Diablo II: Lord of Destruction

Why Diablo II: The History of Diablo II Lord of Destruction
Diablo II was the sequel to the popular RPG Diablo, released November 30, 1996. A third party expansion was released for Diablo entitled Diablo: Hellfire on November 24, 1997. Diablo II was released June 29, 2000, less than 3 years later and its expansion, Diablo II: Lord of Destruction was released June 29, 2001. With Diablo III in development, but still yet to be announced as of April, 2009, Diablo II: Lord of Destruction presents the longest run of a Diablo Game without being amended by an additional expansion, or replaced by a sequel, ever.

The Persistent World
What separate the Diablo series from most MMORPGs is the nature of the persistent world, and the dynamics of the in game interaction. The games utilize Blizzard’s Battle.net online gaming system which stores player information and hosts games directly on a region specific server. Unlike most MMORPGs however, there is not a finite number of preset server worlds for players to choose from, instead the players choose to join a world space or “game” created by another player or they create their own game that other players may join. Within all world spaces several aspects will always be persistent: the town layouts for all five towns will always be the same, and the basic non playable characters will always exist in the same location, as well the player’s “stash” which functions as an additional area to store gold and items. The layout of the outside world also maintains a degree of persistency; the order in which the different areas connect is always the same, but where those connections are, as well as the areas themselves are generated semi-randomly each time a game is created. This brings us to the next unique facet of Diablo II: LOD.

The Random World
In lieu of static maps with units spawned at specific points, Diablo II: LOD utilizes semi random generation of enemies and terrain to create unique worlds each time a game is started. Although some enemies like act bosses and other super uniques remain constant throughout the game, many of the other monsters are chosen from a pool of possible monsters and spawned randomly throughout the maps. The “drops”, or the gold and items that a monster drops when it dies, are also significantly more random than in most MMORPGs. The drops from monsters are based on Monster Level, which determines the quality of equipment that can be dropped: Elite, Exceptional, or Normal, and the enchantment level of that equipment, Unique, Rare, Set, Magic, or Normal. The enchantments on all Magic and Rare equipment are also randomly generated. Thus getting better equipment requires killing higher level monsters, and multiple qualities of the equipment dropped will always be randomized from an incomprehensibly large pool of possibilities. The level of randomness is item drops, combined with the existence of items that can only be used by effectively by specific classes, or players with specific skills and the unusual economy of Diablo II presents itself

The Economy
Gold in Diablo II is essentially useless. The economy focuses entirely around the bartering and trading of useful items. Relative value of items vary dramatically form player to player, and as there is no real set currency, the trading games are often unpredictable and require the player to possess a certain level of out of game bartering skills. The game is made more interesting by the extremely limited carrying space on characters and stashes and the lack of any formalized item storing, transferring, or trading systems outside of one on one player trade windows. To compensate for this scarcity, many players create “mule” characters, or characters that are only used to store items. The lack of a formal system of transferring items to characters on the same account leaves players with two viable options for transferring their stored goods. They can either trade the goods to an intermediary, sign off, then sign back on with a different character then trade the goods back, or a far riskier approach. The player can sign on and create a game with a password, then stay in the game for a few moments until the game is set properly in the server for permanence, then drop their items and leave the world, and sign back on with a different character and join the empty world. If the player does not return to the empty world fast enough, it, and all of the items in it, will be deleted when the server clears the memory. All of these factors keep the marketplaces of Diablo II: LOD vibrant and unique from day to day.

Core Mechanics
Examining the parts of a game does not do justice to the game as a whole; the pieces of Diablo II: LOD create an experience that is unique even in the MMORPG crazed market of today. The games brilliance lies in its simplicity. There is no leveling up gathering of herbs, or gaining proficiency in creating medicines, nor is there weaving fabric, or making armor. The core mechanic of the game is to go out and kill monsters. The monsters are always different because of the semi-persistent, and semi random world. Your economical prowess is directly proportional to your character level because item drops are dependent entirely on monster level and higher monster levels require higher leveled characters. Furthermore players cannot cheat the system by taking a group of 8 players up to fight monsters of a much higher level because the world automatically readjusts the difficulty of the world based on the number of players present. In other words, if there are more players, there will still be the same number of monsters, and those monsters will still drop equipment of that monster level, but they will be harder to kill, and drop enough equipment for all the players.

The Social Experience
Diablo II: LOD takes a unique stance on social game play. The game has a fully functional single player mode, as well as the ability to play LAN games with friends using single player characters all stored on the player’s computer instead of the Battle.net server. By design the game can be beaten through all three modes (Normal, Nightmare, and Hell) with a single player. However, the relative uselessness of gold from selling powerful items to vendors, versus the returns for trading items with players strongly encourages a more social experience, involving trading with other players. Furthermore many character abilities, like Paladin Auras, or Barbarian War Cries provide bonuses not only for the player, but also for fellow party members. A casual glance at the game lists of Diablo II: LOD will reflect the social aspects of the game, from games entitled “MarketPlace” or “Trade” to “Kill Baal” or “RescueCain” (specific quest in the game).