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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 ;)
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.
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
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...
Actually, no, not 4, 3. Originally it might have been 4 CDs.. But take a look at this post by Blizzard employee Geoff Frazier.
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
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
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..
Wait, I think I have that backwords. How and I supposed to get any quality time with my new game when I have this wife to be playing?
Hmmm ... that doesn't seem right either.
Ah yes ... multitasking. That's the answer. Can I run my wife in a window while the game is running?
Everyone gets down on Blizzard because their release date has slipped on Diablo II. They may not make ship dates, but they have been very persistient in trying to release quality games. They have also gone a long way to fix battle.net code to eliminate cheating, all the while keeping battle.net a free service. I think in the end they have given their fans and users great games that have become instant classics.
With the mulitple character classes, the quest based episodes, and the addition of skills, I certainly think it earns the 2.0 distinction.
The minute to minute gameplay is virtually identical thought (walk around, click on the bad guys, look for loot).
How many people complained that Doom 2 wasn't different enough from Doom 1?
"It's just the same old Malibu Stacy with a new hat."
"But she has a new hat!"
-B
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.