Selby,Apr 18 2005, 12:04 AM Wrote:Really? So the fans weren't the only disappointed with the game?
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My, in part subjective, story can briefly be condensed to the following.
Sierra (I think), under same ownership as Blizzard was set to make some money with an expansion. Tight deadline for Christmas was set, and Blizzard ruled and controlled the development tightly. In normal Blizzard manner, this meant redoing and changing stuff along the way. With Christmas release, there was not room for much and the game was pushed out too soon (Synergistic never liked it but had not much say). The idea was to fix and add with a patch or so later.
The hidden ability to (unsupported) play multiplayer made Blizzard go ballistic and all sort of internal discussion arose. The decided to remove the ability for multiplayer with next patch.
In addition, the hidden Bard was perhaps not so controversial, but when the new patch then added the hidden Barbarian, Blizzard was not pleased, the Barbarian was supposed to be in D2, not D1!!
Donald who was lead, took the responsibility and was basically kicked if I recalled, the rest of the Synergistic was then basically split up and people moved to other places inside Sierra (from being a sort of outside development house).
The Synergistic team really was never happy with how things turned out and wanted to actually finished the game and make it complete instead of the rushed release. But since the game was completely axed after the 1.01 patch, it never was. So I guess we will never see the "wizard" (focused on blood?) as the hidden sorcerer, after all, each patch added a new hidden character. In addition, the stats and abilities for the Bard was not fine-tuned for 1.01 (I actually helped some but my suggestions was just that late for inclusion in 1.01), so she remained to similar to the Rogue in my opinion.
This is a very short condensed story. I think I have read a longer variant (and of course slightly different point of view) somewhere on the net, the main points are the same though. I personally think that if there had been enough time for the team and not so tight whip on them, it could have been a great expansion. Oh well.
EDIT:
I found this hilarious (and quite accurate as well) link:
http://www.diabloii.net/hellfire/hfhistory.htm
There are three types of people in the world. Those who can count and those who can't.