4 ms·

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 pl

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.
- wellthisisgreat 6y ago
  “Escape from Tarkov” raises the hand
- rubyskills 6y ago
  Diablo 3 has hardcore too!
- recursive 6y ago
  Wait until you hear about Minecraft hardcore.
- panopticon 6y ago
  A hardcore mode isn't super rare in gaming. Tell your kids to try Minecraft's hardcore mode; that'll change their answer.
- reitzensteinm 6y ago
  Hardcore mode is what made Diablo 3 fun for me. Except most of my deaths ended up being from internet outages - your characters are generally nearly invincible when attacking enemies, but if they just stand there dumbly they die in seconds. So I stopped playing after that.
- grawprog 6y ago
  Kids these days have it easy. They've never had to leave a nes turned on overnight just because a game lacks a save feature or continues and is unreasonably long...then their mom turns it off while their sleeping...:( Oh Blaster Master...someday i'll complete you...
- thesuperbigfrog 6y ago
  Nethack: https://www.nethack.org/ https://www.nethack.org/ Diablo II is easy compared to Nethack. I love them both, but at least in D2 you know what a potion does when you pick it up and none of the equipment is cursed. There's no feeling quite like being surrounded by too many monsters and looking at all the unidentified potions, spell scrolls, and wands in your inventory, choosing one, and hoping that it will magically teleport you out of trouble. (Only to discover that it was a cursed scroll of fire and now EVERYTHING is on fire.)
zamalek 6y ago
> Never was a big fan of 3. D3 was almost a cross between a cookie clicker game and D2. It's a good game if you ignore its name.
- nostromo 6y ago
  Cookie Clicker is such a good game though. It’s so meta and interesting. It almost single-handedly cured a friend of mine of his video gaming addiction. It’s also a great meditation on exponential economic growth models.
- grawprog 6y ago
  Like I said it reminded me most of Gauntlet. An arcadey, hack and slash game focused more on slaughtering enemies with a character that progresses relatively linearly. It's not a terrible game, I just found it very shallow. It removed most of the element of choice from character builds and streamlined things in a way I just didn't really like very much. Path of exile had the opposite problem, it tried too hard to be like diablo 2, while focusing too much on random loot and excessive choice. Diablo 2 managed to walk that fine line between pointless loot clicker and mindless progression clicker and kept it fun by giving players agency, but not drowning them in choices.
gitpusher 6y ago
The whole concept of having "open" and "closed" Battle.net was genius. If you want to hack, be our guest! (But you can only play with other hackers.) That experience of trying to mod my character was – I'm fairly certain – what eventually got me into programming! (Unfortunately I was on a Mac, so I couldn't use 90% of the so-called "trainers", much to my disappointment at the time.) I recall meeting one specific player on Open Battle.net (their username was "iceblizz", I think) whose hacked sorceress was unbelievably OP. They also had a super-cool personal website -- and both of those things really kindled my curiosity ( ... "How on Earth did they build that website?" ... "How are they so strong with negative 2 billion HP??")
- grawprog 6y ago
  Haha yeah that type of stuff was pretty amazing to me. I remember stone of Jordan rings and armour and stuff hacked with some unique bow quality that made your armour and stuff glowing white were 'the things to have' at least for a while. Though no two were alike and some people somehow had even more hacked shit than the pitiful programs I found could create. It did definitely introduce me to the world of being able to modify programs and playing with the data files of games. I feel like these days with the high stakes surrounding online gaming and.cheating and everything and just the money involved in the game industry sometimes fun gets left by the wayside.
egfx 6y ago
Did you ever end up playing the expansion set? Strangely I don’t see it talked a lot about in the context of Diablo 2 at all but it added new levels and 2 more playable characters (barbarian, assassin) to the game and really expanded the playability. I have some inside into the thinking behind the franchise because I started my career at Blizzard working on D2 expansion set. Anecdotally we had an X-men vs Street fighter game that I found appreciated play style at a very top level. Whatever character you chose that’s how you played. It was street fighter after all and I’m convinced that some of the specializing in character attention in d2 and wow was inspired by the way the coin-op played and QA as well as the game designers played nonstop. Now this sort of attentive character specializing outside of role playing games is all over the place and it’s not novel anymore but back then this was very innovative and immersive in an action game. The Lost Vikings and Rock and Roll racing another blizzard classic had the same mechanic.
- ayrx 6y ago
  I think you mean Druid instead of Barbarian :)
  - egfx 6y ago
    Ach you’re right Druid. The barbarian level was new and the Barbarian flipped archetype Druid and Paladin flipped archetype Assassin. https://diablo-archive.fandom.com/wiki/Druid_(Diablo_II) https://diablo-archive.fandom.com/wiki/Druid_(Diablo_II)
- grawprog 6y ago
  I can't remember when we got lord of destruction but yeah at some point. It basically completed the game. Blizzard's early expansion packs were definitely worth it. Tides of darkness, broodwar, lord of destruction were some of the finest examples of what an expansion pack should do. Blizzard used to make some quality games. Both the blizzard north and blizzard teams. This is just my, possibly unpopular and also likely cliché opinion. But I blame world of Warcraft and Activision. WoW gave them ridiculous amounts of money and Activision gave them Uhhhh...'corporate refinement' that combination led to them becoming much like most other big name game companies. Money over fun. It's sad...but it is what it is. Again, that's just my opinion, i'm sure lots of people have enjoyed post Warcraft 3 blizzard games, but for me, that was their last one where gameplay came before profit.
Can_Not 6y ago
> It felt more like playing some kind of diablo themed version of gauntlet Which gauntlet game is your point of reference?
- effingwewt 6y ago
  I think they mean Gauntlet Legends, it was more ARPG than usual, saved your game even in the arcade. But it was cartoony, which was my issue with D3. I was done when the ultimate gear farm was running around clouds and rainbows hunting unicorns. I played path of exile as well but found it too manipulative, and though QOL the mtx were too expensive, I found within a few seasons of game launch I'd spent too much, and that was with running ladders for items to sell. I'd rather just own games outright. I remember when DLC started on 360 we joked about how long it would be until reverse gear in a car was DLC. Didn't think it'd be quite so soon.
- grawprog 6y ago
  effingwewt's right, either legends or dark legacy but more specifically this one https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gauntlet_(2014_video_game) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gauntlet_(2014_video_game) That came out in 2014. I played both that and D3 around the same time. That version of gauntlet feels heavily inspired by diablo 3 to the point where I was playing them interchangeably when i'd get bored of one or the other and it was only ever really my girlfriend and I and our roommate playing together quick rounds at a time like an arcade game.

