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Games Entertainment

Diablo 2 Goes Gold 177

Posted by Hemos from the finally-going-to dept.
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 ;)
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Diablo 2 Goes Gold More

Diablo 2 Goes Gold

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  • And it was cool, but it's pretty much the same game as Diablo One. Looks better, and has some more stuff like skills and more items/magic/monsters, but it's still "Wander around and kill things" without much "role playing" or interaction.

    Of course, in the beta, only the Barbarian was available to play, and only a small part of the first adventure. So, it could be alot cooler than the Beta was.

    On the upside, it looks really good, and had no bugs that I could find after many hours of play. And Diablo One was a GREAT game, so you don't want to fix what aint broke.

    -geekd
  • You don't notice the graphics after playing for about 15 min, Quake III Test also originally sent info back to id Software, as for console exploding with games, how many of those do you see on linux? We should all be mad at the consoles! Last time I checked, Looking Glass didn't exactly develope for Linux either. Flamebait...
  • Ah okay. I just hope they're not short ones like in Command & Conquer games :). I can't wait!

  • I don't know, watching the videos (I really wish they'd left them as a single file), I found myself saying "but, can we make new tilesets?" repeatedly. Sure, the editor is wicked cool, and looks very easy, but if we can't make custom tiles, everybody's content is going to look just like everyone elses' content.

  • As a closed beta tester who had lots of fun with it, I'd like to say it once and for all:

    The stress test sucks. Bad.

    The stress test is not the game. It is as representative of it as the demo to the original Diablo, with the first two levels of 16 and only the warrior. In fact, given that Diablo II has 5 character classes as opposed to 3, I imagine that the stress test shows even less of the game than the Diablo demo.

    What do you have to look forward to in the actual game? Well, for one, you have not merely one, not two or three but four other classes, each one far more interesting to play than the barbarian--IMO of course! I for one am not going to waste my time with the barbarian--my first character will be a Sorceress, Paladin, or Amazon, all three of which have interesting skills and much more of that complexity of gameplay you speak of. (Curiously, I found the Necromancer a bit dull as time went on.)

    The closed beta was good (particularly in how they manage multiplayer), but I'm sure the final game will be much better, with more places to go, more monsters to kill, (hopefully) more challenge, and more great items (which are after all the point of Diablo).

  • Oh, yes, I understand. I'd much rather have them take their time than rush and create a lower-quality product. We can still joke about it, though. :)

    ------

  • As someone mentioned earlier, the game is more like Diablo 1.5. I've been beta testing it for a few weeks now and although the graphics and gameplay are the same, we really can't say for sure what it is like until it actually ships.
    <br><br>
    Remember, this was the beta used to stress test the battle.net servers. We aren't beta testing the final product and as such we haven't seen half the quests, the areas, the monsters, etc. Just a small sliver of what is available. So until the game actually ships, to me anyway, it stays as Diablo 2 and I look foward to it.<br>
  • How many people complained that Doom 2 wasn't different enough from Doom 1?

    Pretty much everyone. From what I remember of the game, there were so few changes that they should have sold it as an add-on pack for Doom 1.

    Charles Miller


    --
  • The actual code and executables take up very little space in relation to all the artwork you'd find in a typical PC game.
  • > If you turn off hostile, they can attack you (they are still hostile with you)

    > you just can't attack them (since you are now neutral).

    I never really tested it, but one time I went back to town and made the connection neutral, then I went back to a dungeon and the person actually went back to town to turn hostile back on... :)
  • Gee, I have really been wanting Diablo 2 for such a long time. Ever since I stopped playing Diablo, my mousing skills have really gone downhill. Like I'll try to click on the button to close a window, and I'll totally miss. I need some of those skeletons to click on, because they move around and that's just a challenge right there. And clicking on a potion in your belt before you die, now that takes skill, and it's also so much like a roleplaying game, they way you have levels and weapons and stuff. I especially liked the way it works with Battle.net so you can download one of those shady "trainers" and click all over your friend's character, causing him to be dead! Woo hoo! Does it get any better than this?

