It all started innocently enough with GameSpot and their report entitled "Eye of the Storm," a history of Blizzard and Blizzard North.  Included with their report was a trivia contest.  Answer the questions correctly and you'd be entered to win a trip to Blizzard North for one valuable weekend and a chance to play the Diablo II Expansion Pack months before its release.  Naturally I entered, but since I never win anything, I wasn't exactly holding my breath.  Well, I won.  Go figure.  In fact, that was my reaction upon receiving the congratulatory email from Gamespot; the first thing I did was check to see if it was fake!

But it was quite real, and I found myself boarding a flight from Philadelphia to San Francisco about a month later, pad in hand (filled with questions I wanted to ask) and eager to see everything I could in the Expansion Pack.  The opportunity to meet the faces behind the names and to talk one on one with Blizzard North employees was too exciting for words.  I only wished there was more time in a day, for that's what I had: one day to visit the offices of Blizzard North and play a Druid, an Assassin, and Act 5 as much as I could.  Joining me in my quest for fun and excitement was my roommate at Penn State, a fellow Diablo 2 addict who also couldn't wait to rip into some of Baal's hordes.

If you want to skip the pesky details of my arrival at Blizzard and just want to see the juicy bits (the Expansion Pack), just click here.

Friday, January 19th

The day began at the Hilton Towers hotel in downtown San Francisco, where Blizzard was shacking us up for the weekend (a really nice hotel, I might add).  At 9 AM, my roommate and I were picked up by Jon Stone, Diablo II sound programmer, and we embarked on the 40 minute ride from San Francisco to San Mateo.  During the ride, we discussed how the Expansion Pack is amazingly 73.65923% done already (see the December 21 fansite chat article if you don't get the joke).  In reality, the version we were about to play could be considered pre-alpha, but I'll get to that in a bit.

Arrival: deep in the jungles (well, not really) of San Mateo lies an unmarked building on a nondescript road.  Inside this unassuming building lies the center of a gaming universe, known as Diablo.  But you sure couldn't tell that from the outside, and I was imagining a big joke as I walked in ("wait, you wanted us to take you to Blizzard North?  Oh, too bad").  But then the doors of Blizzard Entertainment were before me as I entered their office - which was practically the entire first floor.

Once inside I was greeted by Matt Householder, senior producer of Blizzard North and Diablo II.  Known as the "voice of reason" (and a guy with a really, really cool business card), he introduced me to Bill (no, not THAT Bill), described as "a new guy" who had set up the computers for us in Booneytown (more on that later).  I was also forced to come face to face with the well-known Diablo figurine that you can't help but notice as you enter Blizzard North.  This poor thing's just been abused over the years, but it's still around.  The impressive figure, around 6 feet tall, has a dark secret: Diablo is really a woman (well, a woman doll is inside the outer cover, that is).

Oh, you wanted pictures?  Heh...uh...well, sometimes things don't go as planned.  And, well, sometimes people forget to take their cameras with them on their once-in-a-lifetime trip to their favorite game company.  These people are known as morons, and that's my roommate and I in a nutshell.  Excuse me while I load up Diablo II and press the number pad key 4 a bunch of times, and curse myself for forgetting.  However, all is not lost; if you want a look at the things I saw at Blizzard, Diabloii.Net still has their description of their awesome trip to the company last year.  The pictures of Blizzard North's offices are a great representation of how it still looks today.  Perhaps it's for the best; with only a few hours to mess with the Expansion Pack available, running around taking pictures of the office wasn't a high priority.  We wanted to see bears, wolves, and katars!

