, or to excavate cavities for nesting and roosting. They also use their beaks to drum or tap out sounds during breeding season. Their thick skulls are protected from the concussive force of pounding by a narrow space around the brain that functions as a shock-absorber.
With long, flexible, bristled and sticky tongues, woodpeckers call probe small holes in wood to catch insects. In feeding, most woodpeckers start at the base of a tree, searching for insects and spiders, and then they move up the trunk in spirals until they reach the larger limbs where they explore the undersides of branches. Some species, such as sapsuckers and hairy woodpeckers, excavate holes in live trees. Others, such as flickers and downy woodpeckers, prefer to drill in dying trees or snags. In either case, the birds tunnel down 6 to 18 inches deep, making the excavation wider at the bottom for the egg chamber.
From a different resource:
And if you've ever wondered why woodpeckers don't get headaches with all that bill banging, its because their skulls are unusually thick, curving inward at the upper base of the bill, instead of meeting it directly, giving the woodpecker's brain a built-in shock absorber. The muscle structure of the head is specialized to power the thrusts of the bill and to also help absorb the shock caused by pecking.
Networked stuff is by definition trickier, but quake 3 is proof it can be done.
-- It is my strong belief that it is a mistake to hold strong beliefs.
I think that whats more important than fixing battle.net code so people cant cheat is to fix the %^*#ing code so we can use IPCHAINS/IPMASQ and play with mutiple people from behind the IPCHAINS server (in the same game that is).Starcraft and Linux works!!
Too short ? Hell, no !
The rest of the CDs is filled with content, baby! Just look at Baldur's Gate.
"I like to sit and cry in front of my T.V." -- T.V. Song - Moondog Jr.
Says who? Kind of arrogant that you speak for the ENTIRE slashdot population and determine that every single one of us uses linux all the time for everything...
I played Starcraft64 at E3 Last Year... looked like crap. What really pisses me off though is that i gotta keep that windows partition on my hard drive for Diablo2. Just when I thought i was done with windows because of the UnrealTournament linux port.
They changed their FAQ, now it says Q1 next year, although thats still in the realm of "yeah right".
When they said it'd be out this year, I actually laughed when I heard it. That was before they changed the whole game from some kind of Roleplaying Hybrid back into a real RTS, so who knows how far that set them back.
Mid next year at the absolute earliest, I say Christmas next year.
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
Its supposed to hit the shelves sometime around then, so *maybe* you can get it in time. I don't honestly know, these things aren't overly reliable.
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
I loved the merchants in Diablo...
:)
I probably won't see D2 for a while, but if the merchants still say "What can I do for you?", I'll still say "YOUR MOM!"
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Sure is nice to see they're putting the Battle.net servers on solid ground. Those mobile, ship-board servers WERE an interesting idea, but storms were a problem. When the Battle.net server fleet was on the crest of a wave, things were wonderful, but in the troughs!.....man, trying to punch the signal through the waves must have been the cause of all the lag.
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
yup. I'm going to have to pirate it though, I'd buy it if it was for *nix at least.
Mike Roberto (roberto@soul.apk.net) -GAIM: MicroBerto
Berto
Now we are plagued by very good Online RGSs and the major dellima wil be 'which one?' I am playing EverQuest and man that is a good game, but I want to play Diablo II. Eeergh.. will I betray my fellow EQ players or stick to my sword? I could see people jumping out of their bedroom windows over this.
-Effendi
-Effendi
I am not big diablo fan and wont belive something blizzard says untill I see it. That has been learned from experience.
FearLinux.com
Diablo was a pretty sweet game... Sure took a while for Diablo 2 to come around, geez... It was announced LONG time ago...
Now if they can provide me with a Linux version I'll be happy, although Diablo ran quite respectably under WINE...
Only one town was more of the most boring parts of the orginal.
Great to see that their ramped it up this time.
Malk-a-mite
Tell my folks I love 'em, and my work that I'm sick. I'll be playing D2. :)
--
+&x
I like the game and will buy it... but I agree that the lag/player-killer combo sucks. This is especially frustrating because of two things - 1) the pks ambush you at the waypoint - the lag as the new data loads leaves you staring at a blank screen and listening to yourself get sliced up, even by a wimpy pk. If you go after your body instead of just getting it in town in a new game, and they kill you again (now that you have no armor or weapons), you drop everything and they run off with the goods. I lost a perfect rudy sword and a perfect skull helm this way (though no big deal since the chars are getting wiped). I won't be going back after my body in the same game any more. ( char name grimthork )
Why is it that every game that comes out these days is crap unless it uses alien technology from 200 years in the future. So what if it doesn't break any boundaries in the world of computer gaming? Frankly, if it weren't for cheating on bnet I would still be playing Diablo I, so if D2 is nothing more than a REALLY BIG patch that prevents cheating I'll still buy it.