    Seriously, this game is gonna suck, just like that "RPG" that Blizzard released a few years ago. The only reason Diablo did so well is that there were few good RPGs released at that time. This year is looking to be the "Year of the RPG" with Neverwinter Nights, Icewind Dale, Vampire: The Masquerede Redemption, Deus Ex, and a whole assload of A-1 RPGs bent on ruining your real life forever.

    Does Blizzard really think that they can compete with Vampire: The Masquerede (which just came out yesterday). I mean, this is one slick game.

    AD&D:Neverwinter Nights::V:TM:Vampire: The Masquerede Redemption

    Both these games have a multiplayer mode with a Storyteller (which is WoD speak, analogous to Dungeon Master for you AD&D people), so it's much more like playing your traditional pen & paper RPG, and it also includes, ahem, graphics that are not outdated (as in 3D).

    I'm going out to EB first thing tomorrow to get Vampire, so if you need me, I'll be on Won.net playing a game that actually has more depth than Deer Hunter (which by Blizzard's standards is almost an RPG, since you click on Deer and you get to choose your weapons).

  • Oh no! Not four CD's! Whatever shall we do?
    Don't you people rememeber switching 10+ 3.5 disks back in the days when CD's were just being considered as a medium? I remember trying to play King's Quest 5, where there was one disk with the engine, and 9 disks with content. Every time you changed screens, it made swap disks at least a dozen times... (besides, there's been other games with more CD's, like BG. And lots with 3)
  • actually...i'm running a dual Celeron 500 with 128 megs ram and i'm getting tons of lag...(character speeding up a lot as it tries to catch up to the server, whenever multiple creatures appear on the screen)...does anyone know if the game uses dual CPUs?
  • me too, what a nice thing to come home to - better late than never. it looks cool so far, but i had to switch to direct 3d - 3dfx glide crashed my system as soon as i tried to walk anywhere

    probably a win me bug, as all drivers are current - anyone else try this yet?

    anyway, back to d2 - no sleep tonite....
  • I'm a game developer so I'd like to chip in on this one:

    Most game developers aren't lazy about their code. At least where I work, we strive to keep it as clean as possible - start to finish. It makes it easier for others to work on your code.

    Optimization goes in two phases. First and most important - is the planning / design before much of the code gets written. This is the chance to figure out what's going in your game and what algorithms you might need; that sort of thing. Second, you optimize after you're almost done - this usually has limited scope.

    What things contribute to bad performance? I'd say bad or overzealous design, tight deadlines, and 3rd party tools that are out of your control. Diablo 2 made the design decision to use a 2D engine. This helps performance in those large fights with hordes of creatures. They decided to limit the game to 640x480 which also favors slower machines. I would say these two choices account for a large portion of their good performance (although they've done some good work on reducing area-load times). Blizzard is not one to push a game out early, but I'd say this is more for gameplay reasons, and less for performance.

    Other games may decide to go with a full 3D engine, or whatever. You weigh the pros and cons of each design choice. When you get to the end of the project, sure - a little extra time helps with optimization. But I strongly believe that good design is the key to good performance. At the end of the project, you are fairly limited in the optimizations you can make, regardless of your deadline.

    Best regards,

    SEAL
  • he was playing someones else beta!

    bad taco!

    bad cowboyneil! back to cuba with you!

    *hugs*

  • Re:Slashdot may be down... (Score:5)

    by jayhawk88 ( 160512 ) <jayhawk88@gmail.com> on Wednesday June 07, 2000 @09:55AM (#1018503)
    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.
  • Slashdot is not a linux-only site. Every day you'll see articles about science, movies, books, laws, and other stuff. IOW, "News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters." Of course, linux is a big part of slashdot, but it's hardly the only part.

  • Re:System requirements (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Am I seeing things : 950 Mb of HD space..!!?? You must be kidding my win98 & Linux installations are not even as big as that!
  • ...sue Blizzard for contributing to the delinquency of a minotaur?

