Slashdot Mirror
No Diablo II This Year
ViceClown writes "Blizzard announced in a press release that Diablo II is now looking at a Q1 2000 release and will not be available for the holiday season. They did mention, however, that there may be a limited 1,000 person public beta test around the end of the year so if your lucky enough you can get your fix before everyone else! Read more at IGN PC. " But on the positive side, Rob and I will remain productive throughout the rest of the year.
Will it be legal to export Diablo ][? I'm pretty sure it should be classified as a munition - the first one stopped all work in my entire building for at least a month :)
Can your IM do this?
My wife must have paid someone off.
(I seem to remember that the original Diablo missed Christmas, too.)
Actually, I always like to hear this "Game X is late" stories. It means that there won't be an early, bug-infested release. Better to get it right then get it now.
The cake is a pie
Does anyone know how to get to be one of the beta testers? I'd be willing to sacrifice my personal time and sanity to help test D2, for the sake of society.
I am a big fan of Blizzard games; particularly Starcraft, and Diablo to a lesser extent. I find it frusterating, though, that as one of the most successful computer game company ever, they have spurned Linux so far.
Many of the up and coming big games are slated to come out for Linux. The all-at-once PC/Mac/Linux release is starting to appear with Quake III and Baldurs Gate II. Even if the primary publisher doesn't do a port, Loki Games is filling the gaps with third party ports.
And still no Blizzard games. I hope it is being planned, and the company is just being characteristically tight lipped about it. My hopes are pinned on D2 for Linux, I've already given up on Age of Kings....
from the crying-and-gnashing-and-teeth dept.
Does the dept. name come from a description of the after effects of the reactions of the people hearing it won't come out till q1y2k or a description of the game?
Diablo II is going to sell a lot of copies, no matter what. Even though they're going to miss the holiday season, that's not going to stop me, my brother, the entire population of Slashdot, and everyone else from going out an buying it when it is released.
And why? Because Blizzard puts out good games. The original Diablo was late, other games were more than likely late as well, and Warcraft: Lord of the Clans was axed because it fell short of expectations. Here we have a company that is the opposite of most software companies: Instead of rushing a product out of the door, they test it and refine it until they have a product that's not "good enough" but actually good. And the fans love them for it - games like Diablo and Starcraft are still some of the highest ranked games (in terms of player esteem) ever made.
I think Blizzard gives an example of a software company that doesn't rush out a product, and yet still has a large amount of 'market share'.
IMHO, many companies could learn from this.
-Denor
(inhalation) AAAAARRRRGGGGHHHHH!!!!!
For one time in my life, I want to thump the techie types for not letting the marketing and management types have their way. Any marketeer with 0.5 brains would have said "A rocking good hit, a great brand name (tm), an installed base of hard core fans...sequel NOW!"
How hard could it have been to produce an evolutionary series of add-ons that used the original engine? With Hellfire, Blizzard demonstrated their ability to farm out the graphic and data entry work to some other group, rake in a percentage, and keep at the REAL work of producing Diablo II. Why didn't they keep it up?
Diablo was GREAT, but there was room for minor improvements in gameplay. Hellfire fixed some of those, but had limitations of its own. In the years since Diablo/Hellfire came out, I, and doubtless legions of others, would have paid good money for some good add-ons - additional levels, classes, quests, unique items, whatever - that used the original engine. All of this could have been produced by groups independent of those developing Diablo II.
But NO! The #^@(!%& PURISTS at Blizzard won't let us have any more fun with a new game until they're done with a new engine! I think that's great and all, but I also can't help thinking that MAYBE the new game would have come out sooner had there been more money to finance more bodies to work on the new game - money that could have come from a steady series of add-ons for the original game. 'Nuff said. Rant over.
Don't worry. You can just do what I will do. Start playing it on a friday night and stop only to piss and eat (at the same time mind you). I can guarantee you will be finished by 10am sunday morning. From there you can sleep until 8am monday :).
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Name me one product from Microsoft that was delayed for stability reasons that was actually stable when it was released.
Honestly, I really don't think that 'game X is late' translates into 'game X is going to have less bugs than normal games'.
it very much does when those 4 months fall over the Christmas season. Blizzard releases good stuff, this was a decision for releasing a late product instead of a buggy one, which will most likely cost them some quick cash. I applaud their decision and wish more software developers were in a position (not desperately in need of income) and of a mindset to do the same.
+&x
Do a search for "Blizzard" in the Slashdot older articles and you get:
I buy games because I have fun playing them and then feel good about having fun afterward. I don't feel good after my dealing with Blizzard. I feel violated by them for stealing my personal info and not even apologizing for it. I feel cheated them by for not being able to enjoy the results from StarHack and Micro Star. But most of all, I feel sad that Slashdot decides that Blizzard is a company we can now trust again.
The privacy issue was important enough to display three articles on. But just four days after complaining about TRUSTe lack of protecting privacy, Slashdot decides to promote Blizzard once again--how quickly we forget. I guess the stamp of TRUSTe and the stamp of Slashdot approval just come much too easily for my tastes. But until Blizzard issues a statement of commitment to customer's right to privacy and third party levels, I don't see how Diablo II could be fun for me ever.
So, regardless of if Diablo II comes out today, tomorrow, next month, or Q1 2000, I don't see how it could make a difference to me and I hope enough other Slashdot readers feel the same way. Only when the customer demands fair treatment by effecting the company's bottom line will the customer start getting fair treatment.
Has Blizzard been fair to us?
