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Games Entertainment

No Diablo II This Year 121

Posted by Hemos from the crying-and-gnashing-and-teeth dept.
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.
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No Diablo II This Year More

No Diablo II This Year

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  • I rather enjoyed Diablo, I wish they hadn't delayed things, however, it DOES create less times I have to boot into windows....
  • 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 :)

  • Darn it all! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I guess I'll just have to settle for my two front teeth for Christmas now...

    :(

    -Vel
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • Does it seem strange to anyone else to give a game called "Diablo" as a Christmas gift?
  • After you've explored the maze, and finally blasted the bad ass demon, what is left?

    I'm sure that there are lots of us who are looking forward to this one (with slack jawed anticipation, and fingers twitching to push ever deeper into caverns and tombs using mouse, joystick, or keyboard).

    Mike Eckardt
    meckardt@yahoo.nospam.com
    http://www.geocities.com/meckardt
  • Can anyone else think of a game that was worth playing that actually came out on the original release date? I don't think I have seen such a beast in my time.
  • ... at least we know that they aren't willing to release a crappy product just to get it out on time.

    Of course I'll be a bit upset when they finally do release DII and I still have to download megs and megs of bug fixes....


    --
    "A mind is a horrible thing to waste. But a mime...
    It feels wonderful wasting those fsckers."
  • I read most of the interviews because my girlfriend is addicted to Diablo 1 and really wants D2. I'm looking at the situation like this: We bought Alpha Centauri when it first came out. Now there are 4 - 5 patches for it .. Bugs ran like mad around the game. I'd *much* rather have a game delayed 2-4 months so they can work bugs out and make it more worth my money, then getting a game 2 months early, with so many bugs and playing issues that make the game pointless. Blizzard has really never let us down with some nifty games, and I'm sure Diablo 2 will be as groovy as I hear. I don't mind waiting a few extra months for it.
  • Hey, I'm happy they aren't releasing a bug-ridden, hey-lets-write-a-fast-buck sequal...Besides, more developement time means multiplayer code will be that much better.
  • This is irresponsible. Now those of us who really care and who have thus been following this game all along (and who consequently already knew about this) won't stand a chance of actually getting in on the closed beta, seeing as how the sign-up, once it comes out, will now be /.'ed by many people with only moderate interest who will through their sheer numbers manage to get most of the 1000 spots.

    The pool of tester applicants will now increase by an order of magnitude or so, thereby reducing the chances of getting in for those of us who really care by a factor of ten. Thanks a lot.
  • 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....
  • Yes. It was going to make an excellent Christmas gift...to myself ;>)

  • hrm... (Score:2)

    by Haven ( 34895 )
    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?
  • Hey guys I run http://loki.linuxgames.com [linuxgames.com]and I think that this could give all of a chance to prove that there is a market for Linux. Now that DiabloII is delayed maybe there is a chance to get Loki in the picture to start porting the game. That way we will have a Linux Version on Shelf at the same time as the Windows version. I'm willing to put up a page to sign a petition to port Diablo II to Linux. If anyone can help me out here...please email me! I need someone to help out on the news section and the Petition! Natas natas@linuxgames.com
  • That would depend on your personal opinion, ofcourse, but for me it was enough Grand Theft Auto 2 was on time... (22nd of October worldwide)
  • Somewhat related...Ultima 9 went gold on Monday and should be in shelves by the 24th! There goes all my productivity :)
    --
    Deepak Saxena
  • Delayed 2 - 4 months??? Diablo II was delayed well over a year. My brother was planning on getting it for me last christmas.
  • Yeah. Now, A Barry White Christmas is totally understandable.
  • My wife and I are die-hard Diablo fans -- we've been playing it constantly since it came out. In our desperation for something new, we tried a game called DarkStone. Although the UI doesn't hold together as well as Diablo, it is a really good game and I recommend it to anyone who liked Diablo.
  • Not nearly THAT bad.

  • Have to respect Blizzard.... (Score:3)

    by Denor ( 89982 ) <denor@yahoo.com> on Friday November 12, 1999 @11:15AM (#1537890) Homepage
    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.
  • Hey Diablo was fun, but yeah, once the beast was dead, it got to be a little dull. I think with the new four "zones" they have planned it could be more fun, but for me Everquest is where it's at. Everquest... what D2 wanted to be
  • "It means that there won't be an early, bug-infested release. Better to get it right then get it now."