  • Supposedly it will be out by July 3-5. This is not news from Blizzard, but in their advertising contracts they are set to put out ads on the 5th I believe and they have no option in them to move that date. Of course they could always just advertise and not release, but at least it's a day to look forward to.

  • So you guys are actually using something other than Linux to play a game?

    That may shatter the foundations of reality...
  • I've been saving up weeks of vacation for this....

    Hehehe...

    -Vel
  • In addition to being a Linux user (my desktop at work, my server at home), I have been a Mac user for 12 years. Mac users have struggled for years with the issue of getting games ported, the same issue that Linux users are now facing. There is no market for the games, because there are no games to build the market.

    The iMac changed game publishers' perceptions that there were not enough Mac users. The users were already there, but the perception was not. At some point, there will be an end-user Linux revolution, when Linux is easy enough for regular people to use. The Linux user experience has improved 100-fold over the last two years, but it's still not something I would give to my wife or my mom to use. When that happens, the games will come.

    You'll all be happy to know I deleted a big rant about computer users that was here and replaced it with this sentence. Have a nice day :)
  • As a player of the original Diablo, which at the time was fun and rather novel, and a battle.net stress tester for Blizzard I have to say I am rather disappointed. Yes the graphics are better, and there are a few more customization options (skills, etc), but the gameplay is pretty much unchanged and the graphics aren't THAT good. I'd like to know why it took a company 3 years to revamp a game,IMHO, so poorly. Blizzard is veering from the right track since the leaving of some of its top programmers which founded triforge. Gameplay is more important to me than graphics, and the gameplay is unimpressive....so much so that it would take Q3+ graphics to make up for it, and they ain't that good. Just my two cents of disappointment in a company I used to really like.
  • Do people want to play it on their web servers or something? Why would Blizzard port it to a primarily based server OS? Doesn't make sense to me. No, this is not a troll, this is serious. I have yet to meet anyone who uses Linux as a desktop OS. They all use it for servers (Including myself).
  • Heathen! How dare you mock "Lemonade Stand", the greatest game of all time! Oh, the intrigue (How many lemons should I buy?); the excitement (How much money did I make today?); the pain (No more free sugar Mom?). Lemonade Stand had it all! I, personally, don't see what all the fuss about Diablo 2 is about, when clearly the sequal we are all waiting for is Lemonade Stand 2: Electric Boogaloo. It should be out any day now. Really ;)
  • when I see it on shelves. But I must say, it seems more like Diablo 1.5 than anything else.
  • News for Bigots?
    Stuff that matters to you?

    Get over it.

  • Diablo II on battle.net over IPMASQ works great. If you check the website, they say that the battle.net code for their older games has been updated in the patches to work properly over battle.net too. When was the last time you tried it?

  • I hope (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    I hope it's better than Daikatana

  • People say Diablo 2's system requirements are really special. "I can play this on my I-opener!" you hear them explain with glee. "Wow, Blizzard rocks!"

    Yeah they did a real nice job making sure all the sprites stayed non-CPU intensive. Hell, Doom's sprites just killed my system. And don't even get me started on limiting you to a 640x480 resolution! That's two times higher than Doom. Take that ID! Genius, sheer genius.

    It's like having my cake, and freakin' eating it too. Here's an excerpt from a conversation I had with my friend while playing the stress test.

    Me: "Damn this game sure looks like hell."
    My Friend: "You suck man, it's about the gameplay."
    Me: "You mean like when I'm frantically hitting the left mouse button in an attempt to 'battle' my enemies?"
    My Friend: Stares blankly "It's got depth."
    Me: "Yeah, so does my left mouse button. You should hear the stories it tells. Hey button, remember that time I got that new weapon, you know, the one with bigger stats and stuff? Remember, it caused more damage when I pounded on you?"
    Left Mouse Button: Whimpers "Please God let the frantic clicking stop."

    And so on for hours. I can only imagine the full game - I can frantically click with two new characters on my 133 megahertz Celeron with 8 megs of RAM. I look forward to being player killed on such a low end system and replacing my mouse due to wear every couple of days.

