Before there was World of Warcraft, Diablo 2 was the rpg people played with the Blizzard logo. Although Diablo 2 had singleplayer and no monthly fee, its generally considered that the game was a miniature mmorpg. Up to 8 players could party up and tackle quests and unique challenges in their own public or private game, trade magical or set armor or weapons, and duel one another in tense, often very quick pvp battles. This game is known for its addictive qualities. Players would dungeon crawl the same areas hour after hour just to find "phat lewt" and gain experience so they could spend skill points on cool, powerful new spells and masteries. The amount of special, named items in this game was truely spectacular; they even outnumber the amount of magic, rare, and epic weapons and armor in WoW. People would even sell their godly finds from hell mode baal runs on ebay and make money to pay off their bills or credit card accounts, giving up their job and everything to become virtual, self-sustained merchants. Diablo 2 simply hooked people, whether they were 8 years old or 50 years old. However, with this much attention, the community started to tear down the magical atmosphere of this multiplayer rpg. Hackers, looking for quick ways to get first place on the ladder, forged fake accounts with insane stats and fake equips. Almost corporate companies took over the D2 market and passed out godly armor sets to ordinary people for measily amounts of cash. Soon, everyone was wearing the tal rasha or immortal kings sets, which were designed to be very rare drops by blizzard. In search of faster ways to level up alts, people invented the repetitive, exploit-like concept of baal runs, which left the rest of the game completely ignored since people would gain a level every 10 minutes from standing on at the side of a room doing nothing. Leveling up a character in Diablo 2 turned from a wonderful, fun filled adventure into a boring, predictable task. Unfortunately, WoW is following the same route, as "worldofwarcraftlegit" sites and ebay users are popping up all over the web selling unique bind on equips, gold, and lvl 60 accounts to ordinary men and women for cheap prices. So is World of Warcraft following in the footsteps of Diablo 2's legacy? Yes, for the better and the worst. World of Warcraft is still a better, more popular game to play today, but if you don't want to ditch 15 dollars a month to play a video game and if you don't like guild wars for its lack of attention to customization and leveling up, then Diablo 2 is still a decent alternative. Many people still play D2 today, both ladder and non ladder, and the characters seem much more balanced in Diablo 2 than world of warcraft atm. D2 is a classic, and even those who aren't getting bored of WoW who never played Diablo should give the game a whirl, even if it is just to better understand the heritage of role playing games.
(Note: This review is based on the game when the Lord of Destruction expansion pack is installed, hence I'll be basing the game when elements introduced in the expansion are implemented into the gameplay i.e. class-speci... Read Full Review
The original Diablo made a sensation, winning praise among the critics and gamers alike. This second game in the installment is just as great. It sticks to the same old formula of its predecessor, while building up on th... Read Full Review