All in all, however, my trip was poorly timed.  It was a Friday.  A Friday in which the Schaefer brothers (Max and Erich) were out, Peter Hu was nowhere to be seen (working at Irvine on Battle.Net issues), and much of the Blizzard staff wasn't around.  Unlike Diabloii.Net's trip a year ago, the office wasn't in crunch mode rushing to get Diablo II done, with sleeping bags all over the place, employees who hadn't showered or seen their families in days (yikes), and other such fun.  However, it was Donut Day.™  Donut Day was marked by the array of programmers, producers, and techies hovering around the entrance to the main kitchen for the donuts to arrive.  This gave me a chance to meet a bunch of great people (who were divided on whether I should be called Rob or Bolty).  Employees were wondering why I wasn't wearing a large shirt with a bolt on it.  The whole time, I'm thinking,

Oh boy I'm inside Blizzard North this is so cool I can't believe I'm talking to these people I wish I worked here I wonder how much of the Expansion Pack they have coded why did I forget my camera I wonder if I can snag some cool Blizzard stuff while I'm here maybe I can make game suggestions this is awesome I wish I could be here longer than a day I wanna meet everyone it's cool that they all know who I am yay yay yay yay yay whoopie this is so awesome!

What did I actually do?  I shook hands with the employees and said "nice to meet you."  Way to articulate, Bolty!

I was also introduced multiple times to the USWest realm server (first as a calculator sitting on a table, then as a refrigerator, a toaster, a heater, and a circuit box, all throughout the day - sort of the running joke).  Exciting!  :-)  Thankfully, the Blizzard North office was to be blackout-free that weekend, or my trip would REALLY have been poorly timed.  The recent power shortages in California have not made it easy for companies throughout the region, but I was assured that Blizzard was outside the blackout range for that day.

The procession headed back to "Booneytown," signified by a sign stating just that as we passed through a doorway headed to the back area of the office.  Our home for the day was set up back there across the hallway from a room which looked like it had been ransacked, with a desk on its side, things piled up in one corner, and, yes, a sleeping bag!  In our room was a table located in the center along with two computers (with nice, big monitors) along the side walls.  The computers were set up with a Diablo-ish Windows desktop theme (red on black).  I was practically salivating by this point.  "Me play Diablo.  Yum yum.  Me go kill big uglies (oh wait, that's Diablo 1)."

A few formalities were gotten out of the way.  My roommate and I informed Matt Householder that we'd be here until he threw us out, and that our goal was to see as much of the expansion as we could in our limited time.  Matt responded with "Great.  We want to know what you think of everything you see."

That's when Tyler Thompson, lead designer of the Expansion Pack, walked in.  Tyler and Matt were our sounding boards throughout the day.  We'd make comments and ask questions about what we were seeing, and Tyler would write down our suggestions.  Tyler was wearing a really cool Blizzard North hockey jersey, and we were informed that the office actually has a hockey team (many employees are real hockey fans there).  The jersey was red and white with a logo of a black shield and the head of Diablo on the front.  I immediately wanted one for myself.  :-)

In the build of the expansion we played, multiplayer wasn't available.  My roommate decided to take the Assassin class, and I took the Druid.  We could each evaluate the specific class and have more time to study it in detail.  As we sat in front of the computers, the lights were turned out and we entered the Rogue Encampment for the first time as a Druid and Assassin...

What you'll read here is based on what I saw, but Blizzard made it abundantly clear that everything is subject to change (as always with Blizzard games) before the Expansion is released.  Where to begin?  I suppose I'll start with what wasn't in the current build of the Expansion Pack, so that you won't be wondering why I don't discuss it.  The build of the Expansion Pack we played was extremely alpha.  There were a lot of unfinished graphics, sound effects, music, boss names, skill icons, skill trees, etc.  Since the game was being programmed elsewhere in the office at the same time we were playing it, we had programmers come in through the day and comment on what had already been changed from the recent build we were playing on!  For instance, we learned that one skill my roommate was using often at one point in Act 5 wasn't even in the game anymore - it had been completely removed the day before.  That's how quickly things are changing in development right now.

Because of this, I could tell you very detailed stats and figures about skills and equipment, but doing so would probably be a waste.  There is no reason to believe that much of anything we saw will be the same months from now, and the skills had, according to Tyler, only been given one look-over.  There was very little balance in the skills yet.  "We haven't even begun to tweak the skills to balanced levels," explained Tyler, and laughed later in the day when we showed him an Assassin fire trap skill which was causing over 350 damage per second to any monsters that came near it - at skill level 9!  We could plant two of these traps down on the ground and nothing that came close to them survived for even a second.