    Congratulations Blizzard, you're only 2 years past schedule and current technology. Kudos.

  • No. That is completely misguided.

    The purpose of the stress test is to hammer the servers with waves of people.

    Blizzard just sent out the Third wave of emails, and with their latest revision (very stable) of the server, and given the current number of people playing, it will give them an excellent idea of how to scale up their servers.

    After the stress test is done, they will know how to handle the current loads, and adding more servers to anticipate more loads will not be a problem.

    1.5 million people preordered the game thus far. This means they will have to scale their servers about 10-20 times (20 would be a good bet) in order to handle that many people.

    I doubt blizzard will have a problem with that.

    100,000 is a lot of people.
  • There's nothing in the press release about a Linux version.

    Is one planned?

  • Some people have had success playing Diablo II under Linux using WINE. So how does this exclude the entire Linux community?

  • I just got invited to join the stress test, and they are going gold. Good timing there.
  • Diablo 2 better come out sometime this summer, very soon. Otherwise, I'll have another fiasco on my hands (per: Diablo 1) as to where all my work, school and other, was completley disregarded, along with all friends, while I stayed home and played battle.net for somewhere around 3 months. Hmm...maybe I can sue Blizzard for contributing to the delinquency of a minor? -evel aka matt- "Are we not me? No, we are DEVO!" -"Jocko Homo", Devo
  • I'm putting the shipping date in quotes, since it's not in stone, obviously, but I've read of certian web sites (you know, the kind with the rediculous 1-click patents) that are promising shipping on June 30th.
  • Blizzard has said they will have the game ported to Linux as soon as there are sales figures to support it ... How can you argue with that?

    I can ask: if Blizzard is really sincere then why don't they cut a deal with Loki to do the port at Loki's expense, in return for which Loki gets a cut of the royalties? I don't know exactly how Loki's business model works but I imagine it's something like that. No risk for Blizzard. Hardly any risk for Loki either, because they know their market and their programming abilities very well.
    --
  • I understand the game has just gone gold, but has anyone heard anything about the pre-ordered sets? Specifically, when they might ship?

    Hmmm ... time to go see if Babbages has charged my Visa yet.

    RLJ

  • While I will no doubt purshase and lose many hours playing Diablo II, I find recent RPG offerings very lacking. None of them has the depth, or "feel" of Angband/Moria/Rogue/Nethack and all of them suffer from the horrible bane of a linear story, if I'm going to get into a character, I want to play that character my way, not a do a, then b, then c. What if I want to do c then a then b? or skip a altogether? aside from the obvious increase in enjoyment from a non-linear method, it makes the game more challenging. nothing takes the fun out of a game like encountering a difficult puzzle and being able to wander around until you come to the spot you're supposed to be at, and only that spot "does something" FF7 and up suffer from this worst of all,the closest to a "good" modern RPG I have found was Fallout and Fallout 2, hell you could wipe out an entire town, or most all of them and still finish. It had some wonderful depth of play. Diablo 1 was boring, almost like it was trying for the involvment and game play of Angband with graphics, but failling miserably.
    Even the MMORPG's are largely lacking in the depth of some of the better MUD's (which I must admit I never really got into either . . .) It's almost like game designers and developers today have gotten entirely lost in the graphics and "story" and forgotten about the most important aspect: Gameplay. Either that or they've started coding for the highest profits, which is most likely, unfortunately the highest profits often coincide with lowest common denominator quality-wise, especially in a game genre which is supposed to require some kind of thought, creating it for the "average person" is simply going to get you that an "average game" sure it may sell well, but it won't have the staying power or appeal of its better crafted, perhaps worse selling, games. The most memorable games, among those of us who acctually played them, are the ones that took the most thought. HHGtG, Adventure, most any of teh Infocom text based games, while lacking in even the simple graphics of the Rogue derivitives were games one could get involved in, and largely more addicted to than any of the recent "flashy graphics and long cinematic sequences make for a good game" genre of RPGs. *sigh* I guess I'll just crawl back into my hole and back to an era where quality RPGs meant something.

