20 ms·

Diablo II: Resurrected

186 points by eswat 6y ago

dangwu 6y ago
Oh man - quite possibly my favorite game of all time. I find it funny that the remastered graphics look exactly like how I remember the game (though they're clearly improved).
- ketzo 6y ago
  It's exactly what a videogame remaster should be, IMO; use modern technology to recreate the feelings you had when you first played it!
- wellthisisgreat 6y ago
  I was looking at the graphics and wondering if they just had those 3D models all this time, because they had to make them for 2.5D rendering in D2 and just swapped the assets now in a sense (and the engine too of course)
  - somedude895 6y ago
    That's an interesting thought, but I'd assume 20 year old 3D models wouldn't be much use today, would they? I know they were thinking about making D2 a 3D game at first, like Runescape, but then went with 2D, because 3D technology wasn't at a point that allowed them to carry over the gritty and dark theme they wanted for Diablo. And then went on to make D3 look as cartoony as it does... They used photos of clay figurines for Diablo 1, would be fun if they remade that with 3D scanning techniques. Do check out David Brevik's post mortem on D1 from GDC by the way, it's fantastic: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VscdPA6sUkc https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VscdPA6sUkc
- eiriklv 6y ago
  That might not all be attributed to nostalgia. CRT displays actually make things look more hi-res and «depthy» [0]. We’ve barely caught up with 4/8K and OLED. This is why CRTs are so popular for retro gaming. Some effects aren’t even possible to display correctly on a non-CRT (without shaders at least) [1]. [0] - https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/9xg8w3/the_same_pixel_art_on_a_crt_vs_lcd_screen/ https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/9xg8w3/t... [1] - https://mobile.twitter.com/gamesnosh/status/1232731118354550784 https://mobile.twitter.com/gamesnosh/status/1232731118354550...
m3kw9 6y ago
2 was always better than 3
- postalrat 6y ago
  Was there ever any doubt?
Dirlewanger 6y ago
Wow...looks pretty damn good. Wonder how intense the rewrite was; David Brevik said that much of the game relied on the precise resolution and framerate for everything to work. It wasn't a matter of just upping the resolution and everything worked fine. I swear though, if this is anything like Warcraft Reforged, I'm truly done with this company.
- hartator 6y ago
  It probably is though. Is any remaster any successful?
  - t-writescode 6y ago
    Windwaker HD and Link’s Awakening’s 2 remakes were pretty well received
  - xkeysc0re 6y ago
    Yes, a few of the Metal Gears. FF7. Legend of Zelda Master Quest for Gamecube. Counter-Strike: Source. Demon's Souls.
    - huckyaus 6y ago
      Have to disagree with you on Half Life: Source. It’s way too glitchy to enjoy from start to finish. I’d recommend playing Black Mesa instead.
      - t-writescode 6y ago
        You and I must have played different copies of the game, then
  - endgame 6y ago
    https://www.thedragonstrap.com/ https://www.thedragonstrap.com/ was absolutely beautiful, and done with real care and attention by dedicated fans.
  - 6y ago
xkeysc0re 6y ago
Wow, they really did it. Curious how much of the latter-day mechanics they'll include like runewords, cube crafting etc.
- skocznymroczny 6y ago
  It will have a key to switch between old and new graphics. They mentioned they don't want to touch the gameplay, not even bugfixes. It's primarily a graphics remaster, the gameplay will stay the same.
  - scythe 6y ago
    Some bugs in D2 and pretty silly. Like how Strafe displays (animation) a 2-frame attack while doing a 3-frame attack. Or how Fend will miss every hit if you trigger a Dodge. Or how the Blaze synergy on Fire Wall just doesn't work. I guess cashing in is supposed to be cheap, and D2 was good enough that I might still play it.
    - nivekuil 6y ago
      IIRC the Fend/Strafe bug is only a visual bug, and you can spam click to restart the actual attack. This may not be true for the vanilla game; it's what I remember from Eastern Sun.
    - hellcow 6y ago
      Don't forget the paladin's charge! Hit it just right and you barely move.
    - skocznymroczny 6y ago
      Well, seems like most people want the original experience, bugs and all. On one hand they are worried that Blizzard will try to improve the experience too much and diverge from the original, on other hand they got used to most bugs/features and consider it part of the original game's soul. Personally, I wouldn't mind having things like unlimited stash and unlimited respecs, which most things add (in singleplayer) by mods anyway.
BugsJustFindMe 6y ago
"You are not allowed to view this page at this time." ?
- Nailgun 6y ago
  Go "inconito". I think something I had filled the date to make me too young. It's ridiculous that entering drop down fields proves your age.
  - NullPrefix 6y ago
    It doesn't prove your age. It proves that you declared yourself to be of age.
    - BugsJustFindMe 6y ago
      It proves that something or someone, not necessarily you, declared yourself to be of age.
throwawayboise 6y ago
LOL I thought Diablo was an old daisy-wheel printer. Gives away that I'm not a gamer.
- m463 6y ago
  No, it's a nuclear reactor.
dj_mc_merlin 6y ago
I personally enjoy the classic graphics more.
EduardoBautista 6y ago
Shame that it's not coming to macOS. Does anyone have any experience gaming through Parallels? I have a 16-inch MBP. I have never ran Windows on it though.
- terramex 6y ago
  In general it works great, but many online games have anti-cheat systems preventing them from running inside VM - for example Overwatch (also from Blizzard).
- Nailgun 6y ago
  Ha this always made me laugh since 96. - It doesn't work on Linux - It doesn't work on Mac
  - ksec 6y ago
    Linux is extremely fragmented and has less than 1% of market. Mac has 10% - 20% Market with 100M+ Active user, and judging from the M1 sales it should finally cross the 110M by late 2021. Asking for Mac support isn't ridiculous question like it was in the 90s.
    - vetinari 6y ago