Blizzard has always kept the quality of their games to a higher standard than those of other companies. They could have released StarCraft in 1996 ... they didn't -- they took two more years to get it "just right".
The end result of their policy is that, even though they release less games than other game companies, *every single game* that they have ever released as "Blizzard Entertainment" has been a best seller... they haven't released a single bad game, or even an overly buggy game. Every patch that they've released to every game that they've made has eithor been a game balance improvement for something that they couldn't have seen without actually releasing the game, a patch to re-arrange the memory image of the game to make cheating more difficult, or an enhancement.
Blizzard and Diablo II are the only reason I still have a Windows partition on this computer, and if I didn't know that the game was going to kick ass before I had even gotten previews of it, Windows would have been nuked for the HD space long ago...
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
I take it you've never delt with Blizzard before.
They announced that "StarCraft" would be released in '96... it wasn't released until '98. Us hardcore Diablo II fans were expecting it earlier this year.
Blizzard's products end up being insanely awesome primarily because they wait until they're done before they are released. You can expect Diablo II to be the best of the genre, to sell millions of copies and to get tons of awards when it's finally released.
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
Diablo II is currently the only reason I still have a licence for Windows 98, but I don't want to have to reboot to play it.
They've got a Battle.net forum for suggestions for Diablo II, (at http://www.battle.net/forums/diab lo2-suggestions/), so I'm off to suggest that they port to Linux.
They are one of the best, if not *the* best, game company out there. If we can just get them to understand the benifiets of a Linux port, then I can ditch Windows and save myself 500 megabytes.
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
Well you know what it is full of? Textures and graphics. Non-3d games take up a ton of space with art. Granted, it will be 4 times larger than diablo (as claimed by blizzard), but diablo wasn't very large itself. Remember, this game is mindless point and click violence. I doubt there are going to be any difficult puzzles. The possiblity of a large number of redundant levels aside; It's nothing I can't tackle in a weekend.
Hopefully Diablo 2 will have more than three different armor types this time. If they had kept the game in 2d, but made the characters 3d, they would have virtually unlimited armor and weapon possibilities. Unfortunately since they've gone 2d again they will have to render each frame of animation which uses up a lot of space. It really is too bad that they didn't do the 3d because they could have had decent collision detection and monsters actually reacting to attacks instead of point, click, hit with reaction determined randomly. Though static 2d art looks pretty good, this type of engine shows its age. Thank god Warcraft III will be 3d.
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As an industry insider (core developer for all 3 Age of Empires games), I've known for a long time that Diablo II wasn't going to come out this year. There are two reasons for this, and both of them are for the better.
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/. readers. As well it should be. Things like that are not accidental, and it's my strong belief that Blizzard will be much more careful this time.
:) (It's a sort of tit-for-tat in the Game Biz.. We send them a beta of our game, and all productivity at their officies grinds to a halt for a couple weeks, so.. they are compelled to return the 'favor' and spread the delays around.)
First Reason: Blizzard's Management and operating principial is to not release a game until it is done to a high degree of polish. This includes testing for such hard to quantify things such as "is it fun?" This goal is held in high enough regard by the company that it will allow release dates to suffer for it. Not every game company does this - in fact I would say that game companies that do are in the minority. This is made practical by the
Second Reason: Blizzard can *afford* to let Diablo II slip. Their previous titles, and the fact that they publish themselves, has given Blizzard an incredible cash flow and reserves. Consider that Blizzard employs around 80 (give or take) people. It would probably be conservative to say Diablo 2 has cost more than $5 Million dollars (so far) to make. Time and time again in the game business, money considerations have forced a game to be shipped before it is finished and polished. Time and money to do it right is a luxury.
What's interesting about the business is that this becomes something of a self-perpetuating cycle: The top selling games are the ones that make the lion's share of the money.. allowing their creators the luxury of not having to make any cuts or concessions in their next game, while the ones that didn't sell well leave their creators in the position of having to do their next game quickly and cheaply.
Another Factor: Content Level Expexctations - these have risen steadily every year. As each year passes, you have to put some x% "more" into a game for it to be received at the same level by the game buying public. Must be a side effect of radiation from ever increasing CPU speeds.
As the costs of making a "Triple-A" (or "AAA") quality game (That phrase is used to death by people in the industry) have risen steadily in the last decade, we are seeing less change in terms the people and companies that make the chart toping games. I'm not really sure if this is good, bad, or just the way it is. So far it's not significant enough to stifle innovation or newcomers, but if development costs keep rising you have to wonder about the future...
Anyway...
With Diablo 2, Blizzard faces a couple of tough challenges:
#1: They have to make the game more resistant to hacking and cheating. This is not anywhere as easy as it sounds or most programmers think. If you are really interested in the subject, I am in the process of writing an lengthy article on the subject of cheating in on-line games for 'Game Developer' magazine, which should appear around the time Diablo 2 is released. (If you really are interested, feel free to email me). Diablo's problems with cheaters were so well known, that it tainted the reputation of the game and sets a high bar of expectations to be met for Diablo 2.
#2: The privacy challenge. It's fair enough to say that every network packet sent by Diablo 2 will be under the microscope of many
All that said, I'm looking forward to it. I know many of their guys and they are excellent at what they do. Hopefully, putting their developers on The Age of Kings beta will get us on the D2 beta.
I remember the Microstar expansion sucked, big time, and it was the fans that pushed Blizzard to sue them. The mission editor license specifically stated that you could make your own campaigns, but you could not sell them, without the express permission of Blizzard. I.E. enjoy your campaigns all you want, but you are not allowed to make money off of them. Seemed fair to a lot of us campaign makers.