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Preamble: This isn't a review. It doesn't contain critical analysis, just the subjective opinions of one person. The intent is to remember the games I've come across in my life and share the nostalgia, nothing more. And some of those games I didn't play in great depth.
I only ever played Diablo II over LAN, my experiences are completely limited to that aspect of the game! I understand that blocks out a huge part of the Diablo II experience. I'd be very interested to hear about your experiences of Diablo II on the internet! I also realise that just as I despise Diablo III and much prefer its predecessor, that there are many players who think Diablo II was a poor sequel to the original game... That's not my opinion. If you want to hate on my post because you think Diablo (original) is better, please direct your hatred elsewhere or I'll simply ban you from posting 
Diablo II: Lord of Destruction
Developer: Blizzard North
Platform: PC
Release Year: 2001
Stephen's Rating: 9/10
![[image loading]](http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ZA_ajoIB5xw/TsGNIPQwNRI/AAAAAAAAAic/aQGS3v5_dbE/s1600/Diablo_II_-_Lord_of_Destruction_Coverart.png)
I'll make a note here that this blog entry encompasses both the original Diablo II and its expansion Lord of Destruction as I never played the original by itself.
Basic Plot
The story follows after that of the original game. You spend the game following the tracks of the Dark Wanderer who is essentially your character from the original Diablo who is being slowly corrupted by the soul stone.
During the course of the game and the expansion you encounter and defeat all of the three prime evils, Mephisto, Diablo, and Baal; as well as two of the lesser evils Andariel, and Duriel.
![[image loading]](http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-bS-Lhkz_FA4/TsGNeXwW6FI/AAAAAAAAAis/JvJ9-Zwtbcc/s1600/Druid.jpg)
The druid class on the character selection screen.
Gameplay
Diablo II is an action role playing game similar to the original but much broader in scope and complexity.
You start the game by choosing one of the character classes. Each class has vastly different skills and abilities, and even within a single class you can drastically alter the way you play the game. The character classes are:
- Barbarian - The ultimate melee fighter class. Abilities involve special attacks and weapon specialization, improved defense, speed, and damage, as well as battle cries.
- Paladin - A multi-talented warrior who can specialise in a variety of roles including a melee warrior with elemental attacks, or even a caster using the "blessed hammer" skill. Paladins use defensive and offensive auras to augment their abilities.
- Sorceress - The standard caster had three tiers of spells; fire, cold, and lightning. If you wanted to progress to Nightmare or Hell difficulty you needed to ensure you had specialised in at least two of these elements as most monsters were immune to one of them. If you knew what you were doing this was probably the most powerful class in the game in terms of damage output.
- Amazon - A ranged warrior who could specialize in bow or javelin, augmenting these weapons with lightning, fire, cold, magic or poison damage. She also had passive abilities which improved her all-round combat abilities and could summon allies.
- Necromancer - One of the primary summoning classes. Many options for summoning undead allies, as well as pure bone magic attacks if you wanted to be a damage dealing caster. The necromancer could also theoretically become a melee warrior with his poison inflicting abilities although this was a tricky path to take.
- Druid - Jack of all trades, master of none. My second major character was an elemental druid who had cold and wind abilities. I took him through most of the game but found in lacking in damage later on. There was also a summoning tree with many options but less diverse than the Necromancer. Additionally there was a shapechanging tree where you could turn your druid into either a werewolf or werebear melee warrior. Both were inferior to the skill of the Barbarian but were an interesting challenge. Only in the expansion.
- Assassin - Another character available only in the expansion. The assassin took either the role of a melee warrior with martial arts abilities and finishing moves, or in essence a caster with the use of traps. My primary character was a trap assassin, who I go to level 91 and who I solo'd Hell difficulty with.
![[image loading]](http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-OXXmN1a7Bos/TsGNPxKpHVI/AAAAAAAAAik/YjH5Yv6r8bs/s320/Druid_Skill_Trees_%2528Diablo_II%2529.png)
The three druid skill trees. Each class had three trees to pick from, often specialising in one.
The expansion pack Patch 1.10 (thanks Black Gun) introduced the concept of synergy. Certain skills gave passive bonuses to other skills. The player also had (from memory) 116 total skill points to spend if they reached level 100, and skills could be raised to level 20 as a maximum. This gave each character around 5 skills they could max out to 20, with some extra points for utilities or skills required to reach higher tier ones. The end result was very diverse set of paths each character class could go down, each providing a completely unique experience.
