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

Wow, this is neat!

[Trespass]

Oh, wait...it's not 1998.

Ack!

[edgezone]

I swear, I really didn't NEED to have a life. I don't know about many of you, but Diablo II ended up being THE most addictive game I've ever played (eclipsing both Nethack and Civ II no less!). Now there are even MORE things for me to try and figure out (including a bloody new tweaked skill tree? God save me!).

Well, I'm happy to hear about all this though. I'm hopefull that it will at least dampen the number of rushes and cow levels for a few days. While blizzard has been known to throw a few curveballs with thier patches to Diablo, I'm extremely excited about the chance to jump on there and give them a shot and go hunting after some of the new uniques. Ok. I've wasted too much time talking to all of you already. Off to battle.net.

Re:Ack!

[pHatidic]

I swear, I really didn't NEED to have a life. I don't know about many of you, but Diablo II ended up being THE most addictive game I've ever played (eclipsing both Nethack and Civ II no less!).

More addicting than Nethack? DIE HERETIC DIE! And may the RNG spit upon your grave.

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".

Re:Ack!

[TalonKarrde989]

I gave away the game 2 times to try to get over my addiction. Then I went out and bought it again. I finaly got to the point online where I had a char selection screen full of level 99 characters, 10 mule accounts, 3 of which having nothing but SOJs, until I finaly got over it. I. Was. Addicted. So was the rest of the "clan" I was in.

I'd like to point out...

[Mononoke]

You've been waiting over a year for a GAME to be patched??

What have you been doing in the meantime, living?

Re:I'd like to point out...

[juggleme]

The game doesn't need patching in terms of bugs. I'm not saying it's bug free or anything, but the game is definitely worth playing in its current form. Think of this "patch" as a bucket of extra goodies to entice you to keep playing this addictive game until the next one comes out.

Oh, and I've been playing Angband. Almost as addictive, but it doesn't require as much adrenaline. I've do play other games; it's not like Diablo is the only game in town...

Re:I'd like to point out...

[afidel]

Don't bother, the top ladder characters will be built using teams playing a group of characters 24X7 until they get one to level 99, basically they build the team to level 80+, then they repeatadly kill everything in a level except for a boss, work the boss down to a few hps, then the char they are trying to get to 99 comes in and kills the boss. They use a couple teams so that the target char can jump from game to game repeatadly killing bosses. Last time I played they had level 99 done in under 36 hours.

I'm not sure I like...

[mdbales]

this It takes the whole uniqueness of classes away. I guess it could be interesting.

Please notice!

[Jugalator]

Much of the stats on diabloii.net for unique items, runewords, set items and skills are all wildly inaccurate. I have so far heard two Blizzard representatives saying they were "WAY wrong" and "ancient data". The leak of information was unintentional and an unfortunate side-effect of a mistake during the web server upgrade process. The leaked patch data seem to be from 1.10 in an early stage of development, likely even before their Quality Assurance team has tested the stuff for balancing, since they are still doing it.

So... Before you complain about the items and runewords being too powerful (there have been some complaints like this) and that the Necro/Druid didn't get their necessary skill changes, remember that much (most?) of the "revealed" data on the diabloii.net site is simply incorrect or missing.

For correct information, check Arreat Summit (official Diablo II information site) and the information that will be released during/after E3 (i.e. May 13 - 16 or shortly after).

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.

Hacking ruined Diablo II

[WIAKywbfatw]

Diablo II is a great game, definitely worth £30/$50/whatever of any gamer's money, but it's a shame that the online experience has been ruined for many fans by the ridiculous number of hacks that have spawned up since the game was released.

Credit to Blizzard, the game's another masterpiece that's playable way past the point where most games just become boring (yes, I know DII can be repetitive, but it's repetitive in a fun way) and it's done all it could to patch hacks, exploits, etc when they've surfaced, but all the duping, hacking of uber items, etc really spoilt a great game for many players.

I know that I, several friends and many others all stopped playing DII for that very reason.

I suppose, in a way, Blizzard should be flattered that so many people out there were so obsessed at having the best of everything that they were prepared to hack the game to death. Nobody writes hacks for awful games that are barely played. But that's scant consellation for those of us who's experiences have been soured by a small, mindless minority.

