New Diablo II Patch Finally Revealed

colaco writes "After more than a year waiting for the 1.10 patch, Diablo II gamers now have an inside scoop at changes that it will implement. Most of the info on new items and gameplay rules (eg: ladder characters) have been available on Arreat Summit for the past few hours, and are now displayed on DiabloII.net. Blizzard has also offered some clarification. Sources inside Blizzard indicate that more info will be given at E3."

Comments

Fervor in patch information

[Navaash Fenwylde]

To say that this has been one of the most hotly anticipated patches of the year is an understatement. Hell, it's been one of the most hotly anticipaed patches of almost the past TWO years.

The information went up by mistake Thursday night in the midst of a Blizzard webserver upgrade, and it ended up getting a virtual Slashdotting as thousands upon thousands of information-hungry gamers descended upon the server.

The problem was corrected Friday morning, but so much of the information has disseminated itself around the Internet that Blizzard posted a partial update Friday afternoon to appease the masses. A Blizzard programmer who had been working on the patch commented independenty on a couple of other message boards that the information that had been uploaded was somewhat inaccurate (is he implying that the items as they are now are BETTER?).

Any time a patch comes out for a game nowadays, thousands upon thousands of hungry gamers flood the Internet to get it. In the case of Blizzard patches, it seems, getting even a *preview* of that information is enough to clog the hell out of a webserver. Just wait until the patch actually gets released... *g*

Re:Why bother?

[Jugalator]

Diablo 2, released years later, was nothing more than more of the same. What a disappointment! It was repetitive and tedious: click-die, click-die, click-die.

D1 was also the same. Could it be the game genre you don't like? All Action RPG's I know is click-die. When they start having more RPG elements, the "Action" part of the genre is usually dropped.

What made it worse is that saving the game doesn't work. You can save anywhere, but you start back in "town," and all the baddies that you've tediously killed are back alive again. For that "feature" alone, I gave up playing after only a week.

Waypoints are saved. The reason to why the game state aren't fully saved (dead monsters coming back to life) is because it doesn't make sense in multiplayer and on-line play. And I have a feeling D2 was always much more geared to this environment than D1.

Re:Kudos to Blizzard

[critter_hunter]

Amazing gameplay changes?! From now on, players above lvl 70 will require more gameplay time, killing even harder units, to gain more worthless levels (since really, levels get increasingly useless, since the items you can use are much more powerful than the additional levels' effects). Add to that that they've added more items, most of which are Elite uniques, and more Runewords, probably all wildly powerful, and Diablo II just becomes even more item based.

And let's face it, starting a new game every 30 seconds to make another Meph run is just SOO much fun! Go! Kill Meph! Kill him again! and again! ad nauseam!

Re:Ack!

[bigman2003]

I agree. They called it Diablo, because that game truely was the Devil. I spent/wasted waaaayyyy too many hours on that game. Hundreds.

Then finally I was in Hell, in Hell mode (single player) and something happened to my character (barbarian), and I lost my entire inventory.

Another time I was using an assassin, and put way too many points into some of the simple skills, which left me unable to kill that big maggoty thing at the end of Level II in Hell mode.

Then another time I had a sorceress, and I couldn't get through one of the spider lairs in Level III (hell mode)

The list goes on and on....I've played every character through the game twice, and but could not get through hell mode. I think the barbarian could have done it.

I eventually had to un-install it, and GIVE THE GAME AWAY just to get over my addiction. But I am frequently heard saying "I can't wait until Diable III comes out...Diablo III is gonna be awesome".

BnetD new feature: Piracy Promotion

[vertical_98]

So only pirates use Bnetd? Stopping that awful program will wipe out pirates? Pirates of D2 are unable to go online?

No, No, and NO!
I can make a copy of the 3 disks and send them to a friend, he can then install D2, start an open TCP/IP game and ......guess.....play on line. Can he play on Battle.net? Yes, but not if I'm playing also. Can he play on a Bnetd server? yes. Can he play me online? In an open game. Can he play solo? yes. Can he make multiple copies and play with people on a local net? yes.
So please, please, I beg you. explain how bnetd promotes piracy? What? They don't check for CD-keys? OMG! Those bastards! (slight reality check: They have NO way to check for keys)
So my solution is a solution...because if it was that damn good....I'd pay to have a full legal copy. And if I didn't think it was worth it...I'd not pay for it.
What you are saying is that pirates wouldn't pay to play....So how do you know they would anyway?
Vertical

Sorry if I don't see it. I do love D2 and have 2 legal copies. I also have a Bnetd server on my home lan. Oh well, I'm sure you're going to tell me how everyone else who uses Bnetd is a pirate and I'm really rare. Maybe I just want to believe that piracy isn't as big a problem as Microsoft/RIAA/MPAA/etc. would have us believe.

Diablo 2 is *still* a top selling PC game, weekly

[ThresholdRPG]

In case anyone thought Diablo 2 was no longer relevant in the PC market:

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/deltaforceblac kh awkdown/news_6026076.html

Best-selling PC games for the week of April 13-19, 2003:

Rank / Title / Publisher / Average Price
1 / Delta Force: Black Hawk Down / NovaLogic / $39
2/ Command & Conquer: Generals / EA / $46
3/ The Sims Deluxe / EA / $44
4 / The Sims: Unleashed / EA / $29
5 / Battlefield 1942 / EA / $47
6 / Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets / EA / $18
7 / Zoo Tycoon / Microsoft / $28
8 / CSI: Crime Scene Investigation / Ubi Soft / $30
9 / Diablo II / Vivendi Universal / $21
10 / Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos / Vivendi Universal / $39

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/commandconqu er generals/news_6026444.html

Best-selling PC games for the week of April 20-26, 2003:

Rank / Title / Publisher / Average Price
1/ Command & Conquer: Generals / EA / $46
2/ The Sims Deluxe / EA / $42
3 / Delta Force: Black Hawk Down / NovaLogic / $39
4 / The Sims: Unleashed / EA / $29
5 / Battlefield 1942 / EA / $47
6 / Diablo II / Vivendi Universal / $21
7 / Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos / Vivendi Universal / $36
8 / Zoo Tycoon / Microsoft / $27
9 / CSI: Crime Scene Investigation / Ubi Soft / $30
10 / Battlefield 1942: The Road to Rome / EA / $19

-----------

That's right. #6 and #9 for the most recent weeks of PC sales data.

Pretty amazing for a 3 year old game.

This ... on Slashdot?

[DaemonGem]

Why are patch releases being posted on Slashdot? If every patch release were posted on Slashdot, then there would be no space for other articles. That being said, why single out Diablo II? I could just as well send in an article about the Descent 3 1.4 patch, or at least, I could have, when it came out. Are we now going to get a Slashdot article where people can talk about how long they've waited for this patch to come out all the time? Surely there's better news than this.

Perhaps you will rate me as flamebait, though I assure you that this is not meant as such.

-Dae