    --Akeru
  • Diablo was tons o' fun until everyone used a trainer and became a super-powered PK (player killer) or PKK (player killer killer). No challenge at all, just who had the most ears ...
  • <offtopic>
    I've yet to find a SNES emulator that doesn't suck. Maybe I haven't tried hard enough. Which one do you use, and does it have good speed, sound quality? Does it play Mario Kart?
    </offtopic>


    --
    "And is the Tao in the DOS for a personal computer?"

  • Diablo II Stress Test Update (Score:4)

    by Kowh ( 61371 ) on Wednesday June 07, 2000 @11:32AM (#1018530) Homepage Journal
    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

  • In my experience, it has seemed that the Battle.Net Beta servers have been up alot more recently than they were at the beginning. Which is promissing.

    Either their servers are getting better, or people have just been getting bored with the small game and poor server uptimes....

  • you fucking dolt!

    it was HEMOS who played COWBOYNEALS copy....what a tard, ban this guy...so speaks faeryman.
  • nah, you're thinking of Darkstone...
  • They already advertise. I've never seen a game/movie wait until the day they're released before they advertise. I mean, that's what the whole concept behind movie trailers is, right? To hype up the movie BEFORE it comes out so it does well in the box office.
  • I am hoping to play it over my long weekend (Independence day weekend with a vacation day [grin]).

  • Stress test ok... (Score:4)

    by jdwtiv ( 107586 ) on Wednesday June 07, 2000 @09:59AM (#1018536)
    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... :(

  • 3 CDs!!!! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    3 CD's?
    Isn't it abut time things like this got a DVD release?
  • I am already playing with the stress test and WINE. I don't have Windows on the machine, will someone who does use a windows installation test it? The installer works perfectly, but it fails to load up the opening screen of the actual game.

  • One on Starcraft/Brood War, one on Diablo.
  • I already subsist on Ramen and Sam's Choice so that's already taken care of. :)
    I may have to take a look at Icewind Dale...

    -Vel
  • Not true... at least from what i've seen you can attack anybody who is hostile turned on.
  • Okay, moderate my ass down, but Operation Mindcrime was my favorite album for about 6 years. I don't listen to the genre anymore, but that album still ranks in my top 10 and probably always will. Hell, I still know all the lyrics to every song.

  • Not all of us use it just for servers. Yes I run a few servers with it, but I also have it dual-booted on both my personal desktop and my laptop. I know I would buy Blizzard games for linux. I would love to wipe out my Windoze partition. Only if I could get Creative to support my Dxr3...
  • Actually, I really used to like Diablo, but it came to a point where it was even more hollow than having the most ears. I'd be killed by a god-mode, super-powered, 3-dot level 1 PK, so I'd just fire up a trainer and dump copies of all of his items at him, then throw 8 or 10 of his own ears at him just to show how pointless it was with hacks.
    ...then the PK would shoot a few WinNuke packets at my IP... which had been patched months earlier.

    ...that is, before autokill came out, and the PK didn't even have to be in the same screen as you to kill you with mere whim, then resurrect and re-kill. wheeee... are we havin' fun yet?

    I really hope Blizzard makes sure they have good security on Diablo 2.

    (...and upgrades their servers. I stopped playing Diablo online because StarCraft came out and made battle.net unusable to Diablo players.)
  • I made some of the louder noises when Lunar's release dates kept getting pushed back (beat out by one of my friends). For more release date fun watch for Lunar2 which (i believe) is scheduled for sometime this year. Hopefully its out within the decade.

    -Elendale (and yes, I'm going to pre-order again)

  • Well, I know one thing. DII is going to steal my summer. I spent 5 hours playing last night before I finally crawled off to bed.

    I'd have to say that anyone whining about lag has problems at their end. The only time I had any slowdown was when memturbo defraged, causing hard drive thrash. (I'll have to turn off the auto defrag tonight)Didn't have any problems with it other than that. (Although I wiped my first guy by accident)
  • Oh wow. SLashdot: I'll pay to rent a room, chair, few square feet of space, anything that gets me but 2 hops to battle.net!
    =)

    No reasonable offer of rent will be refused!