Re:Hacking ruined Diablo II

[Jugalator]

I agree with you, and I guess this is where the idea with MMORPG's and a constant income for the game company to continue supporting the game with a dedicated team comes into play.

Blizzard are continuing to ban hackers and recently banned 130k accounts (!) but it doesn't happen that often, and it's actually cool they do it at all since I don't think they earn much money from the game anymore, especially when you take the bandwidth costs for their free servers into account.

Diablo II is a game I think should really benefit from the MMORPG game model.

Re:Hacking ruined Diablo II

[Elwood P Dowd]

If it's still worth it to stock Diablo II on shelves in Office Depot, then it's probably still selling. And it's definitely still in Office Depot.

Re:Hacking ruined Diablo II

[asink]

Whoa... A minority of players cheat on DII? That is new to me. I've been playing for well over 2 years now, and at the very least over 95% of the players use maphack. A cheat. Hacks, dupes, trojans, and otherwise malicious cheats are now and have been a part of the culture of DII for a _very_ long time. Nonmalicious cheats simply added another element to the game, and gave me more code to play with! It is sad that this drove you away, but why not just go with the flow?

To answer another question altogether, Blizz has to 'fix' the hacking not because they are dedicated, but because major news sites have picked up on the enormous hacking community. Syadasti was on TechTV a long time ago that covered his mephbot, and Slashdot posted info about d2jsp, a javascript parser for diabloii. That's just off the top of my head, I'm sure there have been other damaging news coverage. They certainly have never been in a hurry to fix dupes or the easily detected hacked items. I don't claim to know anything for sure, but I started cheating because I had played long enough to know that blizz doesn't really care.

Kudos to Blizzard

[DeeBye]

It's nice to see a gaming company support an older game, for no more reason than to keep making it better. They didn't need to (the game is far from bug-free, but it's still very playable), and it makes little economic sense to devote resources to it.

By most accounts, the 1.10 patch introduces some pretty amazing gameplay changes. It's almost like another expansion.

Way to go, Blizzard.

-DeeBye

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:Kudos to Blizzard

[Babbster]

You're kidding, right? Everything you described (especially "even more item based") is exactly what people wanted when they bought the game, and it's CERTAINLY what people who are still playing the game want - I'm not one of them but I might give 1.10 a try when it arrives.

I'll admit that "amazing gameplay changes" is hyperbole but what the heck is wrong with someone still enjoying a game and being excited about it? If you enjoy making these kinds of comments, might I suggest visiting the message boards of GameFAQs? You certainly wouldn't be out of place there.

Whatever changes end up coming in the patch, Blizzard is indeed to be commended for their seemingly endless support of an old game for which they charge no extra money to play online.

Re:Kudos to Blizzard

[critter_hunter]

More items IS a good development. The problem is that these items are so rare, it destroys the game. Instead of simply having to level up to gain power - and lets face, going around killing thousands of monster certainly is enjoyable - you have to selectively kill the "big drop" monsters in the game repeatedly to be able to survive the harder difficulty levels. By repeatedly, I don't mean a dozen times, or even a hundred. I mean THOUSANDS of times.

By adding even more emphsasis to the necessity of having the best items, you make it pretty much impossible to do anything in the game without making that three thousand Meph run.

I don't know. Maybe people actually enjoy killing the same enemy over and over again, every damn 30 seconds. I personally think it encourages people to use bots to get them the items so they can actually play. Ain't enhanced gameplay to me. (and no, I don't use bots. I usually just stop playing for a few months once I can't get any further without spending days chasing after the game's most elusive items)

Re:wow

[Jugalator]

The skill system will be drastically changed so you'll be able to create new viable character builds with the use of new skill synergy bonuses. The gameplay will also be more challenging and get more random monsters. Ladder characters will be introduced.

IMHO, a patch unlike any scope I've seen before. Thankfully, the patch won't change its its game genre (Action RPG, i.e. "killing everything that moves"), so those of us who bought Diablo II for what it offered back then won't be screwed.

Still Boycotting...

[Hilleh]

Still boycotting, still haven't bought War3, still have no plans to buy world of warcraft. Did we forget already?

Keep your repetitive games that haven't changed since 94 (or whenever Warcraft 2 was released), you fucks. You'll get no money from me until you jump off the bandwagon of sue-happy corporate morons with no concern for civil rights whatsoever.

