Just wondering if anyone out there has bought Diablo II yet. It came out last week and (thanks to the glory of the pre-order system ) was the #1 seller at Chips & Bits.

I was not even mildy interested in this game until I actually read something about it recently. It seems like they are actually bringing in some RPG elements this time I doubt I'll want to get it any time soon though ... too many other games I am more interested in (Drakan, Thief II) and not enough time for them

Tools for your Wizardry(r) toolkit

• D2 and more Monday Morning rambling,analander, 04:32 AM, Jul-10-00
  • Age of Blunders :),Llevram, 07:08 AM, Jul-10-00
    • Master of Magic!!!! 8o),Lord Gram, 01:34 PM, Jul-10-00
• RE: Got Diablo (II)? (yet?),DrSlop, 01:24 PM, Jul-10-00
• Early report on Diablo 2,analander, 04:51 AM, Jul-11-00
  • Late report on Diablo 2 (with character files!),analander, 11:18 AM, Aug-23-00
    • What!?!? You didn't sell your charcater :?,Llevram, 04:53 PM, Aug-23-00
      • ebay is a fraudulent cesspool,analander, 04:22 AM, Aug-24-00
        • Well, sure there are problems, but cesspool?,Llevram, 07:50 AM, Aug-24-00
• RE: Got Diablo (II)? (yet?),GlennRN, 00:18 AM, Jul-17-00
  • RE: Got Diablo (II)? (yet?),elrond, 11:31 AM, Jul-22-00
    • If you can't do anything else ...,Llevram, 02:53 PM, Jul-22-00
• RE: Got Diablo (II)? (yet?),Ben Esacove -ur, 07:08 AM, Aug-19-00

Mine's apparently in the mail as a b-day present, but most people may want to wait a few months for the $60 retail price to drop (in contrast, check the war/starcraft pries at http://www.blizzard.com/market.shtml). Still waiting on that Barbarian action figure, though.

For a laugh, check the D2 Collectors Edition prices on the fradulent cesspool that is E-Bay (also fun to sort by price on things like "Ultima Online", "Domain Name", "Used Underwear", etc...)

In the meantime, I'm checking out the demo for "Age of Wonders" at http://www.ageofwonders.com/ - has anybody played this?

I tried a few other demo downloads, but was too frustrated with the 3D learning curve (2150AD, Force Commander, Shogun, FreeLancer, etc.) to get very far. Without a wrap-around screen and all, a 3D playing surface just don't work on a 17" vertical glass pane!

Waiting for Myst 3,
- John
http://www.tk421.net/wizardry/

I played the demo, for about an hour. Seemed just like Master of Magic (older DOS game) with great graphics (kind of like a cross between Master of Magic and Heroes of Might & Magic).

$60 for Diablo II? It's only $44.95 at Chips & Bits. Speaking of Myst, that reminds me, I still need to finish Riven. I started it last Xmas, but the school schedule got to hectic to keep playing that, doing Wiz stuff, run the board , ...

Tools for your Wizardry(r) toolkit

I love that game. I am a Mircoprose stratagy game fan (umm....second to Sir-Tech...), and have played most of their stratagy games. Unfortunatly, I can't get any of them to work right now, even with my new boot disk (the only games I *have* gotten it to work with are CoDS and Bane, but Bane under DOS ain't worth it, I don't like those sounds!)

*Sigh* I really need to work on getting my DOS HD to work right w/ the rest of my computer.

Lord Gram (the Light)

This is only hearsay, but from what I hear, the RPG elements in diablo II are purely artificial. They added a few more classes, and a little bit of skill choice, but it really is still essentially just clicking on anything that moves. I also hear a lot of complaints about the save game system -- from what I understand, you have to finish each level, and can't save in the middle, so no real way to just do a quick 10 minute jaunt.

Again, I never played the game, just hearing stuff from friends, so take with a grain of salt.

OE

To make my point let me take you back to the two big changes I first noticed between Ultima 5 and 4 - they added a daylight/nighttime effect, so that half the time you could see only about 20 percent of the screen; and secondly, monsters in dungeon areas could now be killed for good - no more going through the Abyss five times to get to the end questions and having to kill everything all over again (not to mention you could save everywhere). I hated the night-time addition but loved the permanent monster kill.

Diablo II has eliminated the permanent monster kill that was in Diablo I, and has also added night lighting effects (grumble). Furthermore, you can also only save the game upon exit (this prevents taking advantage of some of the game features, such as you can gamble with the Wirt character - although gambling isn't mentioned at all AFAIK in the manual!), and when you restart you're in town, with all monsters everywhere resurrected. In this respect the single player mode is no different than playing online (and its no wonder, since your single player character can play on open battle.net).