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.

wellthisisgreat 6y ago
“Escape from Tarkov” raises the hand
rubyskills 6y ago
Diablo 3 has hardcore too!
recursive 6y ago
Wait until you hear about Minecraft hardcore.
panopticon 6y ago
A hardcore mode isn't super rare in gaming. Tell your kids to try Minecraft's hardcore mode; that'll change their answer.
reitzensteinm 6y ago
Hardcore mode is what made Diablo 3 fun for me. Except most of my deaths ended up being from internet outages - your characters are generally nearly invincible when attacking enemies, but if they just stand there dumbly they die in seconds. So I stopped playing after that.
grawprog 6y ago
Kids these days have it easy. They've never had to leave a nes turned on overnight just because a game lacks a save feature or continues and is unreasonably long...then their mom turns it off while their sleeping...:( Oh Blaster Master...someday i'll complete you...
thesuperbigfrog 6y ago
Nethack: https://www.nethack.org/ https://www.nethack.org/ Diablo II is easy compared to Nethack. I love them both, but at least in D2 you know what a potion does when you pick it up and none of the equipment is cursed. There's no feeling quite like being surrounded by too many monsters and looking at all the unidentified potions, spell scrolls, and wands in your inventory, choosing one, and hoping that it will magically teleport you out of trouble. (Only to discover that it was a cursed scroll of fire and now EVERYTHING is on fire.)

zamalek 6y ago

> Never was a big fan of 3. D3 was almost a cross between a cookie clicker game and D2. It's a good game if you ignore its name.

nostromo 6y ago
Cookie Clicker is such a good game though. It’s so meta and interesting. It almost single-handedly cured a friend of mine of his video gaming addiction. It’s also a great meditation on exponential economic growth models.
grawprog 6y ago
Like I said it reminded me most of Gauntlet. An arcadey, hack and slash game focused more on slaughtering enemies with a character that progresses relatively linearly. It's not a terrible game, I just found it very shallow. It removed most of the element of choice from character builds and streamlined things in a way I just didn't really like very much. Path of exile had the opposite problem, it tried too hard to be like diablo 2, while focusing too much on random loot and excessive choice. Diablo 2 managed to walk that fine line between pointless loot clicker and mindless progression clicker and kept it fun by giving players agency, but not drowning them in choices.