Multiplayer wasn't available in our build - a shame.  I would have enjoyed not just playing alongside my roommate, but any other Blizzard employees who might have felt inclined to join us in, uh, "operational research."  We both played single player mode throughout the day.  Speaking of multiplayer, Matt and I had a discussion about the Battle.Net chat gem and we both came to the conclusion that it is indeed working perfectly.  Yep, it's working great!

I am Akara, High Priestess...
Many aspects of the game had placeholders.  New items (runes, charms, orbs, antlers, etc) had placeholder graphics.  Antlers, a new helm type, looked like bone helms.  Orbs looked like bucklers.  New sound effects weren't implemented; old sound effects from standard D2 were used for many skill effects (Druid summonings sounded like the Necromancer Raise Skeleton skill, the number pad keys would use the Necromancer and Amazon sayings for the Druid and Assassin, etc).  So if you were hoping for screenshots of, say, the Orbs (Sorceress-only item), there won't be any here.  The music wasn't done yet (but we had the pleasure of hearing some new D2 music in development at the office, and it was most impressive!).  The mercenaries of Act 5 were replaced by those in Act 1 as placeholders.  In fact, much of Act 5's town, Harrogath, had Act 1 elements.  Since the voice acting hadn't been completed yet, conversing with any townsperson led to them being eager to inform me that they were really Akara, High Priestess of the Sisterhood of the Sightless Eye.  In fact, I heard the beginning of Akara's introductory speech so many times that day, I've been hearing it in my sleep.  It's kind of hilarious when you keep hearing about Akara every few minutes.  To simulate this, get in a room with 2 or 3 computers, and get people to continuously listen to Akara's "hello" speech.  Many laughs for all, trust me.

Well, enough of what wasn't in the expansion yet.  Time to show you what was - and boy, there's a lot to talk about there.

Getting to know you, getting to know all about you
Let's start off with some rambling on the new features that were apparent right off the bat with our new level 1 Druid and Assassin.  For starters, the graphics of the two characters were all complete, except for a handful of morphing effects.  The Druid morphed well into a bear, but there was no animation yet for the other way around when the spell wore off.  The Assassin looked sleek and deadly, while the Druid tended to lumber around in his earth-tone suits and armor.  When armored, the Assassin looked jet-black, scoring large points in the "Ok, I'm Bad" category for a meanness pageant.  After playing for a little bit (emphasis on "little") in Act 1 we expressed our urge to see Act 5 asap.  In a few minutes, some new created level 35 characters were loaded onto our machines and we were ready for action in Harrogath.

I asked if there would be any new number pad expressions (i.e. "help, goodbye, this is for you").  Hilariously, a few employees chimed in simultaneously, "run away!"  I felt like I was watching a Monty Python movie...

The MiniMap Experiment
Blizzard was experimenting with a new minimap feature in the build we played. They haven't decided whether to include it, but here is how it worked.  Instead of a map that is centered on your screen and covers your view, an option to have a mini-map in the upper right corner of the screen was available.  This map is smaller and covers a square area about the size of 4 party player icons arranged in a rectangle.  The colors and overall look of the minimap were still under development, but it was already a handy feature for those who dislike having the automap planted on top of the action.  The minimap allows you to see your surroundings in your immediate area, and doesn't cover as large a range as the full automap.

Character Conversion
It'll be a one-way process.  You can take your character into Expansion Pack mode, but you can't take them back.  If skills are changed around for the expansion, you will need to be aware of them before you switch over - if your favorite skill is nerfed some, you might wind up preferring to keep the character as a standard one.  "We plan to do a complete lookover of every skill in the game," Tyler informed me.  "While every skill won't be altered, we might take a few from each class, say 6, and tweak those."  Matt added, "our goal is to encourage players to employ underused skills in the original Diablo II."  This is great news for those who always want the most in game balance; the game data obtained and lessons learned from six months of fan gameplay will give Blizzard excellent information with which to balance the classes.

As for getting to Act 5, Tyreal will provide a portal for you once Diablo is defeated.

