As announced on the Realm Status forum, the Battle.Net servers are being taken down today for a huge update. Expected also is patch 1.02 today - details to come later if it is released.
Update: on schedule is the release of Diablo II version 1.02. What's new?
Fixed a bug that deleted your single player or open character if you deleted a Realm character with the same name.
Fixed several bugs to improve memory usage--those bugs could cause the game to slow down after playing for a while.
Fixed a bug associated with ejecting the Play CD.
More consistent closing of dialog boxes and pop-up screens when hitting Esc key.
Fixed a bug to allow faster drawing of the auto-map.
Will auto-close some NPC menus when necessary.
The automap can be toggled when a waypoint is active.
Game log file names follow the format D2YearMonthDay.txt.
Fixed a bug that caused the portal to the Valley of the Magi to disappear (Act II).
Stepladders
Diablo II News
Written by Bolty
Sunday, 09 July 2000
Stolen without honor from Diabloii.Net comes word of the annuls of MetalMan_GGN, the current #1 ladder player on the USEast Diablo II realm. He describes his strategies using his Necromancer to climb so quickly through the ranks. Two words: Corpse Explosion, he says.
Also, the D2 news megasite has new information on Horadric Cube recipes. Those of you who know what the Cube is know what I'm talking about, and those who don't won't be spoiled by me discussing it further. Head on over to their page for more info.
Golden Macintoshes
Diablo II News
Written by Bolty
Wednesday, 05 July 2000
Huzzah and kudos to Layil for alerting me to the fact that the Macintosh version of Diablo II has gone gold and should be out by the end of this month. Wow, that was FAST. The full Blizzard press release is up here. I'm sure all the Macintosh Diablo II fans (both of them) will be thrilled to get their copies so quickly. (Yes, I'm just kidding. No flame mail, please.)
DSF For Diablo II?
Diablo News
Written by Bolty
Wednesday, 05 July 2000
It's been a long-standing question on the Diablo Strategy Forum; should the original DSF be used to discuss Diablo II strategy as well in an environment much less deluged with spam? DSF regular Pete brings it to a head with a post today, and it's started off a thread discussing the issue. On the other side is Claudio, webmaster of Cat's Diablo Page, who believes it belongs there if it's well-tagged and kept clear of spoilers. What do you think? Register your opinion with an informal and totally non-scientific (haha) Lurker Lounge poll, courtesy of our "friends" at Network54. It can be accessed as well from the Forums page. I'm interested in the result...
The News
Diablo II News
Written by Bolty
Wednesday, 05 July 2000
Time to play "catch up" with the news of the past few days:
Blizzard released a Gateway Selector program to be able to manually select which realm you will connect to when you log onto Battle.Net.
There are all sorts of bugs with character names. Make sure that you don't have an open and realm character with the same name! This will be fixed in a future patch, but for now, be careful with your character names as you risk losing your characters if they share names.
Peter Hu chimes in with some tech support issues; a good read if you're having problems. Of note is that USWest is the server where most of the testing is taking place - so it may go down more often, but it will have the latest fixes as well.
Jarulf, the master of Diablo I knowledge, has a superb post studying how blocking effects work (they're unrelated to dexterity, everyone), and it develops into a great thread as well. Following that up is his study of damage effects based on monster type (there's more than just normal, demon, and undead in Diablo II). Finally, he provides his thoughts on why the Barbarian is a great character class in a very extensive post.
DaShiv adds a review of Hell difficulty in Diablo II, with an amazing tale of a level 47 Necromancer's solo trip through the acts. Good reading.
Believe it or not, but I still don't have my copy of Diablo II. :-) UPS is holding it hostage, apparently.
Have a Good One
Diablo II News
Written by Bolty
Friday, 30 June 2000
I'll be out until Wednesday, July 5th, celebrating the 4th of July (Independence Day) weekend here in the States. Just a few updates on things in the scene: if you're having hardware problems and crashes, remember to check your driver versions! Diablo II requires the very latest drivers for your hardware and DirectX 7.1. Many of the problems people have had in these first few days are caused by old drivers in their systems.
All of the Diablo forums are just hopping. Already, great strategy discussions are breaking out on various scene forums. Keep track of it all from the forums page. And enjoy these days, Diablo fans, for you'll never have them back again: the time when you were new to the game, observing things you've never seen before, and being surprised around every corner. There's nothing quite like being a newbie. See you next week!
D-Day
Diablo II News
Written by Bolty
Wednesday, 28 June 2000
One heck of a day. Yes, Diablo II has shipped - yesterday, in fact. Loads of people are getting it even today. The web gang at Blizzard has been busy - there are new forums for each realm, and an all new Official Diablo II site layout with new wallpapers and more.
Already?
Diablo II News
Written by Bolty
Tuesday, 27 June 2000
Yes, there's already a patch out for Diablo II. Version 1.01 was released today for those insanely lucky enough to have a copy this quickly. There's a list of the fixes here if you're interested in that sort of thing. Listed are obscure bugs like "a hang bug that could occur if picking up gold while fleeing from a Gargantuan Beast (Act I)" and more general bugs like "lower-titled characters may now join Open games created by higher-titled characters (those who have completed the game in Normal, Nightmare, or Hell difficulty)." There are a number of spoilers in the list of fixes, including NPC names, quest names, and details on later Acts of the game, so avoid it if you don't want to hear about anything. Two interesting things listed under Improvements are:
Changed the amount of gold dropped by a player who is killed by another player (PKed) to equal the amount that would normally be lost "to the void" as a death penalty when killed by a monster.