      > Linux is extremely fragmented Linux support in games usually means support for Ubuntu/Steam runtime. No Linux user is asking for 100% QA coverage for Alpine and Kali. > and has less than 1% of market. If you mean Steam stats, it is comparable to macos market share. > Mac has 10% - 20% Market Nope, not even in US. > judging from the M1 sales it should finally cross the 110M by late 2021. Did you know that in 2020 ChromeOS machines sold better? I was also surprised. > Asking for Mac support isn't ridiculous question like it was in the 90s. Actually, it is. MacOS is the platform that breaks ABI the fastest, even faster than Linux distributions. Apple expects the developers to keep up with maintenance of their software for each annual MacOS release -- which is exactly what game developers won't do. They expect to release their game, and after the wave of their sales ends, the game will end up basically unmaintained. Hence, all the 32-bit games I have for MacOS won't ever run on M1. Or even any other Intel Mac that was upgraded to Catalina or newer. But their Linux counterparts will run on Linux for years to come.
moralestapia 6y ago
I really want this but the Warcraft 3 remaster was so so so bad that I'm holding my breath until I can play it first.
- imbnwa 6y ago
  Was really looking forward to playing Helm's Deep maps on Bnet with the new WC3 but alas
- DixieDev 6y ago
  Between the Hong Kong shenanigans, 2019 layoffs, and abysmal WC3 remaster release and support, it's hard to support anything this company does these days.
  - redisman 6y ago
    For me it was the HGC. Just kinda sucks that they killed it right before the new season was supposed to start because I was really getting into it. Killed my whole interest in the game. I know it wasn't profitable but that just kind of says it all. When I was a kid and fell in love with Warcraft and Diablo, I really don't know how much of that soul of the company remains today.
- minimaxir 6y ago
  Note that unlike W3R, the Diablo II Remake will be made internally (via the recent Vicarious Visions subsidiary)
grawprog 6y ago
I was pretty addicted to Diablo 2 for a couple years as a teenager. Never got into WoW or anything, but I wasted at least one entire summer doing nothing but playing Diablo 2. Never was a big fan of 3. It felt more like playing some kind of diablo themed version of gauntlet or something with a bit more depth. It didn't feel like Diablo 2. I tried another recent one that was supposed keep the spirit of diablo 2. I think it was path of exile. I never got into it the same way. It was better than Diablo 3 but still didn't quite capture what made diablo 2 so addictively awesome. As far as atmosphere and everything goes, diablo 1 was always best at that. Diablo 2 brought the series in a different way, but diablo 2 was something else. The open battlenet games were utterly ridiculous. Hacked items to the point of nonsense. Like you couldn't even see what was happening on.the screen, but it was fun playing with those sketchy editors that were more often than not likely malware. Mostly though, my memories are from the closed battlenet games. Lots of time spent gaming with random people I never seen again, but we'd spend hours getting through an act or two together, race for treasure and just have good times. Helping low levels run through the game so they can mule for their high level characters and farm, cheap shots from high level characters that went hostile immediately, good PvP duels, item runs, and just generally lots of fun. I still remember the day I stepped into a game playing my level 84 hardcore(permadeath) character...somebody went hostile immediately, I was somewhere pretty obscure so I thought it'd be alright, stepped through the waypoint...was dead before the screen loaded, of all the places I picked...that's where they were, that game had like 60 way points or something...that was pretty heartbreaking... I dunno, I've yet to find an online game with the same kind of community. There was hackers, griefers, people really into the game, item farmers, pvpers, it was a varied mix of gamers under a barely moderated environment, yet somehow it worked and it was pretty amazing. At least when blizzard was active with d2. Near the end it started to decline and the hackers took over, still in its golden age, d2's closed battlenet was pretty great and I haven't really gotten into an online game in the same way since.
- andrewprock 6y ago
  Every time my kids die in a game, I ask them what happens. The answer is never: "I lost everything!" I still haven't found anything quite like the feeling you get when you die in Diablo II hardcore.
stefanmichael 6y ago
I'm excited for runewords :)
k__ 6y ago
I loved D2 back in the days, but I don't know how good that gameplay aged...
- esgwpl 6y ago
  I don't know about you but to me what makes D2 so charming is its loot and character progression.
- m463 6y ago
  Even after all these years, I recall the clicking... my fingers would get tired from all the clicking.
- Can_Not 6y ago
  First time I played D2 might have been in 2010 with people who played D1&D2 on release. It was genuinely one of the worst games I had ever played.
reshie 6y ago
looks good. the pixels are gone and the ui where similar and recognizable got a overhaul. i would assume it supports resolutions of our era as well.
cwkoss 6y ago
I wonder if they are using the same backend servers as old client or if that got a rewrite as well and players will be in separate environments. I played a couple months of evenings of D2 during the pandemic: the online experience was quite a mess. Got temp bans several times for switching characters soon after login. Rampant botting to the point that people made bot services that would give you waypoints upon request as they spam their d2itemz4sale.biz or whatever URL. Seems like there is no moderation budget so they just have a bunch of blunt automated rules. Lots of quality of life issues remain in the game, like potion management after death, managing projectile consumables in the inventory, friend system is a bolt on through the chat system. I wonder if they made any changes to address un-fun parts of the game or if this is functionally identical. Still had quite a bit of fun. Was able to tank Uber Diablo with a Zeal paladin to drop annihilus.
- Lammy 6y ago
  > I wonder if they are using the same backend servers as old client To me it seems like the entire point of these remakes has been to kill off the classic Battle.net and get everyone on to the new Blizzard Launcher. The WarcraftⅢ remake made this especially apparent due to how much was promised but then cut before release: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sURZZkQxru8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sURZZkQxru8
- phone8675309 6y ago
  The original Diablo 2 could be played offline or with friends without using Battle.net, so those can be worked around. I'm guessing with the "cross progression" system (whatever that means) that games will have to be on Blizzard's servers at all times to allow syncing and avoid cheating, hacks, and piracy.