ARx4
"It was intentional and designed," said Tyler.  "The character screen just wasn't showing the right data until 1.04."  For those unaware, ARx4 is the discovery of Jarulf, who found out after Diablo II's release that monsters actually had 4 times as much AR then previously believed (and shown on the character screen as your chance-to-be-hit value).  In 1.04, the character screen was updated to show the true value of that chance, and many players unaware of the ARx4 situation thought that the monsters' abilities had been improved.  ARx4 makes it difficult for any class other than the Barbarian to get a high enough DR level to be considerably effective in Hell difficulty.  Tyler disagreed with my belief in this, stating that a Defiance-based Paladin can tank like nobody's business, and that he'd played Defiance Paladins in Hell difficulty.

The Stash
It's double the size.  'Nuff said.  It contains new artwork and holds twice as much as before (take the normal space, clone it, and add it above the regular space).  Sorry, no screenshots got through the screening process.

Weapon Swap
Those of you who have been around long enough might remember a common argument in the Diablo 1 days, which went along the lines of "if Sorcerers can change their attacks with hotkeys, warriors should be allowed to switch weapons with hotkeys as well!"  Well, guess what, everyone.  Now you can!  The new inventory system in the Expansion Pack allows all characters to hold TWO sets of weapons/shields.  And, at the press of a key, you can switch between the two sets!  This has far-reaching implications for all classes.  Barbarians can swap between high-damage two-handed weapons to a sword/shield combo instantly if a tough hard-hitting boss is approaching.  Amazons can swap between a bow and a lance for some close-up action at a whim.  You just bind a key to your weapon swap (listed in the current build as "an evil force" in the key assignment screen, hehe) and you're all set.  The skill selections you have transfer as well, meaning that if you have Jab set to your left click with your lance setup, whenever you switch to the lance setup Jab will appear there again.  The new inventory screen shows this change by having two tabs above the right hand and left hand slots, with Roman numerals I and II.  While the tabs weren't working yet in the build we played, you will be able to just click on the tabs to switch setups (but the key you bind to that command will be the faster, more useful way to do so anyhow).  You can see these tabs in some screenshots later on in the report.

Think that's a neat feature?  Try this next one.

Mercenaries
We discussed a little about the mercenaries in Diablo II - what made some of them good, what made some of them bad (*cough* Act 2 mercs *cough*), and ways to improve them.  Why?  They're being tweaked - a lot.  Mercenaries in the Expansion Pack are going to play a larger role in your survival.  Why?  Because you can customize them.  Why?  Stop asking why!

Mercenaries are now more controllable.  That is, you can give them items, see their stats, and watch as they level up with you.  In normal D2, when you leveled up you'd see a bubble message of "I feel much stronger now" over your mercenary's head, but the details of what improvements were made to your hirable were unclear.  Now they can be.  Although the menu setup was temporary, in the current build we played you could look up your merc's stats by hovering your cursor over their party icon in the upper left of the screen.  You'd be told their level, strength, dex, etc; these stats are necessary because you can equip your mercenaries with items!  I tested this out in Act 5 by hiring Gaile, namesake rogue of a webmaster (and a really nice person to boot; hi Gaile!) at Diabloii.Net, and equipped her with some simple bows.  She was only level 3 (remember, the mercs in Act 5 had Act 1 placeholders), so she couldn't use many of the bows I found.

The implications for this are many.  For starters, Blizzard plans to allow you to heal your mercs with potions in the final version; clearly their intention is to allow you to be able to develop a mercenary to be a true sidekick instead of mere cannon fodder.  I still feel dirty hiring a mercenary just to give me an extra second of survival time against Duriel.  :)  However, if this is the case, would we be able to take our mercenaries to other acts?  We can only hope; my Druid was able to take his bear with him between acts, but players would run into a problem with quests that award you mercenaries for completing them.  Thus, I wouldn't bet on transferable mercenaries in the final.

A long term mercenary would be a lot of fun.  I hope it works out in the final version.  The system for mercenaries wasn't anywhere near complete in the build we played.  It's yet unknown what would happen to a merc when it dies carrying items you gave him/her, as I didn't have time to test out mercenaries all that much.