As with the original levels are randomly generated each time you start or join a new game. This allows for a slightly different playing experience each time which adds to the replayability. There are exceptions to this rule such as some of the zones where you fight bosses as well as the cities.
Items and equipment were a huge part of the game. Items came in tiers; white for normal items, blue for magical items, yellow for rare items (magical items with better buffs), gold for unique items (had a unique name, many of the best items in the game were unique), green for "set" items (having the complete or partial collection of a matching set of these items provided improvements). Finally the player could find items with sockets where they could place gems or runes to improve them. The ultimate use of this was to create "runewords" by combining a certain combination of runes in the correct order into an item with the correct number of sockets. This turned a socketted item into an item of immense power.
![[image loading]](http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-de-5sgD-07I/TsGNnXvXLoI/AAAAAAAAAi0/Oo5TQDA3oCw/s320/images.jpg)
A boss fight in Act V.
When the game was new multiplayer was big on battle.net. When I played it the game was already very old, and we played over LAN only. The game was primarily co-operative but you could do PvP by mutual agreement.
Positives
The combinations of characters and skills meant there was huge scope for customising a unique character for yourself. There are countless numbers of character builds posted all over the internet, with a fair amount of creativity left to the player in designing them. This is in stark contrast to World of Warcraft where classes are very limited - there are essentially a set of "best" skills which should be picked for each role.
The items were diverse and interesting. There was nothing more exciting than seeing a "green" or "gold" item drop from a boss and wondering what it might be.
The experience gain was very well balanced. Even into the high levels there was always a "sweet spot" where you could go to level fairly efficiently. Being able to put on /player8 in single player also greatly improved the experience gained from monsters.
The culmination of all of the elements of the game made for a fantastic and rich experience that was highly addictive.
UPDATE: Now that I've played Diablo III the thing I really miss about Diablo II was how it forced you to lock in a skill path for each character. It made each character you made mean something as opposed to being a generic "level 60 wizard" who can rearrange their skills whenever they want. I also loved the imbalance. Trying to be a melee necromancer was almost impossible, but at least I could try the challenge. Now, in Diablo III, every class and skill feels over-balanced to the point where there is nothing to be discovered or exploited. Taking away the joy of finding an over-powered skill and using it is pretty cruel  That's a big part of gaming for me.
Negatives
I found that multiplayer was lacking in some respects. Although it worked perfectly well and I got a lot of joy out of trading items and building up sets and runes, when we played we spent most of the time in different parts of the map essentially competing for loot.
![[image loading]](http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-MeBLZR_Ophw/TsGNtgx650I/AAAAAAAAAi8/6QEFoFpajEA/s320/Dionmelee-druidaction.jpg)
A druid casting tornadoes.
Memorable Moments
Some of the character builds I tried were:
- A werewolf druid (my first character). Was fun in concept but very weak without good gear and I quickly fell behind my friend playing a fire sorceress.
An elemental druid going down the cold/wind path. Very versatile and lots of options for damage dealing. Was amazing until I reached Hell difficulty where I couldn't deal enough damage to progress.
- A "wolverine" paladin build where I put skill points toward an aura which regenerated my health as quickly as possible. I was regenerating health faster than enemies could hurt me, but the side effect was that I couldn't do any damage. Fun to try it out though.
- A trap assassin focusing on the death sentry trap due to it's dual lightning and physical damage, with fire blast as a back-up. This was the ultimate build for me, not dependent on good gear and could solo Hell without too much difficulty.
- A "hammerdin" to trial it out. Powerful but boring.
We had a lot of "mule" characters whose sole purpose was to hold items for our other characters, along with a spreadsheet of all the set and unique items we had. We probably spent as much time managing all of this as we did playing the actual game.
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not playing on battle.net and thus not using the highend runewords that were only available by using duped runes (duped by someone else, but persistent in the economy once created) means that you lost out not only the battle.net experience but also a huge part of the character diversity.
for those who didnt play d2: there was one highend runeword, called enigma, that allowed all chars to use the sorc's teleport spell, which was a vastly more effective means of moving than walking. that every char was able to teleport on battle.net made both pvm and pvp a very different game from what the TS is describing. and this is just one out of many examples how the "completely fucked up economy" on battle.net changed the face of the game.
its still a nice review though, good job! 
edit: one mistake i found at first glance: you say that the expansion pack introduced synergies, but thats not true. they were introduced with a huge content patch, the infamous patch 1.10, which was released several years (i think 2) after the expansion pack.