That's two big suckys for me to get past. Nevertheless, I'm enjoying the clickfest so far (and learning tricks similar to shooting the barrels in Doom, such as first kill the Goblin Shamans who resurrect slain Goblins!) – there's a new skills tree that's vaguely interesting (although it feels like I'm building up for a nuke silo in Starcraft somewhat), as my Barbarian has already learned the Bash skill ("C'mon Marge, its fun to bash things!") – quite useful for wielding two weapons at once. The inventory and items, and especially the belt, are improved, and there's a permanent "stash" you can keep in town. Once you complete quests, they're done permanently, but like I said, you can go back and re-kill the monsters upon re-load for more experience. But because you start each game in town, there's no possibility of accomplishing anything in a quick few minute play sessions, unlike in Diablo I, although eventually there’s permanent town portals called waygates. Another neat thing is that I just got my first mercenary – an NPC who will fight along side you.

The e-bay laugh of the day is:
http://cgi.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=377058007

- John
http://www.tk421.net/wizardry/

Well, after winning on Hell difficulty its time to retire for awhile from Diablo II.

The coolest thing had to be the Cow Level. Someone started an Easter Egg rumor that there was a secret Cow Level in Diablo I (there wasn't) and it became a popular pastime on battle.net to tell newbies to click on the cows 83 times to open the cow level. Blizzard tried to squelch the rumor, they even had a "there is no cow level" cheat code in Starcraft, but to little avail. When I heard the same rumors surfacing for Diablo II (take Wirt's leg, transmute it with a Town Portal tome in the Rogue encampment after you've won on that difficulty to open the cow portal) I was a little dubious. But after a few personal run-ins with the Cow King (Moo!) I know otherwise.

Open battle.net's become hacked to hell with the influx of Diablo II trainers (if you want no hacks, you can play exclusively online, but I would suggest DSL for this) so I think I've had my fill for now. The clickfest was fun while it lasted though.

In the hopes of sharing the fruits of my labor with other Blizzard fans, I've sent a few Diablo II Webmasters my character files so they can have the joy of romping around with a level 74 Barbarian. One site that's loaded my files is:

http://diablo2.qb45.com/files.shtml

Enjoy!
- John
Prepare Yourself for the Ultimate in Fantasy Games

I couldn't believe how much that one went for on ebay a while back - something like $700.00? How ludicrous.

Tools for your Wizardry(r) toolkit

And they're making billions from it. Its not so much that they offer listings for used underwear or Nazi artifacts, but that the stucture of anonymous bidding encourages deceptive behavior. People drive up bids on their own listings, or just fail to adhere to their bids or listings altogether (often by creating a fake reputation for themselves by crosslisting self-praises). And ebay loves it all along - they collect a commission on each item sold, one way or another.

The people selling Diablo characters and items on ebay are violating the spirit of their license agreement with Blizzard and have no respect for the experience of playing an RPG. I thought briefly about trying to sell my character on ebay, but I would much rather just share it with as many people as possible without trying to make a questionable buck about it.

Do an ebay seach for "Diablo", "Ultima Online", "Everquest" and the like, and sort by price for a good laugh...

- John
Prepare Yourself for the Ultimate in Fantasy Games

I've bought and sold quite a bit of stuff so far w/o any problems. As for the Online character and item sales, yes those are fraudulent and people claim to be making upwards of $2000-$3000 a month doing it (per an article I recently read). But those people had to remain anonymous to keep from getting their accounts suspended.

Tools for your Wizardry(r) toolkit

Playing Diablo 2 now. Basically not that different from the original. I am enjoying it so far in fact I spent 5 hours on it the first day, but have been working since.
The night lighting really sucks and the skill system is impeneterable (especially since I never read the damn manuals.) I can say I am enjoying it much more than I did Baldurs Gate I also orddered Icewind but have not yet recieved it.

Glenn RN
-----
I started out with nothing & still have most of it left.

I'd say it all hinges on whether you liked Diablo 1. If not, well, don't get Diablo 2 I personally think it's a helluva lot of fun. It's definitely geared towards multiplayer, which is the reason for the game changes that were being complained about above. The skill trees to add a lot more customization, since it makes each person's character that much more unique. There are enough skills which kinda cause you to plan out what you want to specialize in, or you could go for the whole jack of all trades thing. Of course, part of what makes this game so much fun is getting on with a whole bunch of friends and having at it. The characters are definitely much more unique, rather than the everyone gets the same spells, etc. It's definitely more of an action game, not an rpg, so for those of you hard-core rpgers out there, stay away. I still think it's kinda odd how I keep reading that Diablo breathed life back into the crpg industry. Dunno how true that is, but i just find it weird, since i didn't consider it to be even close to an rpg. Just enjoy it for what it is...fun.

... you can serve as a bad example Maybe that that is how Diablo I breathed life back into the RPG world. The outrage at just what could pass for an RPG Back in my day, an RPG ....

Tools for your Wizardry(r) toolkit

Honestly, I still think of Diablo II as more of a realtime roguelike than an RPG... I like roguelikes, though, so it's still a fun game. (Does anyone else around here play roguelikes?)

As for Diablo II costing $60, and the Collector's Edition prices... the solution was to pre-order the game. I pre-ordered from EBworld, and got the Collector's Edition for only $61.98, incl. S, and it arrived on June 29th. (I mentioned that in passing on Battle.net and got yelled at by a lot of envious people. ;)

Ben