- rubyskills 6y ago
  I remember towards the end of my time playing d2, bots were everywhere. At some point, I will admit I started to do it too. I actually really enjoyed the scripting behind it (in Lua) and the technical challenges behind it. Funny, it looks like d2jsp is still a thing.
NikolaeVarius 6y ago
Welp, theres a year of my life going down the drain again. I have spent way too many hours breathing second hand smoke in internet cafes playing this game
throwaway13337 6y ago
If anyone is looking to play a modern version of Diablo 2, the spiritual successor is probably more a game called Path of Exile (rather than Diablo 3 or this). The developers managed to capture the aesthetic while improving the game in the direction of what gave the original game its replay-ability. Their development cycle of new content every 3 or 4 months with a league reset is unique and keeps things fresh. They're additionally not too monetized. It's a good company with probably more of a future than a Diablo 2 remaster.
- phone8675309 6y ago
  If you want something in the vein of Diablo 2 but with a different aesthetic (and not always online) then try Torchlight 2.
  - bloodorange 6y ago
    While Torchlight and Torchlight 2 have a lot of "quality of life" improvements and are decent games in general, I've found that they lack the replay value which Diablo 2 (with LOD) has. I can't exactly say why but this is how it felt to me.
    - eru 6y ago
      You might have been older when you played Torchlight 2 than when you played Diablo 2?
      - bloodorange 6y ago
        I'm afraid, to me, that doesn't seem like sufficient explanation. Now, given a choice, even with outdated graphics, I'd rather play Diablo 2 than play Torchlight 2.
        eru 6y ago
        Games seem more magic when we are younger.
StillBored 6y ago
Weird, it shows up as Diablo IV on their game selector page. I clicked the beta button. I probably don't need another game I won't play (or play for an hour once every 5 years). So the beta is probably just about right. A couple hours of gameplay will satisfy my needs. That is sort of my Path Of Exile habit too. About once a year I will get a hankering for a good old slaughter fest. Except POE keeps adjusting their skills tree, and destroying my characters. Or so it seems, since I can never remember the exact builds for some of these 5+ year old characters.
lanius 6y ago
I'll play this, but all these remasters make me wonder if Blizzard is running out of ideas.
- minimaxir 6y ago
  World of Warcraft Classic was resisted as the CEO infamously said "You think you want it, but you don't." When that turned out to be completely wrong and WoW Classic turned out to be a smash success, chances are Blizzard shifted development priority toward more nostalgia.
  - cozuya 6y ago
    People are still playing it, but its certainly no longer a smash success. WoW classic really exposed the weakness of easily min maxed old games like vanilla WoW. I hope they learned their lesson and "update" D2. Otherwise yeah it'll be a trip down memory lane and then after the 5th Baal run I'm out.
- hertzrat 6y ago
  A lot of old school blizzard creative staff have left over the years [1] [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/Blizzard/comments/ewdija/a_list_of_veteran_developers_who_left_blizzard_in/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Blizzard/comments/ewdija/a_list_of_...
- runawaybottle 6y ago
  It’s corporate now. Corporate is actually different from Business even. It means, we know what prints money, and will stick to the script. Corporate is pretty much the death of innovation and creativity.
- soneil 6y ago
  I fear that would be a cynical but possibly accurate take on it. However I must note I've seen people begging for this ever since D3 released. I think Blizzard are well aware that there's plenty of us who have grown up with their core franchises, and are now at the age where nostalgia is an easy sell. (Also interesting to note they have Future, Mobile and Nostalgia releases of the same franchise all on the near-future map. They're not going backwards, but they're certainly spreading out.)
ulisesrmzroche 6y ago
I signed up to it. I’m curious how it goes. Diablo 3 was such a letdown, about as bad as GOT season 8.
huachimingo 6y ago
Diablo means "devil" in Spanish, and being raised in a catholic family always gave me odd feels when I talked about these game with people. Still nice game, amazing soundtrack, same as D1.
chrononaut 6y ago
While many folks here reminiscence about the game play, I remember being absolutely amazed by the cinematics. I couldn't think of another game at the time having such detail, and I recall just being really excited to watch each Act's cutscenes as I progressed through the game. I wonder if they are going to update and re-render those as well..
kingkawn 6y ago
YES
nknealk 6y ago
I played D2 regularly all through my teenage years. I think it might be one of the most exploited games ever which was half of what made it fun: * There were a variety of ways to duplicate items online. One really popular and well known one involved spamming bone wall on a necromancer + meteor on a sorceress which would cause the server to lag to the point that your ping would exceed 1000. At that point, you could join a game with the same character, stop spamming the skill so your original character didn’t lag out, thus creating two ephemeral copies of your items. This eventually got patched * One commonly duplicated item was called a stone ring of Jordan (SOJ). They were so commonly duplicated that blizzard added an event that if you sold ~100 to an in game merchant, everyone connected to a given server would spawn an Uber version of Diablo that dropped a unique small charm. * Another way blizzard got rid of duplicated items was something called “rust storm” where they’d take the servers offline and go through every item in existence, deleting duplicates. * Botting was extremely common. There are a bunch of weird quirks added to the game to try to prevent botting, though none of them worked. For example, if you spin the mouse wheel while hovering over a skill, it’ll cycle through your skills. That would immediately get you kicked from the game because the person who programmed the server thought only bots could switch skills that quickly. * There was a feature in the game that if one person in your party got a quest, the whole party got the