Blizzard Announces Diablo 2: Resurrected

Items going for 100+ SOJs always cracked me up back in the day.... It was so obvious that they were duped to hell. It was still fun though. Key was to play the game on your own terms and find your own loot. If you weren't trying for epeen, not having 500 SOJs didn't matter.


I’m more talking about the cube recipes that used the SoJ, less trading theme for a specific weapons or drops. It’s been a super long time for me, so I don’t remember the specific recipes, I just remember being annoyed I didn’t have enough SoJs to play with the recipes.
 
I've always hated the randomly generated maps in diabolo. I have always laughed at addict like you who can't be satisfied with a single rogelike, and keep paying more for your next hit

If you also pay a monthly fee for a wow account then lol , you are truly pathetic, and need to find a new hobby :D
 
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If you also pay a monthly fee for a wow account then lol , you are truly pathetic, and need to find a new hobby :D

What an asinine statement. The whole point of a hobby is spending money on what you enjoy. Paying for WOW is no different than a tv/streaming subscription. I don’t play WoW but I can understand the enjoyment it can bring.
 
Items going for 100+ SOJs always cracked me up back in the day.... It was so obvious that they were duped to hell. It was still fun though. Key was to play the game on your own terms and find your own loot. If you weren't trying for epeen, not having 500 SOJs didn't matter.




The difficulty progression of D3 modes at launch was nuts, I think because the expectation was that everyone would gear up using the the RMAH. If you didn't use it you spent quite a while getting punked every time you went up a difficulty level. Good times I thought. RMAH wasn't good times though, glad they removed it.


Yeah the game was ridiculous at launch. I did manage to get couple of characters up Hell difficulty (but not through it) when I figured out that you were more likely to get different characters loot than what you are playing currently so I had to switch between them and trade what the other had found. :D But eventually I got so sick of having lame loot even from grinding bosses for hours. And because of that playing Hell was... well... pure hell. Getting ass fisted without a lube simply because the gear drop rates were obviously rigged against you got old real fast. And I refused to use the auction house.

Now, I know the game was eventually fixed and drop rates became more fair after the auction house was closed but I never bothered to get back into the game, I thought I had seen everything the game has to offer by then.
 
What an asinine statement. The whole point of a hobby is spending money on what you enjoy. Paying for WOW is no different than a tv/streaming subscription. I don’t play WoW but I can understand the enjoyment it can bring.
Also from a non WOW player - but, for $15/mo and the # of hours of hobby/entertainment it provides - I can think of a LOT more expensive hobbies that provide less value, yet people dont bat an eye. Setting up an aquarium? Collecting rocks? Have a boat? What about an ATV? Travel to new places? Many of those are YEARS worth of WOW sub costs.

Just because you wouldn't do it doesn't mean it isn't worth it to some people.
 
Yeah the game was ridiculous at launch. I did manage to get couple of characters up Hell difficulty (but not through it) when I figured out that you were more likely to get different characters loot than what you are playing currently so I had to switch between them and trade what the other had found. :D But eventually I got so sick of having lame loot even from grinding bosses for hours. And because of that playing Hell was... well... pure hell. Getting ass fisted without a lube simply because the gear drop rates were obviously rigged against you got old real fast. And I refused to use the auction house.

Now, I know the game was eventually fixed and drop rates became more fair after the auction house was closed but I never bothered to get back into the game, I thought I had seen everything the game has to offer by then.

You have not seen everything the game has to offer if you haven't played the last 3+ years. Lots of pretty massive changes and new progression system
 
You have not seen everything the game has to offer if you haven't played the last 3+ years. Lots of pretty massive changes and new progression system

And a new expansion too, I forgot that existed. Never even touched that one. Maybe I really should give it another go one day.

BTW, is that god damn mobile-game style delay away? The one if you kept dying in the same spot then you had to wait longer and longer before it allowed respawning, even in single player game? That was also another feature that made me rip my hair out from frustration.
 
And a new expansion too, I forgot that existed. Never even touched that one. Maybe I really should give it another go one day.

BTW, is that god damn mobile-game style delay away? The one if you kept dying in the same spot then you had to wait longer and longer before it allowed respawning, even in single player game? That was also another feature that made me rip my hair out from frustration.

The respawn thing is long gone except during the competitive greater rifts. But, you can be revived by your team so it's really not an issue
 
Deep dive video


Looks like they are really staying true to the original, as well as eliminating some of the annoyances of the original (mule characters, calculating your mod benefits). You can even toggle between the old graphics and the new. Almost entertaining buying this, if real life didn't already occupy so much of my time. Nice job, Blizzard.
 
I almost flunked out of college my freshman year because i spent more time doing mephisto magic find runs than going to class and studying....yeah i'll probably still buy it
 
It seems impossible for large video game publishers to maintain a good reputation. Blizzard was once worshipped as a company that cared about its fans and produced quality games; those days are long gone. More recently CDPR have shit the bed, and that seemed an impossibility so soon after all the goodwill they'd cultivated with "Witcher 3". Bioware crashed and burned with "Mass Effect: Andromeda" and Bethesda with "Fallout 76".