Re:Still Boycotting...

[CausticWindow]

bnetd might have helped pirates get online, but it's still nothing else than a fucking server. reverse engineering a protocol is legal. writing software that utilizes that protocol is legal. what should be illegal, is bullying people with the legal system.

people on slashdot should be people who understand stuff like this.. oh, but this is the games section after all.

Re:Linux??? Linux ???

[Jugalator]

Does it run on Linux?

Does it? Does it run on Linux???

Yeah. Under Wine.

Check this out:
http://www.latte.ca/D2LOD/

Re:wow

[pezpunk]

look, this game is over 3 years old and Blizzard is still working hard to add value to it! how can you complain? they're fixing and improving so much, it's, well, it's like a free expansion pack really. Blizzard once again asserts itself as the number one game company in the world. this patch shows why. this patch will generate virtually NO new revenue for them. all it will do is improve their game. kudos to you, blizzard, don't ever change!

Biting off you nose...

[Omestes]

Good for you, then your missing out. I agree with Blizzard, and will continue to agree with Blizzard, until MS buys their parent company, and everything becomes Xbox exlusive, then Blizzard can screw themselves.

But right now, I would elect Blizzard as God, or Cheif Designer of the Universe. They are the only game company who has come out with QUALITY games, the FIRST time. Every Blizzard patch is like a mini-expansion, rather than a bug fix caused by rushing development.

What company cold EVER hope to match Blizzards line-up of games? Blackthorne kicked much ass, RnR Racing also kicked ass, Diablo I wasted my whole highschool existance (well, that and MUDs), Warcraft was the first genre making RTS, Warcraft 2 was the best RTS until... STARCRAFT! Any game that causes Koreans to starve, must be a damn good game. Then we have Diablo II, the most anticpated game of 2000, and the only game to live up to it's hype. Then LoD, which also lived up to it's hype. Then of course Warcraft 3, which is a new genre making RTS, on that caused those silly command and conquer people to copy it's formula (to a point), and the upcoming Worlds of Warcraft look like it may just be the ONLY MMORPG that I will consider playing, which is saying alot since I HATE that genre. And from the Frozen Throne previews, it looks also like quality stuff.

My only complaint is Ghost. What a steaming pile of crap, not releasing it on PC. I don't WANT to buy an Xbox, or a PS2, or even a GC, my compy works fine for gaming, and I just spent $300 to be DoomIII compliant, and Unreal 2 capable. And now I'm supposed to fork over however much for a damn peice of propritary console crap, just to play a game... bah.

I'm rambleing, just woke up, got sake hangover... I'll shut up.

Re:Biting off you nose...

[asink]

Every Blizzard patch is like a mini-expansion, rather than a bug fix caused by rushing development.

... wow. You really missed out on last December's server patching, eh? Go rummaging around forums, and _eveyrone_ legit and non-legit players were being constantly kicked for 'excessive packet usage' because they set their filters too tightly. This was the most poorly thought out patch for any game that I have seen.
But hey, I usually don't play games -- DII is just the heroin of video games... one try and you're hooked for life. That doesn't mean that I agree with _any_ of their post-release politics or changes(including D2X). The things they do to whitewash their reputation are at the top of my personal list of reasons to dislike them. Bnetd is nothing in comparison to the way that they treat their customers.

Re:Too little too late

[Peyna]

84,000 people playing 40,000 games of Diablo 2 right now; I've seen numbers well above 100,000 playing at any one time, so I guess a lot of people still like it.

Blizzard not the only great company out there

[LPetrazickis]

The guys at Paradox Entertainment, the makers of Europa Universalis II and Hearts of Iron, also release patches years after the original game had come out while working without pay. Now, that's what I call true gamer geek spirit.:)

Stopping Piracy?

[vertical_98]

Also glad that a company should be vilified for stopping rampant piracy.

Ahoy Me Matey!

ok, maybe it wasn't funny, but why is sueing(sp?) Bnetd.org stopping rampant piracy? If they where really worried about it, they would make their servers the best so that no one would want to use the bnetd servers. (gasp!) No instead of putting out a superior product they claim DMCA violations and copyright infringement.

Of course, that just makes us 'self-rightous' whiners.
Vertical

People just don't understand...