quest. Players regularly abuse this to “rush” level 1 characters into act 5 in the hardest difficulty so that they can expedite leveling up. * There are ethereal items that get a 50% bonus to their core attribute (eg. Armor). If you used the cube recipe to socket the item, that 50% bonus would then get applied again. There were an entire class of items called “ebugged” that were overpowered. * There was an event added much later for a unique large charm. Someone figured out that you could trap Mephisto in a building such that he would never path out of it, continuously trigger him to summon minions, and kill those minions to grant you massive experience with low risk of death. Thus uber leveling was born. You’d do this in a party with a fully equipped character handling the minions and could go 1-80 in like 5 minutes. This later got patched. * There are still a small group of people who maintain items from previous patches that no longer spawn. A good google search term for this if you wanted to go down a rabbit hole is “1.08 valkyrie wing”. These are commonly duplicated and at risk of disappearing in a rust storm, so these players maintain a genealogy on forums of their items to prove they’re “legit” and not going to poof on you. * Servers would drop you after like 30 minutes of inactivity. However, there were pathing bugs that could be exploited to make your character bounce back and forth between squares on the grid effectively preventing you from disconnecting. No mouse clicking scripts needed. There’s probably more but this is getting long
pazimzadeh 6y ago
It looks pretty good, but seems to me that each of the elements look a little too distinct from each other in this hi res version. There needs to be a little bit of fog or something to make it more cohesive.
- pazimzadeh 6y ago
  To be more precise, I am saying the spells and character effects could be more integrated a little more into the entire scene, like in D2. Otherwise it looks amazing.
Espionage724 6y ago
Well, I'm excited! The screenshots and small snippets of gameplay presented look familiar and fun. There's going to be controller support on PC as well (was one of my favorite things about D3). And cross-platform progression sounds interesting. I'm not entirely happy about what happened with WC3:R, but I'm assuming some kind of lessons were learned with that, and with D2:R being made with a different team with closer interactions, I believe it will end up in a better state at launch. (of course I'll also back-up my old copies of D2 and its installers as well just in-case)
encom 6y ago
Note there's even the cursed chat gem on the bottom of the page.
Decker87 6y ago
As much as I like the idea, I wish they'd tweak the gameplay just enough to make all the classes viable. Especially summoner druids.
hh3k0 6y ago
I've loved the Diablo and Warcraft series but I will never buy anything from Blizzard again: > In the Blitzchung controversy, the company withdrew the prize from the winner of an online game tournament after he wore a mask and spoke in support of the 2019–20 Hong Kong protests in a post-game interview, stating "Liberate Hong Kong, the revolution of our times". The company is partly owned by Tencent. In August 2020, Activision Blizzard removed imagery of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests from its trailer of Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War.
BossingAround 6y ago
This is amazing but wow, full price (60 EUR in Europe). I wonder whether the Switch version will get the "Switch tax" (70-80EUR per full game in my region).
- Hiopl 6y ago
  It's 40€ including the old version. The 60€ Prime Evil version also contains Diablo 3 Eternal Collection and some D3 cosmetics.
LargoLasskhyfv 6y ago
Rarely experienced audio stuttering for a long time. This site did it, all cores maxed out for a second. Guess it didn't like to be restricted by uBlock-origin.
gnyman 6y ago
If anyone is wondering what the original Diablo II battle.net experience looks like in 2020 (yep, it's apparently still working, hows that for legacy support?), Carbot recently did an episode on it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CYIyQMVzUnI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CYIyQMVzUnI Also the Diablol 2 series does cause some flashbacks, especially the soundscape... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ru-UM1nYJQ&list=PL0QrZvg7QIgqG206vRwF4hhY9h4JG6mtM&index=3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ru-UM1nYJQ&list=PL0QrZvg7QI...
FrozenVoid 6y ago
As someone who wasted a decade on the game, i'm not interested in minor pixel hacks that are irrelevant to gameplay(99.99% of time isn't spent on staring at objects) which remains a cookie cutter clickfest trash( and a closest RPG game that is cookie-clicker like). There is a reason game bots were pioneered with d2, the game is extremely repetitive and loot-centric pinata simulator. If the mechanics didn't change its just the same game with extra makeup. D2 mods at least implement quality-of-life improvement, which often clash with the vanilla game expecting the player to maintain tasks and repeat routine actions(often requiring a town portal), as well as limited pool of viable builds(mods significantly expand the space of possible builds and item customization). Anyone who played any decent D2 mod will know that QoL improvements and diverse build pool is much more interesting long-term vs the improved graphics that will be 'novel' for a few days at best.
nathias 6y ago
The magic of D2 was battlenet with all its glitches that made the game develop in its own weird way (the soj-based economy that developed because a hack was possible for a time, being the prime example).
pjmlp 6y ago
> Verify your age Choose a random date with enough years into it, done. Other than that, good to see it, I have most of the original editions in special release boxes. Spent endless hours playing them when they were new.
dustymcp 6y ago
Lets ruin another classic im looking at you wc3 remastered..
krzyk 6y ago
So Blizzard now only remakes games? So far ther remade: StarCraft, warcraft 3, World of Warcraft (classic mode) and now Diablo 2. Whay happened to the best gaming company?
wes-k 6y ago
No mention of the secret cow level!? So many great memories, and such high level of addiction. Temping...
jongorer 6y ago
This is awesome, I've been playing Path of Exile since it released and now I have hope to return to childhood.
warpspin 6y ago
I wished they added couch co-op, like in Diablo 3. This was D3's best feature. Too few games nowadays have that.

