South Korea had it even worse after the Fair Trade Commission raided Blizzard’s offices there, resulting in Korean players being unable to play at all, despite owning the game. Second, Diablo III arrived with an invasive DRM stipulating that even single player games required an always-on, high-speed internet connection which resulted in players in Europe suffering crippling lag in their single-player games. First, several expansions to Diablo II were delayed or abandoned due to that focus, and of course it had been over a decade since Diablo II first landed. The focus on its subscription-led cash cow reflected poorly on Diablo as a whole. By then, Activision had bought Blizzard via its parent, Vivendi, and World of Warcraft was Activision Blizzard’s new darling. It was still a huge hit, selling 4 million copies within 18 months, and its lasting appeal saw Battle.Net still reporting 11 million players in 2010!įast forward to 2012 and Diablo III would land with several controversies. Later expansions added two further classes, but the core gameplay remained virtually unchanged from the original. Diablo II introduced five new player classes, updated visuals and enemies spread over four distinct Acts. While the original was a classic, eventually selling a very respectable 2.5 million copies, its sequel which arrived three years later was really just more of the same. Just grab the original game from GOG, and follow the instructions on the project page over on Github. There was, simply, nothing else like it.īefore we move on, it's worth mentioning that you can still play Diablo 1 today, thanks to the DevilutionX project. The village of Tristram felt alive as you stocked up on potions and sold your latest loot before delving into the dynamically generated dungeons and caves below the village to level up further. Perhaps inspired by Doom which was 4 years old by then, Blizzard were targeting the LAN party crowd?īut I experienced it by dialling my ISP and playing with my best mate.
So for a game like Diablo to land with multiplayer baked in was unusual. ADSL was rare and fixed connections were pure fantasy. Arriving in 1997, the majority of households didn’t yet have internet connections and those that did were still on 28K or (if they were lucky!) 56K modems. There was something very special about the first Diablo.
Then it’s over to you to tell me how wrong I am, in the comments! Next, I’ll cover a game that’s very similar to the original, then (hopefully!) any games that have surpassed it since, and finally any games that do things in a unique way, but still tipping their hat to the original. I’ll start with a bit of history about the most famous game representing the genre.
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IYL will be a short series of articles delving into various genres and looking at the best examples in each.
Let’s look at the series as a whole, and the genre it largely created. Launched in the 90’s, it defined a new genre of dungeon crawling, successfully mixing traditional Rogue/Nethack elements with beautiful visuals, real-time combat, class selection, an innovative loot system, and haunting music. There shouldn’t be any arguments when I claim that the original Diablo was a masterpiece.
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