All God does is watch us and kill us when we get boring. We must never, ever be boring.
Now, all of my loser friends are going to be playing this game. And, you're telling me that I won't even have Slashdot?!?!?
What kind of a cruel world is this?
I'm going to have to sit around and READ BOOKS while you guys play this damn game.
I will go cry now.
No comment at this time
The demo was too much of a tease. Waiting was getting unbearable. Yes, I was expecting a bit more out of the engine, but I will take playability (which it has) and fun over bleeding edge graphics any day. The pizza delivery guys in my neighborhood are going to be *very* happy ...
Check out Magic Firesheep!
Uh, dude? They're talking about the CD ... not in game.
Yes, the servers went down often. Yes, it may be laggy at times, but what exactly is a stress test?
It's made to stress, even CRASH the servers. With the stress test, Blizzard makes sure it handles a proper load, and this is accomplished through coding and modification of their servers. They WILL take it down in order to do this. People think this will happen in the final version of the game, and believe me, IT WILL NOT happen as often, if at all!
I was a CLOSED beta tester and it wasn't down as much as the stress test! In fact, the closed beta test was awesome! Tons and tons of gameplay (much more expansive than the stress test) and only on about 1/3'rd the game!
IMHO Diablo 2 will be one of the most polished games to ever reach shelves! Don't believe disgruntled stress testers, they just don't interpret what 'stress test' really means!
BTW: for the curious: it seems Blizzard is using SunOS (Solaris?) for their servers. Go Unix..
After playing the Stress Test I really wonder about the quality of the final product. If Battle.net was unable to maintain 100,000 individuals in one section of the world, how will they perform when you have millions of users all over the world? Baring in mind that the server status has improved drastically in the past two weeks, is it really likely that Bnet will be able to support to proposed load? As for the graphics engine, I realize that the ST was limited by colour/detail to keep it small, but in comparison to other games... even Balder's Gate, the graphics are mediocre at best. I'm really intested to see how Direct3D/Glide is improved in the final copy. The best thing about D2 is Blizzard's striving to keep cheating out. Diablo I became extremely unfun when everyone was duping weapons and making it crappy for everyone else. I hope that D2 remains fair for as long as possible for everyone's enjoyment. -CM
..Eschew Obfuscation..
And they're using Exodus to host the servers, just like slashdot. I bet slashdot has some sort of clause in their contract with Exodus that gives them direct access to the Battle.Net servers.
Diablo is gonna be a great game, as all Blizzard's games are, and of course they're gonna make a mint =), BUT it's not really doing much to forward the technology of gaming. I've been watching the evolution on Neverwinter Nights for awhile now, and I have to say that Bioware is doing some revolutionary stuff over and above what everyone else is. The biggest Gee Whiz feature of their new system is the Toolkit/Editor that'll allow all you D & D fans to recreate that perfect dungeon from your childhood. I say Bout time. Gaming shifted awhile back from linear, single shot experiences into long-term Unreal and Quake community type of user supported products with full mods. Much like linux, a creative department consisting of a huge user base is far superior to any single or team of artists. By providing the ability for added user-created content, they're prolonging the life and value of the game considerably. Very cool for those on a budget. Plus, they've announced full support for linux, which is an unusual step for a company making PC games. Hopefully, they mean full support at the same time as the Windows release, and not a year later, but hey, we'll take what we can get right? Check it out here:
_ page_856_1.html
http://www.dailyradar.com/features/game_feature
Imagination is the silver lining of Intelligence.
If you check out the screenshots of the Amazon character, notice which leg is armored. I'll give you a hint -- it's not the left leg that she's shown leading with in all the shots, where it might actually do the lass some good.....
Details like that always manage to bug the hell out of me. ;)
--WhiskeyJack
This is not relevant to Natalie Portman. Please do not let Hemos post any more. Thanks for reading.
Take this personaility test.
I was just at EB, and they told me it'd been moved up to June 30th.
Cheers,
Rick Kirkland
I noticed Starcraft 64 the other day on Gamecenter.com. Seems they don't mind porting to other platforms, just not ours.