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Missing out out bnet means he was most likely legit and not using cheated items. Thats the only way to play! Legit gaming for life!
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Diablo II was so much better than Diablo III. Now that I've played D3 for a little, I miss D2 so much x.x
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classic game
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On August 09 2012 11:03 FullNatural wrote:
Missing out out bnet means he was most likely legit and not using cheated items. Thats the only way to play! Legit gaming for life!
Generalizations, i could easily get better gear in a matter of 5 days via self drop only on HC in D2 than in 2-3 weeks of hardcore goblin runs and AH usage in D3.
Last time i played D2 i had 81 ama with only 1 item traded on a fresh hc ladder. Rest was self drop, and got lucky ber drop from canals in Act2 just after entering it for the first time. And i could recall several such instances of getting something awesome. And i wasnt that hardcore player in D2 ever. I generally played it for a 2 weeks once per 2 years and still could get that 1-2 awesome items that made the game fun to me. In HC d2 i could have passive 150-200 mf while being completely ok with survival or just go hardcore nightmare farming and have fun. In D3 i needed to beeline into AH-Goblin than lose your life on unlucky elite combo. And even with all those risks or using already nerfed content i would never match my self-drop only fun from several plays in D2 throughout the 10 years and different patches.
What i meant is that you could get sufficiently geared with top NM uniques and good build. While in D3 it was a neccesity to have top gear to clear inferno. Not to mention the fun value of those uniques in Nightmare was much higher than any drop in D3 available.
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Leveling different chars with selffound stuff in hc solo or with a friend, by not using all those trist/sewers/tomb/cow/travi/baalruns
was so much more fun than doing the same in d3, probably because the areas in d2 where much larger ("Entering The Durance Of Hate Level 2", aw yeah ) and distinctive, although d3's act 2 got some cool areas.
You are so right with your "UPDATE"
Also i think, that the potion system, skill system and monster affix system of d2 are faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaar superior to d3 (all those cooldowns + the ridiculous amount of crowdcontrol in d3 make the game boring) and in d2 gameplay isn't stopped all the time by having to click away pesky cut scenes which take away your control over your char (just imagine you'd get a cutscene when you enter duriels lair. That would totally kill the adrenalinerush you get from going through the hole in the wall and being attacked instantly)
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Actually if they dumbed down D3 and made ladder like in D2 i would totally play it. However even in overhyped D3 hc the economy still raised after weeks and it was lineary harder to get geared as time passed(after you died). If they bring back ladder (hc is not RMAH afterall....) i would be back. But lack of ladder makes me cringe.
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TL;DR If you have not played D2 with a friend, do it! You will not regret it. Unless you accidentally play instead of study/work/sleep more than is healthy
One important aspect that got added like _really_ late was that you got a skill reset as part of the quest reward from quest 1 act 1 (the Den). This was a HUGE improvement imo as it did not force you to have 20 skill points saved up by the point you reached level 30. Getting one abilities reset in normal, one on nightmare and one on hell was really a great addition to the game, too bad they put it in so late 
Getting into hell and realizing that every zombie is a challenge in itself is a classic. That forced you to go leveling up on nightmare act 5 or discard the character entirely (before the abilites reset got added).
If you are going to play casual LAN i can really recommend PlugY, it allows you to mess around with builds as much as you want and HOARD like there was no tomorrow. Turns out that unlimited inventory leads to the start of a collection that quickly becomes 40 "pages" of extra large stash screens :D
Defeated hell with a friend who had never played D2 two years ago; put him on a frozen orb sorc with me on a lightning fury/Valkyrie Amazon and it was soooo much fun for the both of us. I can really recommend that build if you want to have loads of fun and still be able to defeat the game on Hell. (protip; add nightmare act 2 mercenaries and use online runeword helpers.) Protip 2; Rarely save skillpoints on normal, try a fun build and you will quickly have access to both the normal and nightmare act 1 reset points.
There are certain runewords that can only be used online unless you download a miniscule mod that allows those runewords in singleplayer as well. Special mention to the "insight" runeword [4 Socket Polearms/Staves Ral + Tir + Tal + Sol B.net/Ladder only] which when in a polearm can be put on a act 2 mercenary that gives a huge mana regen aura, and therefore removes the need for annoying TP->buy mana pots->TP back runs.