gitpusher 6y ago

The whole concept of having "open" and "closed" Battle.net was genius. If you want to hack, be our guest! (But you can only play with other hackers.) That experience of trying to mod my character was – I'm fairly certain – what eventually got me into programming! (Unfortunately I was on a Mac, so I couldn't use 90% of the so-called "trainers", much to my disappointment at the time.) I recall meeting one specific player on Open Battle.net (their username was "iceblizz", I think) whose hacked sorceress was unbelievably OP. They also had a super-cool personal website -- and both of those things really kindled my curiosity ( ... "How on Earth did they build that website?" ... "How are they so strong with negative 2 billion HP??")

grawprog 6y ago
Haha yeah that type of stuff was pretty amazing to me. I remember stone of Jordan rings and armour and stuff hacked with some unique bow quality that made your armour and stuff glowing white were 'the things to have' at least for a while. Though no two were alike and some people somehow had even more hacked shit than the pitiful programs I found could create. It did definitely introduce me to the world of being able to modify programs and playing with the data files of games. I feel like these days with the high stakes surrounding online gaming and.cheating and everything and just the money involved in the game industry sometimes fun gets left by the wayside.

egfx 6y ago

Did you ever end up playing the expansion set? Strangely I don’t see it talked a lot about in the context of Diablo 2 at all but it added new levels and 2 more playable characters (barbarian, assassin) to the game and really expanded the playability. I have some inside into the thinking behind the franchise because I started my career at Blizzard working on D2 expansion set. Anecdotally we had an X-men vs Street fighter game that I found appreciated play style at a very top level. Whatever character you chose that’s how you played. It was street fighter after all and I’m convinced that some of the specializing in character attention in d2 and wow was inspired by the way the coin-op played and QA as well as the game designers played nonstop. Now this sort of attentive character specializing outside of role playing games is all over the place and it’s not novel anymore but back then this was very innovative and immersive in an action game. The Lost Vikings and Rock and Roll racing another blizzard classic had the same mechanic.

ayrx 6y ago
I think you mean Druid instead of Barbarian :)
- egfx 6y ago
  Ach you’re right Druid. The barbarian level was new and the Barbarian flipped archetype Druid and Paladin flipped archetype Assassin. https://diablo-archive.fandom.com/wiki/Druid_(Diablo_II) https://diablo-archive.fandom.com/wiki/Druid_(Diablo_II)
grawprog 6y ago
I can't remember when we got lord of destruction but yeah at some point. It basically completed the game. Blizzard's early expansion packs were definitely worth it. Tides of darkness, broodwar, lord of destruction were some of the finest examples of what an expansion pack should do. Blizzard used to make some quality games. Both the blizzard north and blizzard teams. This is just my, possibly unpopular and also likely cliché opinion. But I blame world of Warcraft and Activision. WoW gave them ridiculous amounts of money and Activision gave them Uhhhh...'corporate refinement' that combination led to them becoming much like most other big name game companies. Money over fun. It's sad...but it is what it is. Again, that's just my opinion, i'm sure lots of people have enjoyed post Warcraft 3 blizzard games, but for me, that was their last one where gameplay came before profit.

Can_Not 6y ago

> It felt more like playing some kind of diablo themed version of gauntlet Which gauntlet game is your point of reference?

effingwewt 6y ago
I think they mean Gauntlet Legends, it was more ARPG than usual, saved your game even in the arcade. But it was cartoony, which was my issue with D3. I was done when the ultimate gear farm was running around clouds and rainbows hunting unicorns. I played path of exile as well but found it too manipulative, and though QOL the mtx were too expensive, I found within a few seasons of game launch I'd spent too much, and that was with running ladders for items to sell. I'd rather just own games outright. I remember when DLC started on 360 we joked about how long it would be until reverse gear in a car was DLC. Didn't think it'd be quite so soon.
grawprog 6y ago
effingwewt's right, either legends or dark legacy but more specifically this one https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gauntlet_(2014_video_game) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gauntlet_(2014_video_game) That came out in 2014. I played both that and D3 around the same time. That version of gauntlet feels heavily inspired by diablo 3 to the point where I was playing them interchangeably when i'd get bored of one or the other and it was only ever really my girlfriend and I and our roommate playing together quick rounds at a time like an arcade game.