186 points by eswat 6y ago

Oh man - quite possibly my favorite game of all time. I find it funny that the remastered graphics look exactly like how I remember the game (though they're clearly improved).

ketzo 6y ago
It's exactly what a videogame remaster should be, IMO; use modern technology to recreate the feelings you had when you first played it!
wellthisisgreat 6y ago
I was looking at the graphics and wondering if they just had those 3D models all this time, because they had to make them for 2.5D rendering in D2 and just swapped the assets now in a sense (and the engine too of course)
- somedude895 6y ago
  That's an interesting thought, but I'd assume 20 year old 3D models wouldn't be much use today, would they? I know they were thinking about making D2 a 3D game at first, like Runescape, but then went with 2D, because 3D technology wasn't at a point that allowed them to carry over the gritty and dark theme they wanted for Diablo. And then went on to make D3 look as cartoony as it does... They used photos of clay figurines for Diablo 1, would be fun if they remade that with 3D scanning techniques. Do check out David Brevik's post mortem on D1 from GDC by the way, it's fantastic: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VscdPA6sUkc https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VscdPA6sUkc
eiriklv 6y ago
That might not all be attributed to nostalgia. CRT displays actually make things look more hi-res and «depthy» [0]. We’ve barely caught up with 4/8K and OLED. This is why CRTs are so popular for retro gaming. Some effects aren’t even possible to display correctly on a non-CRT (without shaders at least) [1]. [0] - https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/9xg8w3/the_same_pixel_art_on_a_crt_vs_lcd_screen/ https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/9xg8w3/t... [1] - https://mobile.twitter.com/gamesnosh/status/1232731118354550784 https://mobile.twitter.com/gamesnosh/status/1232731118354550...

m3kw9 6y ago

2 was always better than 3

postalrat 6y ago
Was there ever any doubt?

Dirlewanger 6y ago

Wow...looks pretty damn good. Wonder how intense the rewrite was; David Brevik said that much of the game relied on the precise resolution and framerate for everything to work. It wasn't a matter of just upping the resolution and everything worked fine. I swear though, if this is anything like Warcraft Reforged, I'm truly done with this company.

hartator 6y ago
It probably is though. Is any remaster any successful?
- t-writescode 6y ago
  Windwaker HD and Link’s Awakening’s 2 remakes were pretty well received
- xkeysc0re 6y ago
  Yes, a few of the Metal Gears. FF7. Legend of Zelda Master Quest for Gamecube. Counter-Strike: Source. Demon's Souls.
  - huckyaus 6y ago
    Have to disagree with you on Half Life: Source. It’s way too glitchy to enjoy from start to finish. I’d recommend playing Black Mesa instead.
    - t-writescode 6y ago
      You and I must have played different copies of the game, then
- endgame 6y ago
  https://www.thedragonstrap.com/ https://www.thedragonstrap.com/ was absolutely beautiful, and done with real care and attention by dedicated fans.
- 6y ago

xkeysc0re 6y ago

Wow, they really did it. Curious how much of the latter-day mechanics they'll include like runewords, cube crafting etc.

skocznymroczny 6y ago
It will have a key to switch between old and new graphics. They mentioned they don't want to touch the gameplay, not even bugfixes. It's primarily a graphics remaster, the gameplay will stay the same.
- scythe 6y ago
  Some bugs in D2 and pretty silly. Like how Strafe displays (animation) a 2-frame attack while doing a 3-frame attack. Or how Fend will miss every hit if you trigger a Dodge. Or how the Blaze synergy on Fire Wall just doesn't work. I guess cashing in is supposed to be cheap, and D2 was good enough that I might still play it.
  - nivekuil 6y ago
    IIRC the Fend/Strafe bug is only a visual bug, and you can spam click to restart the actual attack. This may not be true for the vanilla game; it's what I remember from Eastern Sun.
  - hellcow 6y ago
    Don't forget the paladin's charge! Hit it just right and you barely move.
  - skocznymroczny 6y ago
    Well, seems like most people want the original experience, bugs and all. On one hand they are worried that Blizzard will try to improve the experience too much and diverge from the original, on other hand they got used to most bugs/features and consider it part of the original game's soul. Personally, I wouldn't mind having things like unlimited stash and unlimited respecs, which most things add (in singleplayer) by mods anyway.

BugsJustFindMe 6y ago

"You are not allowed to view this page at this time." ?

Nailgun 6y ago
Go "inconito". I think something I had filled the date to make me too young. It's ridiculous that entering drop down fields proves your age.
- NullPrefix 6y ago
  It doesn't prove your age. It proves that you declared yourself to be of age.
  - BugsJustFindMe 6y ago
    It proves that something or someone, not necessarily you, declared yourself to be of age.

throwawayboise 6y ago

LOL I thought Diablo was an old daisy-wheel printer. Gives away that I'm not a gamer.

m463 6y ago
No, it's a nuclear reactor.

dj_mc_merlin 6y ago

I personally enjoy the classic graphics more.

