If you’ve ever touched a mouse and keyboard to game, chances are you’ve experienced the glory that is Blizzard Entertainment’s Diablo II, and perhaps even worked the grind in its expansion, Lord of Destruction. With Diablo III on the horizon (if you can call “sometime in 2011″ a horizon), I thought it would be appropriate to revisit Tristram (after a ten-year hiatus) and see how our old buddies are faring.
Released in June of 2000, Diablo II has been a game I come back to about once every three years or so. Things have changed significantly since I last played it. With the latest patches (dating from 2003 up to 2010), your stash has increased its size, you can now reset your stat and skill points once after completing the first quest, and there are a host of new bosses and quests have been added to the online game.
In some areas, the difficulty has been lessened. High runes now drop with increased frequency, the lesser enemies seem to be more balanced, and character skills seem more powerful in most instances. Likewise, in some areas, difficulty seems to have been ramped up. Some enemies (bosses especially) are a lot stronger than in the first few iterations of the game and rare items seem to drop with less frequency.
In most aspects, however, the game feels like the same classic that I played years ago. Still fun and engaging, the only thing that has changed is that the amount of online players has seemed to taper off. It’s only to be expected as the game is a decade old, after all. The only gripe I could find with that is that now I’ve had to put up with an unusually large amount of spammers who love to advertise their Geocities-era Diablo II websites and annoy you by filling your entire screen with text as you’re fighting a boss for the third time.
Fans of the game who haven’t played in many years will no doubt enjoy getting back into their old war-boots and slaying some demons again. For folks who haven’t had the pleasure of playing Diablo II (they exist?), Diablo II, the expansion and the original Diablo can be had for a paltry 40 bucks at most stores. And since Diablo III is still on the horizon (read: a loooooong way off), Diablo II and Lord of Destruction should keep you waiting with baited breath.