    =)
  • this is yesterday's news which became official this morning. why not change /. 's slogan to old news for nerds.

  • OMG that's a cool page! Gonna hafta give it a try...
  • Absolutely, I was one of the closed testers also (look for Seth Bokelman in the game credits :) ) and it was a much more enjoyable experience than the stress test. I've been telling all of my friends that the game is easily worth buying the day it comes out, I wasted numerous hours just playing as the Paladin character class, I never even had time to get into the other four!

    There's much more that varies between the character classes than there were in the first game. The skill trees have some really unique stuff to them, I can't wait to see the really high-powered spells that the sorceress and necromancer classes have.

    This is a sequel, much like Microsoft's Age of Kings, which is truly much better than it's forebearer, it's not simply a glorified expansion pack, or a couple new features, but a completely new experience, using all of the elements that made the first game a giant success, yet improving every aspect of the gameplay in a logical and much-appreciated manner.

    Go Blizzard, I've gotta order my copy now, it's too bad we closed beta folks didn't get a free copy, but TANSTAAFL...

    I do wish they hadn't made the closed list public, I got e-mail from people I didn't know asking me if they could get my CD Key, etc.
    ---

  • Like the other guys that responded, I use ZSNES. I've never had a problem with it on my P2/333mHz/64 megs ram PC, and it's very customizable.

    It _is_ DOS though.

    I haven't tried Mario Kart on it, however. Get it and all kinds of emulator crap at Zophar's Domain [zophar.net].

    -JimTheta

  • Re:3 CDs!!!! (Score:4)

    by medicthree ( 125112 ) on Wednesday June 07, 2000 @11:51AM (#1018552) Homepage
    Actually, no, not 4, 3. Originally it might have been 4 CDs.. But take a look at this post [battle.net] by Blizzard employee Geoff Frazier.
  • Pry out your mouse and head off to your local electronic store, buy a dozen or two of those switches, and stick the new ones in!

    Perhaps someone should produce a mouse in a way that new switches could be inserted without touching those soldering irons. How about ZIFs?

  • This goes to prove that you don't need bleeding edge (and expensive) hardware to play a great game.

    Pff! Duh. I'm still catching up on all the SNES games I never got to. Emulators rock.

    -JimTheta, jimtheta@beer.com

  • If you turn off hostile, they can attack you (they are still hostile with you) you just can't attack them (since you are now neutral).
  • "70-minute original score of ambient music"

    Why did they bother with 70 min?!?! It's ambient music for goodness sake! It could have been 10 min and I wouldn't have noticed a difference.

    I'm just going to be playing my mp3s anyway.
  • it really would have been nice during the beta testing to have any sort of feedback at all from the developers.. is just a simple 'Found a bug and server's will be down till we fix it' too hard?
  • Oh, I agree that the new characters, spells, etc etc are great, and I'm looking forward to playing the game, but I've seen patches, let alone expansion packs, that add just as much stuff to a game. Time will tell, though, and I still play Diablo, so I'm not complaining. Just observing. :-) Of course, that's assuming I'm not too busy playing Redemption....
  • With Diablo II coming out and my sudden urge to use my DVD-ROM to play movies, it looks like I'm gonna have to bite the bullet and install Windows again. I hear that 98lite is the way to go if you're only using Windows for a few specialized tasks, but any other suggestions on how to keep win9x from taking up too much space?

  • How many mice/mouses/pointing devices have been ruined thanks to Blizzard. I seem to recall my trackball dying a horrible death, the dreaded "whuff" of death in fact (similar to click of death for Zip Drives, just softer).

    Have to find a mouse with super-heavy duty microswitches... :)

  • The Amazon ship dates aren't anything to be trusted. That's not saying that the date on the page isn't correct, but the only reason that Amazon has that date is that Blizzard has been saying for months that the game would be available on June 30.. this isn't anything new.