EduardoBautista 6y ago

Shame that it's not coming to macOS. Does anyone have any experience gaming through Parallels? I have a 16-inch MBP. I have never ran Windows on it though.

terramex 6y ago
In general it works great, but many online games have anti-cheat systems preventing them from running inside VM - for example Overwatch (also from Blizzard).
Nailgun 6y ago
Ha this always made me laugh since 96. - It doesn't work on Linux - It doesn't work on Mac
- ksec 6y ago
  Linux is extremely fragmented and has less than 1% of market. Mac has 10% - 20% Market with 100M+ Active user, and judging from the M1 sales it should finally cross the 110M by late 2021. Asking for Mac support isn't ridiculous question like it was in the 90s.
  - vetinari 6y ago
    > Linux is extremely fragmented Linux support in games usually means support for Ubuntu/Steam runtime. No Linux user is asking for 100% QA coverage for Alpine and Kali. > and has less than 1% of market. If you mean Steam stats, it is comparable to macos market share. > Mac has 10% - 20% Market Nope, not even in US. > judging from the M1 sales it should finally cross the 110M by late 2021. Did you know that in 2020 ChromeOS machines sold better? I was also surprised. > Asking for Mac support isn't ridiculous question like it was in the 90s. Actually, it is. MacOS is the platform that breaks ABI the fastest, even faster than Linux distributions. Apple expects the developers to keep up with maintenance of their software for each annual MacOS release -- which is exactly what game developers won't do. They expect to release their game, and after the wave of their sales ends, the game will end up basically unmaintained. Hence, all the 32-bit games I have for MacOS won't ever run on M1. Or even any other Intel Mac that was upgraded to Catalina or newer. But their Linux counterparts will run on Linux for years to come.

moralestapia 6y ago

I really want this but the Warcraft 3 remaster was so so so bad that I'm holding my breath until I can play it first.

imbnwa 6y ago
Was really looking forward to playing Helm's Deep maps on Bnet with the new WC3 but alas
DixieDev 6y ago
Between the Hong Kong shenanigans, 2019 layoffs, and abysmal WC3 remaster release and support, it's hard to support anything this company does these days.
- redisman 6y ago
  For me it was the HGC. Just kinda sucks that they killed it right before the new season was supposed to start because I was really getting into it. Killed my whole interest in the game. I know it wasn't profitable but that just kind of says it all. When I was a kid and fell in love with Warcraft and Diablo, I really don't know how much of that soul of the company remains today.
minimaxir 6y ago
Note that unlike W3R, the Diablo II Remake will be made internally (via the recent Vicarious Visions subsidiary)

grawprog 6y ago

I was pretty addicted to Diablo 2 for a couple years as a teenager. Never got into WoW or anything, but I wasted at least one entire summer doing nothing but playing Diablo 2. Never was a big fan of 3. It felt more like playing some kind of diablo themed version of gauntlet or something with a bit more depth. It didn't feel like Diablo 2. I tried another recent one that was supposed keep the spirit of diablo 2. I think it was path of exile. I never got into it the same way. It was better than Diablo 3 but still didn't quite capture what made diablo 2 so addictively awesome. As far as atmosphere and everything goes, diablo 1 was always best at that. Diablo 2 brought the series in a different way, but diablo 2 was something else. The open battlenet games were utterly ridiculous. Hacked items to the point of nonsense. Like you couldn't even see what was happening on.the screen, but it was fun playing with those sketchy editors that were more often than not likely malware. Mostly though, my memories are from the closed battlenet games. Lots of time spent gaming with random people I never seen again, but we'd spend hours getting through an act or two together, race for treasure and just have good times. Helping low levels run through the game so they can mule for their high level characters and farm, cheap shots from high level characters that went hostile immediately, good PvP duels, item runs, and just generally lots of fun. I still remember the day I stepped into a game playing my level 84 hardcore(permadeath) character...somebody went hostile immediately, I was somewhere pretty obscure so I thought it'd be alright, stepped through the waypoint...was dead before the screen loaded, of all the places I picked...that's where they were, that game had like 60 way points or something...that was pretty heartbreaking... I dunno, I've yet to find an online game with the same kind of community. There was hackers, griefers, people really into the game, item farmers, pvpers, it was a varied mix of gamers under a barely moderated environment, yet somehow it worked and it was pretty amazing. At least when blizzard was active with d2. Near the end it started to decline and the hackers took over, still in its golden age, d2's closed battlenet was pretty great and I haven't really gotten into an online game in the same way since.

andrewprock 6y ago
Every time my kids die in a game, I ask them what happens. The answer is never: "I lost everything!" I still haven't found anything quite like the feeling you get when you die in Diablo II hardcore.

stefanmichael 6y ago

I'm excited for runewords :)

k__ 6y ago

I loved D2 back in the days, but I don't know how good that gameplay aged...

esgwpl 6y ago
I don't know about you but to me what makes D2 so charming is its loot and character progression.
m463 6y ago
Even after all these years, I recall the clicking... my fingers would get tired from all the clicking.
Can_Not 6y ago
First time I played D2 might have been in 2010 with people who played D1&D2 on release. It was genuinely one of the worst games I had ever played.

reshie 6y ago

looks good. the pixels are gone and the ui where similar and recognizable got a overhaul. i would assume it supports resolutions of our era as well.

cwkoss 6y ago

I wonder if they are using the same backend servers as old client or if that got a rewrite as well and players will be in separate environments. I played a couple months of evenings of D2 during the pandemic: the online experience was quite a mess. Got temp bans several times for switching characters soon after login. Rampant botting to the point that people made bot services that would give you waypoints upon request as they spam their d2itemz4sale.biz or whatever URL. Seems like there is no moderation budget so they just have a bunch of blunt automated rules. Lots of quality of life issues remain in the game, like potion management after death, managing projectile consumables in the inventory, friend system is a bolt on through the chat system. I wonder if they made any changes to address un-fun parts of the game or if this is functionally identical. Still had quite a bit of fun. Was able to tank Uber Diablo with a Zeal paladin to drop annihilus.