    Can the same be said of Windows 2000, I wonder?

  • I have to whole heartedly agree with you. The UI has some deficiencies, but in some ways I actually like Darkstone better than Diablo. My wife is also hopelessly addicted to Darkstone as well, which helps keep me out of the doghouse.

  • GK3 (Score:1)

    by tycage ( 96002 )
    Gabriel Knight 3 went Gold last Tuesday and is expected out in the next week or so as well.

    That's the one I've been waiting for. (For years now)

    http://www.sierrastudios.com/games/gk3/ [sierrastudios.com]

  • oh well. back to myth2 for linux and xbill, just can't play that enough. makes me feel better after having to work on windows NT (neanderthal technology) all day.
  • Can the same be said of Windows 2000, I wonder?

    Better not to get that at all!

  • I have been waiting for this game for the last 2 years (has it been THAT long??), so it really does pain me that they are pushing the release again. It would have been worse to have gotten this game, installed all FOUR CD's and found out that there's unplayable portions of the game because of numerous bugs. I think Blizzard's got tremendously large cajones for holding off until it's right. Plus, with this not coming out till early 2K, I'll be able to spend all my waking hours on Opposing Forces!!
  • Oh Silly AC, the original Diablo was out before half of the people that use Linux today had probably even heard of Linux. Besides, this is News for Nerds, blah blah blah, and not ALL nerds need their news topics to be Linux related. If you do, that's what the user preferences are for :-)

    I can speak for myself, until they find a way to use Wine (or until I break down and use VMWare), once D2 is out, I doubt I'll be seeing much of my Linux desktop. I won't be seeing much of my Windows Desktop either though -- just lots and lots of Demoney goodness, chock full of swords, maces, armors, bow & arrows, skills and magics.

    I wonder if anywhere reputable is taking preorders yet? I wanna be the first on my floor to have this.
  • EBWorld.com is listing D2's official release date as Feb 01 2000, I'm not sure how accurate this is, but it's still less than 3 months away. 3 agonizingly painful months away.

    And also on the bright side, my GPA is scheduled to remain relatively constant until Feburary 2000.
  • figures. i just pre-ordered it!
    oh, well... Q3 will have to tide me over.
    ah, and those screenshots of the week. what teasers, those blizzard guys!

    xuvetyn

  • 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's more just that the software company said "damn, we suck, it's taken us 4 months to code the mousedown handler.. uh, maybe we'd better push the release date so that we can code the mouseup handler, too. We'll add an AI in the patch." It'll probably be released with as many bugs as any other game, it's just that it'll be released late. :-(
  • He he, I applaud your sense of idealism, but I have a strong feeling this delay won't help further your vision. Perhaps one day, but I doubt it will be soon when games start being released to Linux upon the actual release date. "If at first you don't succeed..... well wait longer and complain some more, bound to happen eventually." They may be delaying for quality and they may care about customer satisfaction but the possibility of them making a move like this is scarce unless it's already in their agenda.
  • I hear you on this one, but though I hate to say it, EQ is not much different. I was once blind to its manipulative powers, but now I see what EQ is capable. Quit while you can, before its too late.
  • For more info, check out Blizzard's press release at http://www.blizzard.com/PRESS/991111.sht ml [blizzard.com]. It looks like they are having a 1000 person closed beta followed by an open beta for testing Battle.Net.
  • Email Blizzard, start a petition, whatever to get diablo 2 and warcraft 3 for linux. Myself and many others don't use windows at all, and really really want these games!

  • They follows John Carmack's rule of game release: We'll release it when it is done, or it'll be ready when it is ready.
  • As someone who has been following the Diablo II development for quite a while, as well as previous blizzard games, I wasn't at all surprise by this. Doesn't anyone remeber Starcraft, which they originally though would be out by Christmas 97, but instead didn't make it out until April 98.

    As for possibly slashdotting the servers, well it happened with the Starcraft beta sign up, and as a result Blizzard extended the sign up time considerably. I can only hope that they've upped their server capacity considerably.

    Finally, I'm surprised that no one mentioned the recent announcement that after the limited 1000 person beta test (encompassing the entire 1st act, or 1/4 of the game) there will be an open beta test to stress test the battle.net servers! Yes, that means everyone can get a small fix of Diablo II before it comes out.

    G0del

    P.S. www.diabloii.net [diabloii.net] is my main source of D2 news.