New Items and Modifiers

Matt Householder, senior producer, told me at one point that they had over 200 new prefixes and suffixes programmed in.  No doubts about that here, even though I only had the time to see a fraction of that number.  My roommate and I decided to take advantage of a few, uh, "game-enhancing instrumental human-interface interrupts," otherwise known as cheat codes, built in for use during development to go on a gambling binge.  Nihlathak, the NPC who you can gamble from, was more than happy to take our not-so-hard-earned money and dish out items to us.  There were quite a few surprises...

Included in this screenshot collection are other shots of items found on the road.  Each shot includes a short analysis of the item's effects and any other things we noticed about them.

Our gambling binge was assisted by a small gambling change.  We didn't need to leave town each time to gamble; the gambling screen would refresh every time we talked to Nihlathak.  We discussed the new magical modifiers with Tyler a lot.  He was very concerned about play balance with the new modifiers which increase according to character level (and rightly so).  Some modifiers will not be available on rare items, which will greatly increase the fun of items again - now those blue items will be worth picking up again for high level characters.  There were dozens of other new magical modifiers we discovered that aren't shown in these shots, and they were solid evidence of very imaginative ideas by the design team.  For example, there was an armor modifier that could turn your character into an LEB (lightning enchanted boss, those bosses who emit charged bolts whenever they're struck).

Blizzard was tight-lipped about class-specific items, mostly because they hadn't really been balanced yet.  We did find one Sorceress Orb (which looked like a buckler), but it only raised a skill level.  Previous rumors about the Amazon having gloves as her class-specific item are incorrect.  She'll be likely to have a bow or weapon as her item.  But the design on those hasn't even gotten off the ground.

As for uniques, no exceptional uniques had been implemented in the build we played, so no information is available on them.  There were many other magical modifiers we found on items that you won't see in this report, mainly because they might not make the final version.

As for magic throwing weapons, they will indeed exist in the expansion pack.  You can't buy them in town, but the normal throwing weapons are in plentiful supply at the shops.  But what use will a magical throwing weapon have when you can run out of them so quickly?  "You'll be able to restock them in town," Matt Householder informed me.  It'll work like repairing an item, and I only hope that the price is right.  Throwing weapons are some of the most costly in the game, so characters can easily wind up blowing all of their cash restocking a magic throwing weapon if the pricing is high (which I didn't get to test out).

Charms: we found some items called "charms," items which, when held in your inventory, will boost your attributes.  Charms which have a greater effect will use up more space.  I found two charms in Act 1.  The first one (which used a placeholder graphic of a Scroll of Identify) raised the character's light radius (hey, these WERE Act 1 items after all).  Later, my Druid found a larger charm which used a placeholder graphic of an axe which raised his AR and his light radius.  Not much else was discovered about charms during our gaming time.

Gambling order: Blizzard isn't a big fan of the unique ring and amulet gambling order.  Requiring people to hold the Nagelring and the Manald Heal in order to get a Stone of Jordan might be changed in the Expansion Pack.  Also, I asked if scepters, wands, and staves will ever be gamble items, and received a simple explanation as to why they can't: "You could actually make money from them," explained Matt.  "If you gamble a staff for 5,000 and sell it back for up to 25,000 every time, you could generate infinite cash."  Whoops, duh - I knew that; I was just testing him - really!

One fun new helm type we discovered was a Coronet, a small band that your character can wear on their head to have a non-headgear look.  The Coronets we found had a placeholder graphic of a light belt, so we were actually putting belts on our heads.  The Coronet had a low DR (around 7), so it's unlikely that Barbarians will be big fans of that new "helm," but the class that would love them, the Sorceress, is the one that looks best without headgear on (in many peoples' opinions).  A nice touch!

I ran into a few items which gave a damage boost and AR boost against Undead creatures, higher than the standard 150% bonus when using mace weapons.  My roommate discovered a similar item which gave such a bonus when fighting demons!  Does this mean a return to the Demon/Animal/Undead system in Diablo 1?  Could be.