Lammy 6y ago
> I wonder if they are using the same backend servers as old client To me it seems like the entire point of these remakes has been to kill off the classic Battle.net and get everyone on to the new Blizzard Launcher. The WarcraftⅢ remake made this especially apparent due to how much was promised but then cut before release: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sURZZkQxru8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sURZZkQxru8
phone8675309 6y ago
The original Diablo 2 could be played offline or with friends without using Battle.net, so those can be worked around. I'm guessing with the "cross progression" system (whatever that means) that games will have to be on Blizzard's servers at all times to allow syncing and avoid cheating, hacks, and piracy.
rubyskills 6y ago
I remember towards the end of my time playing d2, bots were everywhere. At some point, I will admit I started to do it too. I actually really enjoyed the scripting behind it (in Lua) and the technical challenges behind it. Funny, it looks like d2jsp is still a thing.

NikolaeVarius 6y ago

Welp, theres a year of my life going down the drain again. I have spent way too many hours breathing second hand smoke in internet cafes playing this game

throwaway13337 6y ago

If anyone is looking to play a modern version of Diablo 2, the spiritual successor is probably more a game called Path of Exile (rather than Diablo 3 or this). The developers managed to capture the aesthetic while improving the game in the direction of what gave the original game its replay-ability. Their development cycle of new content every 3 or 4 months with a league reset is unique and keeps things fresh. They're additionally not too monetized. It's a good company with probably more of a future than a Diablo 2 remaster.

phone8675309 6y ago
If you want something in the vein of Diablo 2 but with a different aesthetic (and not always online) then try Torchlight 2.
- bloodorange 6y ago
  While Torchlight and Torchlight 2 have a lot of "quality of life" improvements and are decent games in general, I've found that they lack the replay value which Diablo 2 (with LOD) has. I can't exactly say why but this is how it felt to me.
  - eru 6y ago
    You might have been older when you played Torchlight 2 than when you played Diablo 2?
    - bloodorange 6y ago
      I'm afraid, to me, that doesn't seem like sufficient explanation. Now, given a choice, even with outdated graphics, I'd rather play Diablo 2 than play Torchlight 2.
      - eru 6y ago
        Games seem more magic when we are younger.

StillBored 6y ago

Weird, it shows up as Diablo IV on their game selector page. I clicked the beta button. I probably don't need another game I won't play (or play for an hour once every 5 years). So the beta is probably just about right. A couple hours of gameplay will satisfy my needs. That is sort of my Path Of Exile habit too. About once a year I will get a hankering for a good old slaughter fest. Except POE keeps adjusting their skills tree, and destroying my characters. Or so it seems, since I can never remember the exact builds for some of these 5+ year old characters.

lanius 6y ago

I'll play this, but all these remasters make me wonder if Blizzard is running out of ideas.

minimaxir 6y ago
World of Warcraft Classic was resisted as the CEO infamously said "You think you want it, but you don't." When that turned out to be completely wrong and WoW Classic turned out to be a smash success, chances are Blizzard shifted development priority toward more nostalgia.
- cozuya 6y ago
  People are still playing it, but its certainly no longer a smash success. WoW classic really exposed the weakness of easily min maxed old games like vanilla WoW. I hope they learned their lesson and "update" D2. Otherwise yeah it'll be a trip down memory lane and then after the 5th Baal run I'm out.
hertzrat 6y ago
A lot of old school blizzard creative staff have left over the years [1] [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/Blizzard/comments/ewdija/a_list_of_veteran_developers_who_left_blizzard_in/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Blizzard/comments/ewdija/a_list_of_...
runawaybottle 6y ago
It’s corporate now. Corporate is actually different from Business even. It means, we know what prints money, and will stick to the script. Corporate is pretty much the death of innovation and creativity.
soneil 6y ago
I fear that would be a cynical but possibly accurate take on it. However I must note I've seen people begging for this ever since D3 released. I think Blizzard are well aware that there's plenty of us who have grown up with their core franchises, and are now at the age where nostalgia is an easy sell. (Also interesting to note they have Future, Mobile and Nostalgia releases of the same franchise all on the near-future map. They're not going backwards, but they're certainly spreading out.)

ulisesrmzroche 6y ago

I signed up to it. I’m curious how it goes. Diablo 3 was such a letdown, about as bad as GOT season 8.

huachimingo 6y ago

Diablo means "devil" in Spanish, and being raised in a catholic family always gave me odd feels when I talked about these game with people. Still nice game, amazing soundtrack, same as D1.

chrononaut 6y ago

While many folks here reminiscence about the game play, I remember being absolutely amazed by the cinematics. I couldn't think of another game at the time having such detail, and I recall just being really excited to watch each Act's cutscenes as I progressed through the game. I wonder if they are going to update and re-render those as well..