The stress test is sweet. It just reiterates the adage: "Mac for multimedia, Linux for programming, Windows for games". I'm just hoping that my new hdd and RAM sticks will be able to handle constant hours of gaming.
-- Count Spatula: The Culinary Vampire "...because my cooking sucks."
Even with Starcraft 64 (which was either just released or not released in stores yet?), it took _forever_ to get to the N64... which seems really silly since it would have sold pretty well had they released it earlier... but now it's like, the N64 is nearing its final year, and the game has already lost its fresh feeling.
You played the stress test and not the beta. As far as I know the beta came before the stress test and was much more compleat.
... are some of you talking about? I'm not much of a gamer, and there's only one reason for it.
Before I delve too far into that, let me ask, who remembers Moria? this includes UMoria, JMoria, MacMoria, etc. et al...
The reason Moria was (and still is!!!) great is NOT the graf/x. For thoes of you who don't know, Moria has some very advanced graf/x - ASCII graf/x that is. It rocks though because it is a game I can enjoy for hours. In fact, Diablo is almost exactly like Moria with graf/x. I loved it. I have been playing Moria for about 15 years... it started on an apple II when my bro brought it home from college and I was, what? 5? 6? and the game is still entertaining. If they have added more levels, more characters, and more things to randomize (oh yeah, and maybe a little chaleng -that would be good too - diablo was too easy to keep being entertaining) than I might play it untill I go blind. I'll start again as soon as I can hardwire my comp up into my brain... I don't "Game" I PLAY and ONLY if it's FUN!!! fuck graf/x.
This has been written by a man who takes money for graf/x work. Need a quick 3d movie?
Everything and everyone is an aspect of Gd. So remember to show proper respect!
Note that Blizzard had a number of excellent titles...once upon a time. In recent years they've only released rehashed engines that they claim are chock full of innovations (read Starcraft & DiabloII). It's sad to see a company coast on the popularity of previous titles.
I was in both the private beta and the public stress test. Diablo2 did not work at ALL on my machine in the private beta in D3D mode. They claim its a bug in Nvidia drivers for the Geforce DDR, yet all my OTHER games seem to work ok.
:) I just really really hope that the driver issue is fixed in the gold version. I still can't play Diablo II stress test on my Geforce, and Blizzard won't respond to my bug reports. :(
Then the stress test comes out. Now, if i use the latest Nvidia reference drivers (which btw, won't let me go past 1900x1200, yuck), I can play the game if I don't mind random rectangles and objects shooting around the screen screwing up the 3D. I can still play in DirectDraw mode... but seriously... whats the point?
Lag is so bad that I can hardly ever run away from a hard monster without getting hit for all my hitpoints even though I'm all the way across the screen from the monster. I have a 640/576 (up/down) dsl line, so the lag problem is NOT on my end.
br>The only major improvement in the D2 engine is the fact that loading different dungeon levels is now basically instentaneous whereas before it used to take up to 20 secs on slower machines. The graphics really don't look any better except for the spells. But since I can't run in D3D mode due Geforce compatibility problems, I don't get to see those nifty spells
With all that in mind. I'm still going to be one of the first people on my block to buy this game!
bah@starcrat.org
-Elendale (Yes, I did too...)
IANAT (I Am Not A Troll)
"Nearly 25 minutes of motion picture quality cinematics and a 70-minute original score of
ambient music."
Is it me or is this 25 minutes of motion picture cinematics too short? The introduction is already like 7-8 minutes long. 3 CDs too! Hmm!
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
In Diablo II, players return to a dark world plagued by evil forces. After possessing the body of the hero who defeated him, Diablo resumes his nefarious scheme to shackle humanity into unholy slavery by joining forces with the other Prime Evils, Mephisto and Baal.
-For a minute there I thought that was "Doubleclick" not "Diablo".
-
Starsucks
Wouldn't make much of a difference, might actually slow Diablo II down. It wasn't programmedto take advantage of multi-processors and the like. All the extra stuff would just sit there and suck of power.
I remember playing Diablo at work until 4:00am with my buddies, it was so much fun. I once came back to work at 10:00am to find a friend there trying to get back all my magical items, which got lost when he "borrowed" my character to save his...<GRIN>
--Alain
At least one good thing came from the long length of time it took to create this new addiction : very reasonable system requirements. This goes to prove that you don't need bleeding edge (and expensive) hardware to play a great game.