  • While not every Blizzard game is bug free, but I certianly think Blizzard's standards are *much* higher then most company's standards. You can find weird, small bugs, but nothing glaring, show stopping or game ruining.
  • I know I am going to spark of a lot of talk about this but I just feel I need to say this: Everyone gives MS a hard time when they delay a software release. MS has stated more times than I can remember that they are going to ship their products when they have reached a level of stability rather then the date they said 2+ years ago. Yet as I read most of the reply's here about Diablo being delayed, everyone is okay with that and hardly bashes Westwood for stating that their software isn't good enough for release yet. Why the dual standard? Thats about it for my first Slashdot :-)
  • Sorry I oops... Blizzard not Westwood. And before you ask Yes I am going home to shoot myself for the mistake :-) Jim
  • (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.
  • It's called Linux Advokiddiesm. Once they hate Microsoft heck..Bill Gates can give away his entire fortune to feed starving families, MS can open source, whatever, they'll still find a fault in it. This is just typical slashdot linkiddie thinking, of course if you enjoy using Windows NT (I'm beta testing 2000 here and I must say it's been fantastic so far) you of course get bashed, smirked at, and demoted to "troll" status. Welcome to Linuxdot, news for linux users, nobody else matters ;) The most amusing part in all of this is that most of these kiddies still use the horrible evil evil Windows that they claim to hate so much. Oh the irony ;)
  • Heh. But we are still here waiting aren't we. Kinda funny. But remember more bodies does not always mean faster or better.
  • If you havn't seen Darkstone, I would reccammend giving it a try. Some bacis idea and the controlls were made simular for easy adaptation.
    There is some new unsupported feature now to change the skins on your characters... ought to be interesting.
    Nice little music video in there too.
    http://www.godgames.com/games/darkstone/
  • 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 :).
    ----------
  • 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.
  • Exchange 5.5, Office 98, Office 2000, Publisher, Outlook 98, etc. There are a lot more of them out there, too.
  • I totally agree.

    Diablo was my first foray into online gaming and I would have paid a lot for add-ons. Look at how many Doom packages were offered. The marketing team should have jumped all over Blizzard management to scrape up whatever resources were necessary to release additional packages, especially new levels.

    I will run screaming to the store the second they release Diablo II. They could have made me run there sooner and more frequently ...

  • The irony...Age of Kings was on time..hell I think it was early.
  • Yeah - hacks ruined Diablo. So many damn "trainers" were around it became no fun at all. Security is better in BattleZone, but that is now hacked too (the settings for the Capitan ship can be altered ad nauseum). BZ is still highly playable tho. People are respected for skill, not hacks.

    Hopefully DII will have better security than Diablo.

  • Where do I sign and/or who do I email?
    I'm missing my Blizzard games since I dumped
    Windows in disgust for Linux a year-and-a-half ago.

    Lokisoft could even do the port, so Blizzard's coders could rest (or get started on Starcraft II or something...)

    Of course, for a company who's official line is "We have announced no products for Linux" (but refuse to say whether they're seriously considering it or if they think Linux is just a fad, or what), I don't know how far this'll get.

    It's worth a shot, though. Maybe they'll realize that they, perhaps more than any other game company, have a HUGE potential market in those of us who emigrated to Linux long ago but still badly miss Blizzard's games.
  • Is Blizzard a company that Slashdot readers should be sitting at the edge of their seat for investing game dollars into?

    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 [slashdot.org] 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?

  • And you act like you're doing them a favor. They'll generally get better quality testers by picking them themselves. If you're like most people out there, your bug reports will not be worth the time it would take Blizzard to read them.
  • Not at all. If Blizzard -could- have released Diablo II before christmas, then they would have. But they're behind schedule. They underestimated how long it would take to get the development done, and how long it would take to get the product to meet their stability standards. It's not like they have a releasable product right now, but they just want to make it perfect, which seems to be what everyone is implying. They -can't- release it before christmas. I'll bet any money that D2 will have a comparable number of bugs to Starcraft, D1, Warcraft, and any other blizzard release, when they finally do release it. They aren't working now to make a perfect product, they're working to make a releasable product, and they found that they couldn't do that before christmas.

    At least, this is what makes sense to me.

  • Re:AAAAARRRRGGGGHHHHH!!!!! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Now this is just a silly rant.