kingkawn 6y ago

YES

nknealk 6y ago

I played D2 regularly all through my teenage years. I think it might be one of the most exploited games ever which was half of what made it fun: * There were a variety of ways to duplicate items online. One really popular and well known one involved spamming bone wall on a necromancer + meteor on a sorceress which would cause the server to lag to the point that your ping would exceed 1000. At that point, you could join a game with the same character, stop spamming the skill so your original character didn’t lag out, thus creating two ephemeral copies of your items. This eventually got patched * One commonly duplicated item was called a stone ring of Jordan (SOJ). They were so commonly duplicated that blizzard added an event that if you sold ~100 to an in game merchant, everyone connected to a given server would spawn an Uber version of Diablo that dropped a unique small charm. * Another way blizzard got rid of duplicated items was something called “rust storm” where they’d take the servers offline and go through every item in existence, deleting duplicates. * Botting was extremely common. There are a bunch of weird quirks added to the game to try to prevent botting, though none of them worked. For example, if you spin the mouse wheel while hovering over a skill, it’ll cycle through your skills. That would immediately get you kicked from the game because the person who programmed the server thought only bots could switch skills that quickly. * There was a feature in the game that if one person in your party got a quest, the whole party got the quest. Players regularly abuse this to “rush” level 1 characters into act 5 in the hardest difficulty so that they can expedite leveling up. * There are ethereal items that get a 50% bonus to their core attribute (eg. Armor). If you used the cube recipe to socket the item, that 50% bonus would then get applied again. There were an entire class of items called “ebugged” that were overpowered. * There was an event added much later for a unique large charm. Someone figured out that you could trap Mephisto in a building such that he would never path out of it, continuously trigger him to summon minions, and kill those minions to grant you massive experience with low risk of death. Thus uber leveling was born. You’d do this in a party with a fully equipped character handling the minions and could go 1-80 in like 5 minutes. This later got patched. * There are still a small group of people who maintain items from previous patches that no longer spawn. A good google search term for this if you wanted to go down a rabbit hole is “1.08 valkyrie wing”. These are commonly duplicated and at risk of disappearing in a rust storm, so these players maintain a genealogy on forums of their items to prove they’re “legit” and not going to poof on you. * Servers would drop you after like 30 minutes of inactivity. However, there were pathing bugs that could be exploited to make your character bounce back and forth between squares on the grid effectively preventing you from disconnecting. No mouse clicking scripts needed. There’s probably more but this is getting long

pazimzadeh 6y ago

It looks pretty good, but seems to me that each of the elements look a little too distinct from each other in this hi res version. There needs to be a little bit of fog or something to make it more cohesive.

pazimzadeh 6y ago
To be more precise, I am saying the spells and character effects could be more integrated a little more into the entire scene, like in D2. Otherwise it looks amazing.

Espionage724 6y ago

Well, I'm excited! The screenshots and small snippets of gameplay presented look familiar and fun. There's going to be controller support on PC as well (was one of my favorite things about D3). And cross-platform progression sounds interesting. I'm not entirely happy about what happened with WC3:R, but I'm assuming some kind of lessons were learned with that, and with D2:R being made with a different team with closer interactions, I believe it will end up in a better state at launch. (of course I'll also back-up my old copies of D2 and its installers as well just in-case)

encom 6y ago

Note there's even the cursed chat gem on the bottom of the page.

Decker87 6y ago

As much as I like the idea, I wish they'd tweak the gameplay just enough to make all the classes viable. Especially summoner druids.

hh3k0 6y ago

I've loved the Diablo and Warcraft series but I will never buy anything from Blizzard again: > In the Blitzchung controversy, the company withdrew the prize from the winner of an online game tournament after he wore a mask and spoke in support of the 2019–20 Hong Kong protests in a post-game interview, stating "Liberate Hong Kong, the revolution of our times". The company is partly owned by Tencent. In August 2020, Activision Blizzard removed imagery of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests from its trailer of Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War.

BossingAround 6y ago

This is amazing but wow, full price (60 EUR in Europe). I wonder whether the Switch version will get the "Switch tax" (70-80EUR per full game in my region).

Hiopl 6y ago
It's 40€ including the old version. The 60€ Prime Evil version also contains Diablo 3 Eternal Collection and some D3 cosmetics.

LargoLasskhyfv 6y ago

Rarely experienced audio stuttering for a long time. This site did it, all cores maxed out for a second. Guess it didn't like to be restricted by uBlock-origin.

gnyman 6y ago

If anyone is wondering what the original Diablo II battle.net experience looks like in 2020 (yep, it's apparently still working, hows that for legacy support?), Carbot recently did an episode on it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CYIyQMVzUnI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CYIyQMVzUnI Also the Diablol 2 series does cause some flashbacks, especially the soundscape... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ru-UM1nYJQ&list=PL0QrZvg7QIgqG206vRwF4hhY9h4JG6mtM&index=3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ru-UM1nYJQ&list=PL0QrZvg7QI...

FrozenVoid 6y ago

As someone who wasted a decade on the game, i'm not interested in minor pixel hacks that are irrelevant to gameplay(99.99% of time isn't spent on staring at objects) which remains a cookie cutter clickfest trash( and a closest RPG game that is cookie-clicker like). There is a reason game bots were pioneered with d2, the game is extremely repetitive and loot-centric pinata simulator. If the mechanics didn't change its just the same game with extra makeup. D2 mods at least implement quality-of-life improvement, which often clash with the vanilla game expecting the player to maintain tasks and repeat routine actions(often requiring a town portal), as well as limited pool of viable builds(mods significantly expand the space of possible builds and item customization). Anyone who played any decent D2 mod will know that QoL improvements and diverse build pool is much more interesting long-term vs the improved graphics that will be 'novel' for a few days at best.

nathias 6y ago

The magic of D2 was battlenet with all its glitches that made the game develop in its own weird way (the soj-based economy that developed because a hack was possible for a time, being the prime example).

pjmlp 6y ago

> Verify your age Choose a random date with enough years into it, done. Other than that, good to see it, I have most of the original editions in special release boxes. Spent endless hours playing them when they were new.

dustymcp 6y ago

Lets ruin another classic im looking at you wc3 remastered..

krzyk 6y ago

So Blizzard now only remakes games? So far ther remade: StarCraft, warcraft 3, World of Warcraft (classic mode) and now Diablo 2. Whay happened to the best gaming company?

wes-k 6y ago

No mention of the secret cow level!? So many great memories, and such high level of addiction. Temping...

jongorer 6y ago

This is awesome, I've been playing Path of Exile since it released and now I have hope to return to childhood.

warpspin 6y ago

I wished they added couch co-op, like in Diablo 3. This was D3's best feature. Too few games nowadays have that.