Rockstar and Valve have maintained their reputation, at least when it comes to consistently producing quality games. Those are the only two larger companies I can think of that have.
 
It seems impossible for large video game publishers to maintain a good reputation. Blizzard was once worshipped as a company that cared about its fans and produced quality games; those days are long gone. More recently CDPR have shit the bed, and that seemed an impossibility so soon after all the goodwill they'd cultivated with "Witcher 3". Bioware crashed and burned with "Mass Effect: Andromeda" and Bethesda with "Fallout 76".

Rockstar and Valve have maintained their reputation, at least when it comes to consistently producing quality games. Those are the only two larger companies I can think of that have.
There are two main problems.

"Too Soon, Executus"
Bean counters are forcing things pushed out before the gestation is complete. Really good stuff, but ... not done. So the community goes in life-support mode with mods, forum tips, love. Because there is often a really neat core in many of these mis-steps, but ... too soon.

"unbridled enthusiasm"
Many of the folks who love these franchises do so with ..., er, "gusto"? Nothing can ever hold up to what we created in our minds. Compounding this is that many expect a game to be not just a game, but a life experience.

I guess my point is - consider these things in the context of what they actually are: just games. If you get 20+ hours of fun for even $60 - lordy, that's really great, right? And if you see an NPC glitching, okay, cool. But ... still a fun game, eh?
 
I dunno, maybe I'm weird, I loved Diablo 1 & 2 (and 3 too) but I really had no desire to be be the super ultimate champion of the universe in it. Beat the game, I'm fine yay me, I got the story. Higher difficulty levels? Part of me asks "why?" some fire back "more of a challenge", but a challenge that is based on randomness of drops. The grind at normal difficulty is fine, but at higher difficulties it really seems that you get to a point of grinding just for the sake of grinding. If people want to play higher difficulties that's perfectly fine, and I'm not saying what they're doing is silly/stupid/etc, but for me it was about the atmosphere + story and then the switching of characters to play it in a different way, but yeah, the need to "test myself" with a game largely isn't there.
 
It seems impossible for large video game publishers to maintain a good reputation. Blizzard was once worshipped as a company that cared about its fans and produced quality games; those days are long gone. More recently CDPR have shit the bed, and that seemed an impossibility so soon after all the goodwill they'd cultivated with "Witcher 3". Bioware crashed and burned with "Mass Effect: Andromeda" and Bethesda with "Fallout 76".

Rockstar and Valve have maintained their reputation, at least when it comes to consistently producing quality games. Those are the only two larger companies I can think of that have.
Valve by avoiding game making. Can't get your new game criticized if you don't make it.

Rockstar keeps up by doing more good than bad each time.
 
I dunno, maybe I'm weird, I loved Diablo 1 & 2 (and 3 too) but I really had no desire to be be the super ultimate champion of the universe in it. Beat the game, I'm fine yay me, I got the story. Higher difficulty levels? Part of me asks "why?" some fire back "more of a challenge", but a challenge that is based on randomness of drops. The grind at normal difficulty is fine, but at higher difficulties it really seems that you get to a point of grinding just for the sake of grinding. If people want to play higher difficulties that's perfectly fine, and I'm not saying what they're doing is silly/stupid/etc, but for me it was about the atmosphere + story and then the switching of characters to play it in a different way, but yeah, the need to "test myself" with a game largely isn't there.
The base game really was too easy on normal. With a little planning based on the demo (perfect gem runs - ah, the old days) we flew though the game right after release in one session with a group of 8. Group was half Paladins with different auras to better layer buffs. Things slowed down a lot though starting act 3 in nightmare.
 
The base game really was too easy on normal. With a little planning based on the demo (perfect gem runs - ah, the old days) we flew though the game right after release in one session with a group of 8. Group was half Paladins with different auras to better layer buffs. Things slowed down a lot though starting act 3 in nightmare.
See you say too easy, I say well paced, you didn't need to spend ungodly amounts of time grinding for gear or levels, which is an aspect of RPG type games that I absolutely hate doing.

But hey, everyone has their own feeling about what's a "good" way to play the game, and no one is more correct than the other.
 
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There was a time when games could regularly be cleared in one sitting. A lot of the 8-bit and 16-bit action/platformer games, for instance. While a "traditional" RPG could take a lot longer, the idea of an action/RPG like Diablo being something that you can beat in a day or two doesn't seem odd to me.

Baldur's Gate was something I spent a lot of time playing before I finished it. Diablo 2 was something I beat in a day or two after launch, and then played for months afterwards chasing loot with friends. It was supposed to be that way.
 
There was a time when games could regularly be cleared in one sitting. A lot of the 8-bit and 16-bit action/platformer games, for instance. While a "traditional" RPG could take a lot longer, the idea of an action/RPG like Diablo being something that you can beat in a day or two doesn't seem odd to me.
Also depends on what your definition of "in one sitting" is. I mean hell when FF7 came out, pretty much fired that up at 8am and other than food and bathroom (note... no shower :D) I'd go to bed at 2am or later. Now these days me being quite a bit older, wife, kid, etc, don't quite go anywhere near that same category of "sitting"
 
After my inner hardcore gamer died in a fire several times over in EQ1 and vanilla wow uberguilds, I finish games ridiculously slowly now. I really try to enjoy the content rather than blowing through it for some endgame reward that turns out was never as fun as the content itself. When D3 came out I’d bet it took me 80-100 hours to finish the normal storyline. Probably more.
 