[Anonymous Coward]

From the reading I've done about this patch, it's my understanding that Blizzard QA does a 3 week testing cycle... and if they find a bug, the bug is patched, and they start the 3 weeks over again... so even if they're 22 hours in on the last day, and they find a bug, it's going back to be fixed and another 3 weeks of testing await... Blizzard is to be lauded, if nothing else, for the fact that it's taken so long for this - the only thing I can think of that they should've done was made this 3 week cycle more well known, so that people would understand why it's taken so long.

You can't please everyone all the time, but for anyone who's ever programmed, they know what it's like to come across some really obscure little bug, and have to retest the whole thing. Blizzard wants nothing more than to put out as tight code as possible, and I for one applaud them for that.

-TKK

Suggestions for Diablo 3/new patches

[petrus4]

>Keep your repetitive games that haven't changed
>since 94 (or whenever Warcraft 2 was released),
>you fucks. You'll get no money from me until you

This is true. I'm not boycotting Blizzard, but to a large extent *gameplay wise* Diablo 2 as it currently stands is mainstream RPG lite. The LOD game expansion only really made the game worth looking at..."Classic" Diablo 2 was almost completely unplayable to my mind, due to very rapid onset of boredom. The game is phenomenally well packaged, with outstanding MAX work, it's true...including raising the bar as far as in-game cinematics are concerned...and it's also true that on a purely stat level, some of the weapons are nice...but I can't remember the last RPG I've seen for the PC that didn't have substantially better gameplay than D2...It's mind-numbingly repetitive for my money.

The annoying thing is, that while they got some things right, it could have been a much better game than it was...Some ideas for Diablo 3:- (assuming it ever happens, of course)

• License and adapt the AI used in Black and White from Lionhead. Applied in a dedicated sense to D2's hirelings, you could end up with skilled trackers who know the terrain of the different areas, and could dramatically increase their use of tactics over time. This way as well as different NPCs being more expensive when having more life/skill points, you could also make them more expensive based on their level of knowledge of the terrain and tactics employed when dealing with specific monsters. Best of all, because it's a dedicated scenario with only a limited number of creatures, you don't need to worry about the AI needing to be too open-ended. If you were really scared of that, you could have specialist hirelings who were better at/only knew how to deal with certain kinds of monsters, so that players who were having difficulty in certain areas could say simply hire the NPC to get through that specific area. The possibilities are endless. Hell, you could even go really crazy and apply this to the monsters if you wanted to, although unless you grew a template for each of those, the monsters probably wouldn't live long enough to get good.
• Make the hirelings' inventory possibilities as complete as the real players. While Battle.net and multiplayer capabilities do of course exist, there are always going to be people who play single player games. Coupled with the above suggestion, this would give single players a party member with very close to human functionality in some areas.
• Study some of the other RPGs that have come out since. Many of them use if nothing else, much more complex animation sequences for sword moves for example. You could have for example a scenario where in a town there is a magic training NPC and a weapons training NPC. Assuming a person has enough money/xp/whatever, they could go to each one of these teaching npcs. Probably what you'd perhaps want to do is devise a series of forms/groups of related moves in different tiers/levels, and then based on char level or money, the character could work through each one. For primarily non-magic using characters, to me focussing on mundane moves that can then be optionally augmented with elemental boosts would be the best way to go there. The Assassin has a basic example of what I'm talking about here...but a lot more can and should be done with it.
• Inject atmosphere back into the game. D1 was a truly fantastic game in terms of the environments/music/overall feel...by contrast, although some of it is equally great, a lot of D2's areas are sterile to the point where you almost need Prozac to get through them. This is an intangible, and it's difficult to describe exactly what I mean here...but I think the main thing to remember here is that less is more. Looking at it, one of the main reasons why Diablo 1 was as good as it was is because it was almost exactly the right length...D2 would probably be dramatically improved IMHO by nixing Act 2 in particular altogether.

Blizzard obviously

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

Re:This ... on Slashdot?

[k_187]

Because the Diablo II 1.10 patch was supposed to be out "real soon now" (tm) for over year. All my friends that play D2 have been complaining that Blizzard shifted all their focus away from D2 to Warcraft III and so the 1.10 patch became something like Duke Nukem Forever albeit on a much smaller scale.