  • If slashdot goes down... (Score:3)

    by Frobean ( 79084 ) on Wednesday June 07, 2000 @10:13AM (#1018574)
    ...when Diablo II comes out, how many of us would even notice for at least a week? :-)
  • Yep, I think the single player only installation is smaller.

  • Oh boy, one of these again..

    here's the problem, see Blizzard is a small company. They make what, one game a year at most? (Granted Starcraft was on the top 10 list for over two years which goes to show you how good it was, but ok...)

    They don't have the kind of money to make linux versions of the game if the sales aren't going to be there to support it. They've said several times "Show us the sales, and we'll port it." No one to date has been able to show them anything even remotely resembling strong sales of Linux games. The market just isn't there.

    A tiny but growing market is still a tiny market. As soon as they think there is money to be made by porting to Linux, you can bet they'll do it.

    So far as the "well they never innovate" nonsense, well if you really want to believe that, thats just fine. Personally, I always try to figure out how truly godawful games like anything made by Westwood manages to do so well when stacked up against a masterpiece like Starcraft in the sales department. Of course Tiberian Sun totally died off after a month, so I guess in the end things worked out.

  • Re:System requirements (Score:3)

    by Aero ( 98829 ) <erwin71m AT gmail DOT com> on Wednesday June 07, 2000 @10:36AM (#1018582)

    Far too often, outrageous system requirements are a result of the programmers being [too lazy | under too much pressure from Marketing] to take the time to write good, clean code. Hell, if I didn't care about optimisation, I could write my own version of Pong that would need a PIII to get more than 1 fps. (For that matter, the later versions of ZAngband don't run too well on my P200...)

    And if length of development were the only thing contributing to system requirements staying low, then Daikatana should be able to run on ENIAC. Blizzard used that time for (among other things) making sure that the engine didn't get out of hand and force the system requirements up too much. The only change from the projected requirements was from a P166 to a P233, and I've heard more than one stress tester report that it runs decently on a P200 (64 meg RAM), and one on a P166 (32 meg). How many games these days can be played reasonably well on less than the "minimum" system? (How many can be played reasonably well on the "recommended" system, for that matter?)

    Aero

  • Diablo 2 goes gold

    Oh, come on! It's not even April anymore!

    ------

  • Actually thats wrong. (Score:4)

    by Tridus ( 79566 ) on Wednesday June 07, 2000 @10:40AM (#1018588) Homepage
    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.
  • Says who? Kind of arrogant that you speak for the ENTIRE slashdot population and determine that every single one of us uses linux all the time for everything...
  • I don't think so.. it seems Blizzard has never expressed any interest in supporting Linux
  • Tell my folks I love 'em, and my work that I'm sick. I'll be playing D2. :)

    --

  • Groan. (Score:4)

    by Super_Frosty ( 82232 ) on Wednesday June 07, 2000 @09:41AM (#1018615)
    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.

  • Stress testers (many of them) are misjudging (Score:5)

    by toast- ( 72345 ) on Wednesday June 07, 2000 @10:32AM (#1018623)
    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..

  • Re:See you guys later. (Score:4)

    by SuperRob ( 31516 ) on Wednesday June 07, 2000 @10:34AM (#1018629) Homepage
    Lucky You. I'm going to be on my honeymoon. How and I supposed to get any quality time with my new wife when I have this game to be playing?

    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?

  • Depends what you define as reasonable. It still lists windows as a requirement.
  • Diablo is gonna be a great game, as all Blizzard's games are, and of course they're gonna make a mint =), BUT it's not really doing much to forward the technology of gaming. I've been watching the evolution on Neverwinter Nights for awhile now, and I have to say that Bioware is doing some revolutionary stuff over and above what everyone else is. The biggest Gee Whiz feature of their new system is the Toolkit/Editor that'll allow all you D & D fans to recreate that perfect dungeon from your childhood. I say Bout time. Gaming shifted awhile back from linear, single shot experiences into long-term Unreal and Quake community type of user supported products with full mods. Much like linux, a creative department consisting of a huge user base is far superior to any single or team of artists. By providing the ability for added user-created content, they're prolonging the life and value of the game considerably. Very cool for those on a budget. Plus, they've announced full support for linux, which is an unusual step for a company making PC games. Hopefully, they mean full support at the same time as the Windows release, and not a year later, but hey, we'll take what we can get right? Check it out here:

    http://www.dailyradar.com/features/game_feature_ page_856_1.html

  • Re:I am not looking foward to Diablo 2 anyway (Score:5)

    by jnderr ( 178969 ) on Wednesday June 07, 2000 @09:44AM (#1018637)
    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.