Finally soloed hell last year with a lightning amazon, took me about 10 years and many failed attempts though Hell on solo is haaard. Gave up on Summoning Necros and Hammerdin since playing those "guaranteed to be able to handle hell powebuilds" was about as exciting as watching paint dry.
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On August 09 2012 19:56 Kairo wrote:TL;DR If you have not played D2 with a friend, do it! You will not regret it. Unless you accidentally play instead of study/work/sleep more than is healthy One important aspect that got added like _really_ late was that you got a skill reset as part of the quest reward from quest 1 act 1 (the Den). This was a HUGE improvement imo as it did not force you to have 20 skill points saved up by the point you reached level 30. Getting one abilities reset in normal, one on nightmare and one on hell was really a great addition to the game, too bad they put it in so late Getting into hell and realizing that every zombie is a challenge in itself is a classic. That forced you to go leveling up on nightmare act 5 or discard the character entirely (before the abilites reset got added). If you are going to play casual LAN i can really recommend PlugY, it allows you to mess around with builds as much as you want and HOARD like there was no tomorrow. Turns out that unlimited inventory leads to the start of a collection that quickly becomes 40 "pages" of extra large stash screens :D Defeated hell with a friend who had never played D2 two years ago; put him on a frozen orb sorc with me on a lightning fury/Valkyrie Amazon and it was soooo much fun for the both of us. I can really recommend that build if you want to have loads of fun and still be able to defeat the game on Hell. (protip; add nightmare act 2 mercenaries and use online runeword helpers.) Protip 2; Rarely save skillpoints on normal, try a fun build and you will quickly have access to both the normal and nightmare act 1 reset points. There are certain runewords that can only be used online unless you download a miniscule mod that allows those runewords in singleplayer as well. Special mention to the "insight" runeword [4 Socket Polearms/Staves Ral + Tir + Tal + Sol B.net/Ladder only] which when in a polearm can be put on a act 2 mercenary that gives a huge mana regen aura, and therefore removes the need for annoying TP->buy mana pots->TP back runs. Finally soloed hell last year with a lightning amazon, took me about 10 years and many failed attempts though Hell on solo is haaard. Gave up on Summoning Necros and Hammerdin since playing those "guaranteed to be able to handle hell powebuilds" was about as exciting as watching paint dry. Lightning zon is the strongest and fastest killer in hell so -_-
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Playing through D2 on LAN with buddies is a really good multiplayer experience. In fact, if you aren't into repetitive grinding or PvP, I would even say that offline D2 is more fun than Bnet.
Letting people reset skill points and increasing high rune drops were some very good changes made by Blizzard in my opinion.
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On August 09 2012 20:43 brolaf wrote:Show nested quote +On August 09 2012 19:56 Kairo wrote:TL;DR If you have not played D2 with a friend, do it! You will not regret it. Unless you accidentally play instead of study/work/sleep more than is healthy One important aspect that got added like _really_ late was that you got a skill reset as part of the quest reward from quest 1 act 1 (the Den). This was a HUGE improvement imo as it did not force you to have 20 skill points saved up by the point you reached level 30. Getting one abilities reset in normal, one on nightmare and one on hell was really a great addition to the game, too bad they put it in so late Getting into hell and realizing that every zombie is a challenge in itself is a classic. That forced you to go leveling up on nightmare act 5 or discard the character entirely (before the abilites reset got added). If you are going to play casual LAN i can really recommend PlugY, it allows you to mess around with builds as much as you want and HOARD like there was no tomorrow. Turns out that unlimited inventory leads to the start of a collection that quickly becomes 40 "pages" of extra large stash screens :D Defeated hell with a friend who had never played D2 two years ago; put him on a frozen orb sorc with me on a lightning fury/Valkyrie Amazon and it was soooo much fun for the both of us. I can really recommend that build if you want to have loads of fun and still be able to defeat the game on Hell. (protip; add nightmare act 2 mercenaries and use online runeword helpers.) Protip 2; Rarely save skillpoints on normal, try a fun build and you will quickly have access to both the normal and nightmare act 1 reset points. There are certain runewords that can only be used online unless you download a miniscule mod that allows those runewords in singleplayer as well. Special mention to the "insight" runeword [4 Socket Polearms/Staves Ral + Tir + Tal + Sol B.net/Ladder only] which when in a polearm can be put on a act 2 mercenary that gives a huge mana regen aura, and therefore removes the need for annoying TP->buy mana pots->TP back runs. Finally soloed hell last year with a lightning amazon, took me about 10 years and many failed attempts though Hell on solo is haaard. Gave up on Summoning Necros and Hammerdin since playing those "guaranteed to be able to handle hell powebuilds" was about as exciting as watching paint dry. Lightning zon is the strongest and fastest killer in hell so -_-
fastest killspeed if the zon stands in front of the mob/boss, then yes. but their excruciatingly slow teleport speed means that sorcs or hdins are quicker at doing dia- or baalruns. imho lightsorcs are the best pvm char if built and geared properly.