    If they'd release just an add-on pack a year ago, everyone would be lambasting them (And quite rightly) for being a bunch of frickin' idiots. What, do you *enjoy* it when a great game comes out, but rather than make a sequel they just do little add-on packs for years and years, rather than build on the skills and intelligence they learned from the first one? Would you have preferred they released a "System Shock GOLD!" package rather than make the (amazing) System Shock 2? If so, I'd hazard to guess you're in the minority.

    Second, what makes you think they WANTED it to take this long? Do you have no insight into entertainment industries? You don't know starting out how long it's going to take. You make your best guess at a deadline and try to hit it as close as possible, amending it as necessary. They didn't want it to take this long, but once you've started on a project, you're stuck with it.

    Third, I happen to know that this choice was not a programmers' choice. I have friends who are programmers at BN working on Diablo II, and the choice was *managements*. They realized that releasing a game when it's finished to the whole world is much more important than whacking something out rapidly only in the US, risking pirating, and being forced to put out patches to fix problems they would have known about at ship time.

    I'm floored, frankly, that apparently there are people out there who honestly complain about a game company holding back on shipping until the game's done. Haven't you had ENOUGH patches to deal with in this decade?

  • Actually, they are making a large portion of Diablo 2 server-side at the Battle.net servers instead of being peer-to-peer and just using B.net servers for user 'match making'. I suspect this will give them added expenses since that will use a WHOLE lot more bandwidth if during the game all players are actively communicating with the servers, and I suspect they needed more time to get the added bandwidth capacity delivered or something (just a guess).
  • Really? I liked Ultima V the best.

    It had the same good top-down view as the rest, but it was larger, had more detailed NPCs, more items, etc.

    It also fixed a lot of user interface 'features' imho.

    Like, in 5, you could target distance weapons in more than eight cardinal directions. You could also repeat your last attack. It made the game play a lot better because you got through the fights without putting as much time into them, and got into the quests.

    Four and five were my faves, but five was (imho again) miles better than four.

  • Re:late software (Score:3)

    by Chandon Seldon ( 43083 ) on Friday November 12, 1999 @05:31PM (#1537948) Homepage

    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...

  • as of right now battle.net servers run solaris from what i've seen. check for yourself.. telnet to one of em. are they going to do an OS overhaul on the servers? i find that highly unlikely. that would require a major undertaking and patching all current games that use battle.net i would think. just curious...
  • The one case of them violating someone's privacy was an honest mistake. One honest mistake is irrelevent compared to the consistant, incredible quality of all of their products. As I said before on this thread, Blizzard is the only reason I still own a licence for Windows 98.

  • 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.

  • A trillion useless units and 3d graphics doesnt make a game better. I played SC, i loved it, i played TA.. i got bored with the fact that the AI was moronic and 2 players with any idea of what strategy is will stalemate until someone starts lobbing nukes and when back to SC. Tried TA Kingdoms and gore bored even faster.. went back to SC. SC is just more fun.. it's like pac-man, tetris, defender, space invaders, etc etc etc. A game that relies on actual playability to make it fun instead of flashy features.
    Dreamweaver

  • 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/ [battle.net]), 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.

  • While I've never played it (or intend to), I've seen some of my addicted friends play it, and it's got to be the most boring thing in the world. All they do is stand around the same area with 100 other players, waiting for a single monster to appear so they can all wail on it. What fun is THAT?!?

  • Okay, first i'd like the say that all the "Port it to linux! Port it to linux!" cr** is getting really old. I admit, i use windows more often than linux (mainly because i'm too stingy to spend the exorbinant amount people want for external 56k modems my comp came with a winmodem). But i like linux. It's a great OS and i respect the ideas behind it.
    However, i dont expect companies to start releasing programs for it en masse anytime soon. Why? because they would lose money. There simply aren't enough linux users yet to make it worthwhile to rewrite the software, do more marketing, and ship units to stores when your buyer base is so small compared to that of windows users. Hell, they arent even releasing a Mac version of it immediately and there are considerably more mac users out there than linuxians.
    On top of that.. i dont know about you, but while i'm willing to wait longer for the game so that i'll have a better game, i'm not willing to wait forever and i'm not willing to wait so that they can port it to linux before shipping. Imagine how you would feel as a linux user if a Blizzard came out with StarCraft 2 for linux, announced a release of december 1, then pushed it back 6 months so they could make a windows port to release simultaneously?
    Anyway.. so long as i'm ranting, i wish blizzard Would do what another poster suggested. After they release their game and sales die down enough that the prices start to drop, let other companies take a crack at releasing add-ons. I can understand not wanting to dilute your game with crappy add-ons by 3rd parties, but if they controlled it they could keep some quality management.. and just look at the waves of horrible 'add-on' packs from 3rd parties with loads of SC maps. They're not anything you cant download for free and many times are worse.