  • Re:No trainers for a while I hope (Score:3)

    by Kefabi ( 178403 ) on Wednesday June 07, 2000 @09:46AM (#1018638) Journal
    There might be some trainers, but nothing like what was seen on the first Diablo. That game pretty much worked by hooking four computers together, and with complete trust. If one computer told another, "I just tapped your character witha broken dagger, and I did 999999999999 points of damage!" The second computer would reply, "Oh, okay!" and precede to kill the character. Diablo II works on a completely different way. Closed Characters will live on Blizzard's computers. Calculations are done there. The only way someone could really cheat is to figure out how to hack into Blizzard's computers and control them. That's a ton harder than figuring out how to just talk to another computer. I suppose there could be some trainers, but they won't do much more than things like auto-attack, or display the map, or some small things like that.

  • Re:I'll believe it.... (Score:4)

    by Ralph Wiggam ( 22354 ) on Wednesday June 07, 2000 @09:46AM (#1018640) Homepage
    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
  • Most client-server games do some calculations on the client side to :

    a. reduce server load - this solution scales better.
    b. reduce latency and bandwidth

    While I know nothing about the internals of D2 I would be very surprised if everything was calculated on the server - or I would expect the game to be laggy to play on a modem.

    Even if this is the case, it's still possible to cheat through other means :

    a. display game information the client is not supposed to know - but is sent over the network anyway. For example if a player shouldn't see behind a wall this calculation is usually done on the client side.
    b. bots can preform repetative task that make a little money and make the player rich.
    c. borgs, ala quake

    Personally, I'd like to see an online game that *only* bots can play. Then programmers can write all sort of AIs to play against other AIs... and the world is persistant - so the programmers have to concentrate on how to program in dynamic environment. If your program dies - your character dies. :)
  • What's wrong with Epic's approach with Unreal Tournament? They Sell a "Windows" version of the game and let you download a small Linux executable.

    Most of the game's content is the same because textures, models and sound binaries are cross-platform already. The AI and gameplay is handled by Tim Sweeney's UT script. He has his own "virtual machine" that reads that stuff in, and despite that extra layer the game still rocks

    Sure his UTScript interpreter for Linux was some work as well, but it allowed him to develop the game he wanted without designing around a particular OS.

    This type of game development is definetly the way to go. Too bad Blizzard doesn't have some of Epic's talent.

  • Re:See you guys later. (Score:3)

    by CrosseyedPainless ( 27978 ) on Wednesday June 07, 2000 @11:07AM (#1018655) Homepage
    Simple. Install her as a server and let other people run her while you.... Uh, never mind.
  • "Nearly 25 minutes of motion picture quality cinematics and a 70-minute original score of
    ambient music."

    Is it me or is this 25 minutes of motion picture cinematics too short? The introduction is already like 7-8 minutes long. 3 CDs too! Hmm!

  • Golly! (Score:3)

    by ShaniaTwain ( 197446 ) on Wednesday June 07, 2000 @09:47AM (#1018658) Homepage
    In Diablo II, players return to a dark world plagued by evil forces. After possessing the body of the hero who defeated him, Diablo resumes his nefarious scheme to shackle humanity into unholy slavery by joining forces with the other Prime Evils, Mephisto and Baal.

    -For a minute there I thought that was "Doubleclick" not "Diablo".
    -

  • System requirements (Score:4)

    by darkbabbit ( 172002 ) on Wednesday June 07, 2000 @09:49AM (#1018661)
    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.

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