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Gameplay
The player assumes the role of a hero, fighting monsters while traversing overland and dungeons. The storyline of Diablo II is played through four acts, five with Lord of Destruction. Each act follows a predetermined path with preselected quests, although many quests are optional. Each act culminates with the destruction of a boss type monster, upon which the player proceeds to the next act. Battle is conducted in real-time, using an isometric oblique top-down viewpoint (basically, this just means that the game has a set, hovering camera angle). Players fight monsters to level up their character and gain better items.
Diablo II emphasises combat, and randomly generates many monster properties, level layouts and item drops. Most of the maps themselves are randomly generated. In single player mode, the map is randomly generated but locks the setting thereafter; in multiplayer mode, it resets each time you restart.
Diablo II allows the player to choose between five different character classes: Necromancer, Amazon, Barbarian, Sorceress and Paladin. Each character has different strengths and weaknesses and sets of skills to choose from. The Diablo II expansion pack, Lord of Destruction, adds two new classes: the Druid and the Assassin.
In addition to the four/five acts there are also three difficulty levels: Normal, Nightmare and Hell. A character must complete these difficulty levels in order; only once a character completes Normal difficulty, that character may play at Nightmare difficulty, and similarly for Hell difficulty. A character retains all abilities, equipment, etc, between difficulties, and may return to earlier difficulties at any time. Upon completion of the game in Normal difficulty, a player may create a Hardcore character. The game ends when a Hardcore character is killed.
Diablo II also has a number of other features that enhance gameplay. The player has the option of hiring one of several computer-controlled mercenaries, that follow the player and attack nearby enemies. On occasion, the player might find a rare, valuable item, or one that is part of a set that becomes more powerful when the entire set is collected. Items can be customized using sockets and gems, or transmuted into different items using the Horadric Cube.
Multiplayer is achieved through Blizzard's Battle.net free online service, or via a LAN. Battle.net is divided into "Open" and "Closed" realms. Players may play their single-player characters on open realms; characters in closed realms are stored on Blizzard's servers, as a measure against cheating. Online play is otherwise nearly identical to single-player play.
As an added dimension, Diablo II allows players to engage in competitive player vs. player (PvP) combat, rewarding victors with piles of gold and the severed ear of their enemy. PvP play outside the framework of duels (i.e. random assaults of other players) led to a community of certain PvPers finding ways to interfere with other high-level parties, or repetitively wipe out low-level players [citation needed]. These players are commonly called Pkers (Player Killers) by the Battle.net community.
As the game can be played cooperatively (Players vs. Monsters, PvM), groups of players with specific sets of complementary skills can finish some of the game's climactic battles in a matter of seconds, providing strong incentives for party-oriented character builds.
Reception
Diablo II was a runaway success for Blizzard. It was awarded a spot in the Guinness Book of World Records "2000 edition" for being the fastest-selling computer game ever sold, with more than 1 million units sold in the first two weeks of availability [1].
Collector's Edition
Diablo II Collector's Edition contents
Blizzard released two versions of the game upon its launch; the regular edition and a limited Collector's Edition. The collector's edition box contained the following items:
The game on three CDs
Exclusive Diablo II DVD movie
Collector's Edition manual
Original Diablo II soundtrack
Dungeons & Dragons tabletop RPG
Story
The story of Diablo II takes place soon after the end of the original Diablo. At the end of Diablo, Diablo, the Lord of Terror, was defeated. The hero then takes Diablo's soulstone (a device that is used to bind the soul of any demon or angel) and puts it into his own body, hoping to contain his soul for all eternity. However, the hero is rapidly corrupted by Diablo and quickly begins to lose control. In the opening scene of Diablo II, Marius, the narrator of the story, witnesses the hero (known as the Dark Wanderer) totally lose control, unleashing the demons of hell upon a tavern. He is compelled to follow the Wanderer for reasons he himself does not understand. The player plays a character in the wake of the destruction, following the Dark Wanderer, hoping to halt him, ultimately spying the Wanderer outside the city of Kurast but unable to stop him. The rest of the story is revealed through the four acts, as the player faces not just the demon lord Diablo, but two new major villains, Mephisto and Baal, Diablo's malevolent brothers. Diablo is determined to free them from their incarceration. The hero travels through different lands to thwart the forces of hell from taking over the world.
Character classes
Amazon
The Amazon is an "active skill"-oriented fighter. Her skills are oriented around personal (generally passive) protective abilities, the use of a bow and arrow (whose abilities are linked with the elements of fire and ice), as well as the spear and javelin (whose abilities are linked with the elements of lightning and poison).
The Amazon is most similar to the Rogue of Diablo: both are primarily associated with bows (and crossbows, in the case of the Amazon), and both are middle points between pure strength and pure magic. The Amazon is different in that she can also use javelins and spears adeptly.
Barbarian
The Barbarian is one of the two most powerful melee fighting characters in the orginal Diablo 2, and one of three in the expansion. He is also the only character in the original capable of the dual-wield. He is one of two such characters in Lord Of Destruction able to dual-wield weapons. In the original the Paladin is also able to perform proficiently with his melee ability. In the expansion, both the Paladin and the Assassin are capable in melee combat. Ultimately, the strength of the melee character is dependent on the items he/she has equipped.