Australian users connect to the USWest Realm instead of the Asia Realm.
Why not save yourself some time later on and download the patch now, before you get the game? Then you don't have to sit there waiting anxiously for your first Battle.Net Diablo II session as the patch downloads from their servers.
Benchmarks
Diablo II News
Written by Bolty
Monday, 26 June 2000
Over at Yegg's Tavern, a rather useful read for those who are new to the whole Diablo II scene and haven't read fan sites for three years. :) Benchmarks is the name of their finalized feature on the history of the Diablo II design process all the way back from September of 1997! This makes for some amusing reading at parts (I'll quote one of their 1997 items):
Sun Sept 7 1997: Diablo II, the sequel to the bestselling game of 1997 by Blizzard Software, announced by Blizzard software at the European Computer Trade Show (ECTS) in London. The sequel is expected to be released at approximately December 1998. Details include; "There will be 5 different character class in Diablo II. One is a genuine fighter, one is some kind of sorcerer. 2 characters will be female. One of them will be an Amazon who is very good in using bows and spears, the other will probably be a female demon."
Well, female demons don't always make the cut, I suppose.
The Brady Bunch
Diablo II News
Written by Bolty
Monday, 26 June 2000
Diabloii.Net, everyone's favorite D2 news site, has an interview up with Bart Farkas, author of the BradyGames' Official Diablo II Strategy Guide. I've seen Bradygames guides before and have noted the quality of them; it's bound to be better than Prima's Guide to Diablo 1 (snicker). The Dii.Net crew may be going a little far calling it a "Bible for Diablo II fans," but it is definite that it'll be the best source out there for Diablo II information and tactics along with GFrazier's online guide for some time after the game's release. They're also giving away five copies of this guide in yet another contest, a good $20 value, so you might want to jump on that. It all starts here.
Untitled
Diablo News
Written by Bolty
Monday, 26 June 2000
What a slow weekend; with everyone waiting for Diablo II to ship and the Stress Test ending, there hasn't been much to report. But here's something new which you can chew on while waiting for that mailman to come by: The Untitled Mod by
, author of the complete Hellfire Barbarian guide. The name might be a gimmick, but the work gone into the design of the mod isn't. Every single monster, including bosses, and all uniques in the game are new. Changed base item attributes along with new prefixes and suffixes give a whole new look to item collecting. Mana Shield and Stone Curse don't exist to add to the challenge, and humor is thrown in to spice it up here and there. Give it a look-see.
The Mod page has been updated with information about the 1.08 situation, providing alternatives to Battle.Net for multiplay (thanks, Varaya!). This should help ease the confusion about 1.07-1.08 for newcomers to the mod scene.
D2SF
Diablo II News
Written by Bolty
Monday, 26 June 2000
Sure, technically it's the D2S&TF, but who cares? Mark this date on your calendar: the D2SF is born! As predicted, it's full of spam and useless off-topic posts for now (and, like Beta Buzz, every other person addresses questions to GFrazier only). It's neat to see "1.shtml" as a post number as GFrazier opens up the forum here. In just a few hours, almost 5 pages of posts have gone by, and at the time of this news bit, over 400 posts. One feature I noticed is the "highlight posts" that were in the Beta Buzz forum; it sure would be neat if, in the future, quality strategy posts could be highlighted in a similar fashion, but I doubt Geoff has time for that. But I think I will. And thus, when the posting of strategy kicks up, I hope to have an almost daily update of "top posts" in the D2SF, completely subjective and based on my opinion, of course. You can send bribes to the following address... :)
Seriously, I think Landru, old-time (and currently on vacation) DSF bot would have a heart attack reading the forum right now. In the next few days, Geoff will have more general forums up and hopefully more of the off-topic talk will move out. The signal to noise ratio is a little too high right now. Thanks to Lochnar for sighting it first.
Update: The Beta Buzz forum is being tossed today and the D2SF was named as its replacement. Ouch. However, one thing to note for the record books: for the first few hours the D2SF was alive, the word "Tactics" at the top was spelled wrong. Hehe. Read the details, however long they'll last since the forum is going down, here.
The Arrival
Diablo II News
Written by Bolty
Thursday, 22 June 2000
Here it comes.
The game which was supposed to be out in 1998.
The sequel to the game which is still running strong even after three years.
Blizzard now has a pre-order page up if you want to purchase it directly from them. It's more expensive, yes, but I assume you'll get it faster. Both the standard and Collector's Editions are available.
Excited yet?
Stress Test Ending
Diablo II News
Written by Bolty
Thursday, 22 June 2000
Blizzard has sent emails out to Stress Test participants, detailing the end of the Stress Test. It will wrap up on Monday the 26th at 0800 Battle.Net time. However, they have requested for everyone to jump on their servers tomorrow, Friday the 23rd, for one last mass stress of their bandwidth. Let's see if we can crash it, hmm?
DSF Buglist Update
Diablo News
Written by Bolty
Wednesday, 21 June 2000
Agammaglobulin's town talking bug has been added to the DSF Buglist, while the Mac-to-PC desync bug has been removed (assumed fixed).
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