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On August 09 2012 11:03 FullNatural wrote:
Missing out out bnet means he was most likely legit and not using cheated items. Thats the only way to play! Legit gaming for life!
dude need to trade
gotta perm my HRs
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I had a ton of fun playing D2 HC ladder with TL friends =)
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I wish I was playing PC games back when Diablo just released
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On August 10 2012 02:21 Azera wrote:
I wish I was playing PC games back when Diablo just released
actually the game sucked right after release. then came the golden age of classic (= pre-expansion), which then ended with some kind of armaggeddon when, some weeks before the expansion pack was released, an exploit became public that basically allowed any account to be hacked.
then, when the expansion was released, many people converted their lvl 90 or lvl 92 classic chars to expansion chars, only to realize that you can get a new char to lvl 92 in 2 days in the expansion, whereas the same level took several weeks to months on classic. maaaan, were people pissed.
basically, the game had two good phases pre 1.10, which was the time of 1.06 classic and of 1.09 expansion. of the 3-4 years before the huge content patch 1.10, about 1-2 were good, the other time was really shitty.
and the game took several additional years after 1.10 to become the game we know today. afaik, the infinity runeword was only released 2 years after 1.10. (thats the runeword that singlehandedly made zons and light sorcs extremely powerful in pvm.)
aaah, the good old times. waffling about d2 makes me feel so nostalgic. but also gives me hope for d3's future.
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On August 10 2012 00:26 Black Gun wrote:Show nested quote +On August 09 2012 20:43 brolaf wrote:On August 09 2012 19:56 Kairo wrote:TL;DR If you have not played D2 with a friend, do it! You will not regret it. Unless you accidentally play instead of study/work/sleep more than is healthy One important aspect that got added like _really_ late was that you got a skill reset as part of the quest reward from quest 1 act 1 (the Den). This was a HUGE improvement imo as it did not force you to have 20 skill points saved up by the point you reached level 30. Getting one abilities reset in normal, one on nightmare and one on hell was really a great addition to the game, too bad they put it in so late Getting into hell and realizing that every zombie is a challenge in itself is a classic. That forced you to go leveling up on nightmare act 5 or discard the character entirely (before the abilites reset got added). If you are going to play casual LAN i can really recommend PlugY, it allows you to mess around with builds as much as you want and HOARD like there was no tomorrow. Turns out that unlimited inventory leads to the start of a collection that quickly becomes 40 "pages" of extra large stash screens :D Defeated hell with a friend who had never played D2 two years ago; put him on a frozen orb sorc with me on a lightning fury/Valkyrie Amazon and it was soooo much fun for the both of us. I can really recommend that build if you want to have loads of fun and still be able to defeat the game on Hell. (protip; add nightmare act 2 mercenaries and use online runeword helpers.) Protip 2; Rarely save skillpoints on normal, try a fun build and you will quickly have access to both the normal and nightmare act 1 reset points. There are certain runewords that can only be used online unless you download a miniscule mod that allows those runewords in singleplayer as well. Special mention to the "insight" runeword [4 Socket Polearms/Staves Ral + Tir + Tal + Sol B.net/Ladder only] which when in a polearm can be put on a act 2 mercenary that gives a huge mana regen aura, and therefore removes the need for annoying TP->buy mana pots->TP back runs. Finally soloed hell last year with a lightning amazon, took me about 10 years and many failed attempts though Hell on solo is haaard. Gave up on Summoning Necros and Hammerdin since playing those "guaranteed to be able to handle hell powebuilds" was about as exciting as watching paint dry. Lightning zon is the strongest and fastest killer in hell so -_- fastest killspeed if the zon stands in front of the mob/boss, then yes. but their excruciatingly slow teleport speed means that sorcs or hdins are quicker at doing dia- or baalruns. imho lightsorcs are the best pvm char if built and geared properly. eah sorcs are faster at seal runs, but at baal runs light zons are a bit bette rbecause they can clear waves and throne room faster. And at full clear diaruns zons are much faster than ligghtsorcs
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EPT