Looks great. Diablo 1 and 2 were my favorite games growing up. Diablo 3 sucked donkey balls. I remember being suckered into buying it, and then got suckered twice by the expansion. Shame me once...
 
There was a time when games could regularly be cleared in one sitting. A lot of the 8-bit and 16-bit action/platformer games, for instance. While a "traditional" RPG could take a lot longer, the idea of an action/RPG like Diablo being something that you can beat in a day or two doesn't seem odd to me.

Baldur's Gate was something I spent a lot of time playing before I finished it. Diablo 2 was something I beat in a day or two after launch, and then played for months afterwards chasing loot with friends. It was supposed to be that way.
I recently replayed Baulder’s Gate via the enhanced edition (including the new siege of dragon spear) and played all 3 games though with the same character and did every quest (I think, may have missed 1 or 2). Took me almost 500 hours - it too was awesome, and I hope Diablo 2 Resurrected comes out that well.
 
Why did this happen? Blizzard is THE laziest dev ever, thats why.
Vicarious Visions is not though. Those guys were drooling research and discovery and are just building a 3D renderer on top of the existing game logic, complete with vanilla mechanics. That takes a TON of tuning to make sure all animations sync up.
 
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It seems like companies are increasingly using this as a supplementary source of income (and promotion for their next game). Revive a classic game for relatively low effort to help finance your main projects. Not that I entirely mind — titles like Diablo II and Mass Effect are worth bringing back if it doesn't distract from making sequels.
 
It seems like companies are increasingly using this as a supplementary source of income (and promotion for their next game). Revive a classic game for relatively low effort to help finance your main projects. Not that I entirely mind — titles like Diablo II and Mass Effect are worth bringing back if it doesn't distract from making sequels.
Agree very much. There are Old gate games that are still good games, but in need of a graphics face lift and sometimes some modernization with modern OSes. Diablo 2 is one of those.
 
Agree very much. There are Old gate games that are still good games, but in need of a graphics face lift and sometimes some modernization with modern OSes. Diablo 2 is one of those.
I don't think that older games are necessarily in need of a graphical update at all. Just get them working on modern systems and have resolution with UI elements scale up to high resolution. I would love if Bethesda, for example, did a QoL facelift of the early TES games since playing them in DOSBox is a PITA. No need to create a fancy new engine or any of that. Just basically do what GOG and Blizzard were able to do with the original Diablo.
 
This looks cool but after fucking up the WC3 remaster so badly I'm not going to give blizzard any more money. Plenty of other games out there.
 
I don't think that older games are necessarily in need of a graphical update at all. Just get them working on modern systems and have resolution with UI elements scale up to high resolution. I would love if Bethesda, for example, did a QoL facelift of the early TES games since playing them in DOSBox is a PITA. No need to create a fancy new engine or any of that. Just basically do what GOG and Blizzard were able to do with the original Diablo.
Unfortunately, I think that scaling graphics to higher resolution requires an art team. At that point, if you already have the team, make it pretty to convince me to buy the game. For example, I would have preferred Homeworld Remastered having an awesome, cutting edge graphics facelift that kicked my 1080ti's ass and taken its lunch money over what I got, which is something that is, like, playable on my R250X backup card.
 
Unfortunately, I think that scaling graphics to higher resolution requires an art team. At that point, if you already have the team, make it pretty to convince me to buy the game. For example, I would have preferred Homeworld Remastered having an awesome, cutting edge graphics facelift that kicked my 1080ti's ass and taken its lunch money over what I got, which is something that is, like, playable on my R250X backup card.

Scaling diablo 2 presented a big challenge on its own. The way monster engagement worked was if it was on the screen. Aside from missing art, this was the biggest challenge. So much so, that most of the original Blizzard North team flat out said that it couldn't be done.
 
I missed out on D2 back in the day so I may just pick this up. I wonder if the cinematics will be remastered? Probably not but not a big deal.
 
I missed out on D2 back in the day so I may just pick this up. I wonder if the cinematics will be remastered? Probably not but not a big deal.
The cinematically were awesome. I hope they get redone in 4K and possibly touched up.
 
The cinematically were awesome. I hope they get redone in 4K and possibly touched up.
They really were! I wasn't into pc gaming at the time and just watched my friend obsessively play it here and there but I remember being blown away at how good looking and scary those cinematics were.
 
It seems they are leaving gameplay and itemization alone, it´s mostly a graphical update. Let´s hope they do it right this time, not like Warcraft 3.
It's a lot more than a graphical update as Resurrected is being built in the Unreal Engine and not just an updated version of the original. There are stories floating around of the epic struggle of losing all the game data then rebuilding their codebase from snippets that had been emailed, taken home, or left on old laptops destined for the recycling piles, and getting the art assets back from materials put together for promo booths and the like.
 
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