Diablo II was released on June 29, 2000, meaning the game just recently hit its Sweet Sixteen. For some, this moment is a cute little touchstone that recognizes a game that they played for a while before they moved on to other games. For others, like me, it’s a reminder that a game they revere and still play is almost old enough to vote. I may not obsess over it as much as I used to, but I will still fire it up and play for a few hours here and there. Diablo III arrived not too long ago, and I still play that baby quite often on PC and consoles, but it’s Diablo II that I love the most.
A large reason why I love the game so much is due to the people who created the game: Blizzard Entertainment. Nowadays, they’re known as the company that alienated more World of Warcraft (WoW) players than Brazil has killed mosquitoes prior to the Rio Games. But once upon a time, Blizzard was one of the premier game developers – if not THE premier game developer – in the world. Thousands upon thousands of people have heaped so much undying praise for Blizzard, you would think they’re a cult.
Many will challenge the notion that Blizzard is unassailable, myself included. Blizzard pissed me off enough with their crap that I closed my WoW account after 8 years of near-slavish loyalty. They salted away a lot of interest in Diablo III at launch with their insistence on making the game always-online, a move that gained them widespread scorn after the “Error 37” launch disaster that followed. Those who stuck with Diablo III after that had to deal with the Real World Auction House, a cash-for-items scam that almost broke the game’s balance, as well as the ultimately empty promises to bring player-versus-player (PvP) into the game. They also made the unpopular move to split Starcraft II into three separate full-price games for each of the three main factions, a move that tripled the game’s base price. Let’s just say that they haven’t been doing gamers too many favors lately.
Still, it’s hard to argue with their results. Starcraft II is still a wildly popular real-time strategy (RTS) game despite the splitting shenanigans. WoW may have lost more than half of their subscription base, but they are still the most successful subscription-based massively-multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) in history. Hell, Blizzard decided to screw around with the first-person shooter (FPS) genre and created Overwatch, a game so good that I love playing it EVEN THOUGH I CAN’T STAND PLAYING FPSes! Overwatch is a full-price game that offers microtransactions – something that I hate more than dime-store vodka mixed with Liquid Plumr – and I STILL love the game!
As for Diablo III, after its initial hiccups, it has only improved, morphing into a very satisfying hack-and-slash dungeon crawler. An expansion was added, as well as new content every season. New things like set dungeons, rifts, new areas, and more secrets than a CIA bachelor party, and you can see why the game has a large, loyal player base.
But it will never be Diablo II.
Diablo II is one of my top 10 favorite games of all time, a list occupied by such personal classics as Final Fantasy III (the US release of Final Fantasy VI), Super Mario World, and the Atari 2600 version of Missile Command. The nostalgia runs deep with me and this game, but not just because of my experience playing it solo. Back in the day, my son, my nephew, and my best friend’s son would join me on massive play sessions via Blizzard’s then-new Battle.net online service. We would play until the wee hours of the morning, completely oblivious to everything around us. Of course, my best friend would curse me out in the morning because her son hadn’t slept a wink, but I didn’t care. We were busy, Goddammit!
Every time I upgrade my PC or do a clean install of Windows, I drag my Diablo II save files with me. My main character, a max-level necromancer named KeithRichards (I have great wit, but not much imagination), is my go-to when I want to re-enter Sanctuary and lay waste to the forces of Old Scratch himself, Diablo. KeithRichards is a battle-hardened veteran of both the vanilla game and the expansion, Lord of Destruction, having survived regular, Nightmare, and Hell difficulties many times over. I have rolled several other characters, including the barbarian TerryTate and the Sorceress StevieNicks (I told you about my lack of imagination! Also, I’m old!), but I always go back to KeithRichards. I will rock on with him until Diablo II stops working completely.
Judging by Blizzard’s actions, that will not be anytime soon. They rolled out patch 1.14a on March 2016, almost a full sixteen years after the game’s original release, making the game easier to play on more modern systems. And they do not seem to be remotely done; the patch notes proudly proclaim as much: “The journey starts by making Diablo II run on modern platforms, but it does not end there.” In an era where companies want to shut a game’s servers sooner and sooner, Diablo II is still being supported years after it was considered relevant. As much as I want to hate the fact that Blizzard killed my love for WoW, I still have to respect that company. They know how to support their games when they want to.
I will celebrate Diablo II’s latest birthday by running through Kanduras, Lut Gholein, Kurast, and Harrogath again. I hate Lut Gholein; desert areas piss me off almost as much as water levels. But I will do so in appreciation of what Diablo II is and what it has meant to me. My son doesn’t play with me anymore, but I’ll stack up a few hundred demon corpses in his name as well. Maybe I’ll get him online with me eventually, and we can go traipsing through Sanctuary again, just like old times. We might not get the whole band back together; my nephew and my best friend’s son are into other things now. But it’ll be a great duo nonetheless; KeithRichards still likes to tour.