His skills are divided into various weapon masteries, warcries, and combat skills. The masteries are purely passive and allow the Barbarian to specialize in different types of melee weapons and to gain natural speed and resistances. His warcries can either enhance his and his party's abilities in combat, or reduce the enemy's abilities. The barbarian's combat skills are attacks that maximize brute force, his greatest asset.
The barbarian is based upon the Warrior class from the original Diablo, whose role was meant to encompass a variety of melee characters, including that of the Barbarians of the northern highlands. A hidden class in the patch for Hellfire included a Barbarian class, using the Warrior's appearance with altered statistics.
Paladin
The Paladin is a warrior fighting for all that is good. To reflect this, the Paladin has combat skills ranging from fanatical attacks to anti-undead spells. Paladins can be categorized in groups based on their main combat skill, such as FoHers (Paladins using Fist of the Heavens), Hammerdins (Paladins using Blessed Hammer), or Zealots (Paladins using Zeal). They are also proficient in the use of a shield, with two key skills; Holy Shield, which increases a Paladin's defense drastically, if using a shield, and Smite, which allows the Paladin to use a shield as a weapon, stunning the opponent with a successful hit. The Paladin is the only character able to use his shield as a weapon.
The Paladin's specialty, however, lies in auras that buff himself and his party. These passive auras, which can enhance personal abilities, lower the amount of damage dealt by enemies or recover health and can add considerable complexity to the class because only one aura, except when an item grants another aura, can be active at a time. The Paladin also has access to great strength and health and, because the auras do not generally require mana to activate, is not heavily restricted by mana consumption. They are generally the most popular character, due to their high defense, magical auras, and their ability to do excessive amounts of damage.
Sorceress
The Sorceress focuses on ranged elemental spells in three areas: cold, lightning, and fire. Her cold-based spells have the benefit of chilling affected enemies (slowing them down) or freezing them (stopping them completely). Moreover, any chilled or frozen enemies may shatter instead of leaving a corpse. Furthermore, it is the only spell tree that is able to pierce enemy resistance without certain items. The downside is that cold spells generally do less damage than lightning or fire spells.
The lightning spells are well known to be able to deal horrendous damage to the point of defeating most enemies with no resistance to lightning within a few casts. The damage range of lightning spells are, however, very wide and occasionally you will find that some casts do almost no harm while some others are fatal.
Fire spells have neither have the slowing property of cold spells nor the damage capacity of lightning spells but they are the only spells that can actually stay in a screen for a prolonged period of time while damaging enemies (the hydra spell being a good example).
The strong points of the Sorceress are powerful damaging spells, ability to freeze enemies with cold spells, and mobility (teleporting), which are valuable in multiplayer games and single player games. The weak points are her relatively low hit points and defense, demanding that the player pay close attention to keep her out of the fray.
Among all the classes, it is safe to say that the Sorceress is the most dependent on mana. A Sorceress without mana is a dead one. However, she is able to regenerate mana reasonably effectively due to a fire skill 'Warmth'.
Necromancer
The necromancer is a spell-caster like the sorceress, but in a different way. Whereas the sorceress relies on elemental damage, the necromancer relies on raising an army of the dead to do his dirty work for him. He does possess direct damage in the form of poison and bone-based spells, which can be very powerful because the bone skills do "pure" (non-elemental)magic damage to which few monsters are resistant. Also, players cannot get resistances to pure magic damage, which makes bone skills very strong in PvP. One bone spell, Corpse Explosion, is used to detonate the corpse of a fallen monster doing a percentage of the monster's life in damage in a sizeable AOE. This skill stays just as powerful throughout the game because as monsters gain more life it does more damage, making it very useful. Necromancers also have curses and summons. Summoning abilities allow the necromancer to raise skeletons, a variety of golems, and even former enemies. If his minions are able to kill a monster, the necromancer will get the experience for it. Using an undead squad of allies to destroy enemies is very useful. Curses generally are used to disable enemies (making them take more damage, move slower, have lower resists, take damage on attack etc).
The necromancer is usually welcomed in multiplayer games due to their ability to summon minions to act as meat shields (to soak up damage) and to stall the monsters while other spellcasters or amazons wreak havoc from a distance. The downside to this is the increased lag often reported by other players due to an increase in the amount of information being passed between client and server as the extra minions have to be reported to each player.
Online play
In contrast with the Diablo I, Diablo II was made specifically with online gaming in mind (through Battle.net). Several spells (such as auras or battle cries) multiply their effectiveness if they are cast within a party, and dungeons, although they still exist, were largely replaced by open spaces.
Up to eight players can be in one game, they can either unite as a single party or multiple opposing parties, players are also allowed to duel each other, although all damage is reduced to 1/6th in player vs player (PvP) (with minor exceptions for effects such as thorns, which operates at the 1/10 penalty), the bounty for a successful kill in PvP is a portion of the gold and the "ear" of the defeated player (with the previous owner name and current level at the time of the kill). Experience, monsters hitpoints, and item drops are increased with each player in a game. There is also the posibility of playing with a "hardcore" character, which is basically the same but with one change: when a character dies, it cannot be resurrected. From patch 1.10 onwards, the option of playing with a ladder character was included.
Up to 22 patches have been released for Diablo II, through the patch history several exploits and issues have been addressed (such as illegal item duplication), as well as mayor revamps to the game's balance (from the infamous 1.08 patch to the much awaited 1.10 patch). The game is currently in version 1.11b. | |
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