    Well, that's enough ranting for now. I await the release with baited breath and clutching my pre-order ticket.

    Dreamweaver
  • After Ultima ]I[ it was all over.

    No more taking over towns, killing all the guards and looting to your hearts content. No, now you have to be nice to people ;-p

    Actually I'm just about done playing Ultima ]I[ again on the Mac version.

    Hehe note the .sig
    ---CONFLICT!!---
  • 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.
    ----------

  • No Secret Here (Score:3)

    by The Optimizer ( 14168 ) on Friday November 12, 1999 @07:27PM (#1537961)
    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.

    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 /. 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.


    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. :) (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.)




  • This brings up the point that if, as I've seen stated here in serveral comments, people are willingly rebooting to Winbloz to play games, why should the game publishers go the to effort of appeasing the few die-hards that won't??

    How many here will run to the store and purchase a copy of this, and reboot and/or create a Winbloz partition? If you do, then you have validated Blizzard's, and many others, actions in not giving Linux (and other alternatives for that matter) the recognition we all desire.

    I guess one has to decide which is more important.

  • Half-Life came out on time, about a month before Christmas, which is supposedly the optimum time to release a computer game. That N64 Zelda game came out at almost the same time.
  • I only got one game that comes to mind...

    Battlecruiser 2000AD.

    It almost didn't make it.
  • I don't think Blizzard will do a Linux port of any of their games. I actually emaild them on this and they pretty much said it would never ever ever happen.
  • This whole concept of selling more product, to hire more programmers, to speed development doesnt compute here.

    Why?
    1) programming, and most projects in general, don't scale linearly. more like geometrically. Blizzard has chosen not to grow like that.
    2) most of the actual work on Blizzard games is the artwork. they have impressed me by paying boucoup attention to detail. you just can't rush art and keep the quality high and the artist satisfied. adding more cooks does not make the pot boil faster.

    ...though I do agree with you that add-ons for Diablo would have been neat.

    btw, anyone wonder if Blizzard releases these titles late *on purpose*? ;-)
  • three years . We have been waiting three long years.
  • Well, AFAIK every MS product to date has been delayed. If it was for stability reasons, I can't tell (though I think it probably wasn't).

    But if they had delayed their products until they were stable, we could perhaps look forward to the first release of Win95 before X-mas. : )
    /Ibn
  • 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.
  • I disagree.

    I'd rather wait as long as it takes for Blizzard to release a bug free (mostly), well playtested game. I've spent too much money on games that were poorly designed and implemented because they were rushed to market to make a quick buck.

    Blizzard gets a lot of loyalty from me because I don't have to guess if their games will be good or not. They always are because they take the time to do things right.

    I wish you could say the same for other software companies, who shall remain nameless!
  • Not likely. I talked to Scott Draeker while I was at LWCE this summer - he said that Blizzard has been nothing but painful about any attempts by them (Loki) to establish a porting contract. They seem convinced that there isn't enough of a market for their games on Linux (even after being flooded with e-mails from Linux users wanting StarCraft to be ported - go fig).

    Yes, Blizzard, there is a market for games on Linux - Loki is proving that. (Thank you Sam, Scott, and everyone else @ Loki.)
  • I made a comment about this in another thread - Scott Draeker has told me Blizzard thinks the Linux games market is too insignificant to even open up a porting contract with Loki. But the good folks at Loki have tried, and I'm sure they're continuing to try.
  • It sounds like they are trying. Check out http://www.blizzard.com/diablo2/faq/multiplayer.ht m
  • There will be a beta signup page on the blizzard website when the beta is getting closer, watch for news there.

    -CC
  • just a quick correction, Blizzard has over 100 employees at Blizzard south (where D2 is being tested) and around 40 at Blizzard north (where D2 is being developed).

    -CC
  • The recent webmaster chats (can be located on diablii.net or inforceptor.com) did mention that the beta will continue to be an open international beta(some sort of demo) so as to test the international servers.
    That good enuff for u?
  • ...not to be all particular or anything...

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