Runes: sorry, I don't have much information on runes.  We found a couple (they used gem graphics as placeholders), and none of the ones we found did anything all that special.  Runes are still being worked on at Blizzard.  All we know is that the order at which you socket them is important (people in town tell you that as well), but beyond that, the details remain a mystery.  As for gems, I did get a Flawless Skull from a monster in Act 5!

Quests

This is where Act 5 really shines.  The quests are varied, and in some cases, very surprising.  During our visit, we played the first 5 quests (the last one wasn't coded yet).  The quests are unlike those of previous acts - no more assembling parts of things to place them in your cube.  While details of the later quests won't be appearing in this report, a rundown of quest 1 is chronicled below.

Quest 1: Stop the Bombardment
Harrogath is a proud town.  A Barbarian village, well fortified, but slowly weakening to the assault of Baal's minions.  Of course, none of the townspeople would admit that; they were all too proud.  But if you could prove your worth by defeating the general leading the siege on the town, the townspeople would be sure to show their gratitude.  The target?  Shenk the Overseer, a Lasher boss who ruled over the attacking force with his fury and his whip.  I prepared my Druid and headed out of town (opening the portcullis on the way).  Tyler Thompson was sitting next to me, watching, and he simply stated "you might want to look out."  I wondered what he was talking about.

Two more steps into the Bloody Foothills, the first area outside of town, and I learned what Tyler was talking about.  INCOMING!  This large blue ball descended right from the sky and plopped smack on my head, freezing my minions and chilling me (and boy, it hurt).  My equipment that I had thrown together for me didn't provide me with much in the way of resistance.  As for the cold, I was told that the freezing would be changed to chilling on the minions - Necromancers would be severely punished in this region if their monsters kept getting immobilized.  But the cold ball of doom was a sign of what was to come...

Also featured in the first area outside town was the basic foot soldier unit, the Minion, who complemented the ranged attack of the Demon Imps with a melee attack to harass me.  This presented the basic problem of getting past the melee attackers so that the ranged ones couldn't eat me alive - and don't forget that during all this, catapults were launching fire, poison, lightning, and cold balls at me and my friends as I tried to work my way up the slope to stop Shenk.  In order to end their bombardment on me and my party, I needed to forcibly remove them (read: crush the catapults without mercy).

In the middle of the battlefield were more Barbarians.  A war was being fought, and as I proceeded up the slope I joined more Barbarians in battle.  While they didn't attach to me like a mercenary, they were intelligent enough to see that my major rear-kicking of anything near me was a Good Thing™ and they kind of joined me as I headed around.  Also, dead Barbarians littered the landscape; after all, this wasn't a Disney adventure where nobody dies.  :-)

Shenk's a Lasher.  Lashers are large, bulbous trolls who carry large whips.  Using these whips, Lashers can drive Minions into a frenzy.  They provide an aura-style effect, bloodthirst, to all Minions near them.  Bloodthirst looks like a bunch of red concentric circles (like Blessed Aim, but larger).  Their whips can hit Minions and turn them Berserk.  Basically, each whipped Minion turns into a walking bomb.  Their backs grow large and puffed up with pus and slime, and then run toward you at high speed.  Once they're close, they explode for devastating damage.  This makes Lashers very dangerous when near Minions, and I foresee difficulties some characters will have with these exploders.  Shenk is the only Lasher in the Bloody Foothills, but they become more plentiful in later areas.

With Shenk, I suppose only two strategies apply.  Either try to get in and take him out quickly, or pull Minions away from him so that you're not forced to fight bloodlusted or berserked Minion hordes.  The one thing you want to avoid is a prolonged battle against a collection of Minions under his control.  When Shenk is defeated, your reward is the standard price reduction in town that you also receive for completing quests in Acts 1, 2, and 3.

Quest 2 and Beyond
This act gets good.  The quests, as I stated earlier, are of a new design than those in previous acts and include some good surprises.  The rewards - well, let's just say that the rewards include things never even dreamed of in the past.

Now, join me on a quest to the Expansion Pack January Report, Page Two.  Inside are plenty more screenshots and greater detail on the Assassin and Druid, the new character classes dedicated to stopping Baal.