Diablo 2 is in the air..

[TidusZ]

As the weather has quickly warmed up in my region, I am reminded of the many summers I've spent playing Diablo 2 day and night. Looking back I guess most major patches and ladder resets have come in the summer, plus there used to be summer vacation. Its simply the time for Diablo 2.

The 1.13 patch is due out soon. Bashiok from Blizzard was quoted April 17th as saying possibly by the end of April so its sure to be sooner rather than later, and with it may hopefully come an increase in the max resolution. I'm thinking I might rally the troops for another go when the patch is released and ladder reset.. I'm curious if there are many others who are up for D2, 10 years after release, as I am.

 

[Dumac]

I still have my old D2 chars from last summer alive...

I'm too lazy to restart on ladder when I have such good equipment off ladder

 

[JSt0rm]

is ladder hardcore only? I'm playing sacred 2 right now and it had a serious learning curve as to how to build out your guys but after a lot of reading I'm enjoying going my own way with the character builds in hardcore only of course

 

[Dorkenstein]

I wanted to get back into it but I was away too long and my Battle.net characters got deleted.

 

[Dumac]

Originally posted by: JSt0rm01
is ladder hardcore only? I'm playing sacred 2 right now and it had a serious learning curve as to how to build out your guys but after a lot of reading I'm enjoying going my own way with the character builds in hardcore only of course

No, ladder isn't hardcore only.

I can't imagine doing hardcore on battlenet...

The occasional lag has caused my death many times.

Plus its difficult not to die at least once while going through the three difficulties.

 

[hanoverphist]

i have 2 copies of d2 and lod that i bought back in the day. apparently someone stole the disks out of one set, and the other set has a cracked play disk. just tried to reinstall it about 2 weeks ago and found that crack. still have the keys for all 4 disks tho, just need to get off my butt and send in to blizz for replacement disks.

 

[Zenoth]

I will answer the call once more to defend Mount Arreat with a trusty Barbarian, my favorite class. I will give that patch a try, whatever it does, but I honestly don't know for how long I will be playing it. I have played D2 so much in my life that I have my own reasons to believe that my very body and psyche has developed both a physical and mental defensive system against it.

If I play it too much I actually become dizzy (a very similar feeling to vertigo, which I don't even have) and I feel my stomach goes upside down, which is something that never happened in the first years of play I had with that game. And no I am not exaggerating anything. I simply cannot physically endure that game as much as I did before, it went that far.

 

[TidusZ]

Hanoverphist, you can just sign up for a blizzard battle.net account, input your cdkeys on the website, and download the game to your hard drive at high speed. I pm'd you the URL. The ladder reset is sc and hardcore, I personally prefer hardcore though. I'm really hoping that they increase the resolution because while 800x600 wasn't so bad on a 17", stretched to 24" its terrible and playing in window mode is kinda meh (though that's been my preferred method for a long time). I'll probably start off with a sorc to run meph, that's what I generally do. It's nice havin ppl to play with who start paladins and barbs though cus they kick ass at the start for climbing the ladder.

 

[Udgnim]

got back into D2 for about 1 month, but stopped playing recently since I just PvM

game economy is dominated by botters and / or dupers. hardcore is a tppk away from death.

a ladder reset honestly gives botters / dupers more power since prices crashed once reset rumors started circulating

edit: I played D2 in a window with a 1680*1050 desktop resolution with minimal problems.

 

[TidusZ]

this isn't any old ladder reset, its also a 1.13 content patch, which will likely mean no bots/duping for at least a while. I agree with what you say though, tppk is pretty bad for hardcore and such, but its still very possible to get quite rich without botting or duping. I've never met anyone who could dupe either, so I don't think its very easy to do. Here's hoping that 1.13 fixes that for at least a period of time.

 

[ibex333]

Originally posted by: TidusZ
As the weather has quickly warmed up in my region, I am reminded of the many summers I've spent playing Diablo 2 day and night. Looking back I guess most major patches and ladder resets have come in the summer, plus there used to be summer vacation. Its simply the time for Diablo 2.

The 1.13 patch is due out soon. Bashiok from Blizzard was quoted April 17th as saying possibly by the end of April so its sure to be sooner rather than later, and with it may hopefully come an increase in the max resolution. I'm thinking I might rally the troops for another go when the patch is released and ladder reset.. I'm curious if there are many others who are up for D2, 10 years after release, as I am.

The problem is, there is simply no good way to play this game without bots and hacks anymore, it's been ruined beyond any redemption. I cant play the game knowing that any rune I trade for could be duped, and an item I grinded for days to drop from a boss, was easily obtained by someone who ran their bot all night.

I wish they would somehow make all bots/dupes/hacks unusable with the new patch at least for a year or so... But let's face it... NOT GONNA HAPPEN.

 

[AstroManLuca]

No way. I used to play Diablo 2 single player with the runeword mod (which lets you make ladder-only runewords in single-player) and even with all sorts of offline-only muling tools at my disposal, it was still a pain in the ass to manage my gear and grind my characters to the appropriate levels. I can only imagine how much time I'd waste muling on closed B.net. Probably more time than I'd spend actually playing the game.

 

[CottonRabbit]

Originally posted by: AstroManLuca
No way. I used to play Diablo 2 single player with the runeword mod (which lets you make ladder-only runewords in single-player) and even with all sorts of offline-only muling tools at my disposal, it was still a pain in the ass to manage my gear and grind my characters to the appropriate levels. I can only imagine how much time I'd waste muling on closed B.net. Probably more time than I'd spend actually playing the game.

That's why you have at least 2 sets of cd-keys like any serious D2 player . Leveling is a lot faster online.

 

[pontifex]

Originally posted by: hanoverphist
i have 2 copies of d2 and lod that i bought back in the day. apparently someone stole the disks out of one set, and the other set has a cracked play disk. just tried to reinstall it about 2 weeks ago and found that crack. still have the keys for all 4 disks tho, just need to get off my butt and send in to blizz for replacement disks.

if you have your serial number, i think you can go to blizzard and actually download it.
i forget how it works but i did that a little while ago.

 

[Dumac]

Originally posted by: ibex333
The problem is, there is simply no good way to play this game without bots and hacks anymore, it's been ruined beyond any redemption. I cant play the game knowing that any rune I trade for could be duped, and an item I grinded for days to drop from a boss, was easily obtained by someone who ran their bot all night.

I wish they would somehow make all bots/dupes/hacks unusable with the new patch at least for a year or so... But let's face it... NOT GONNA HAPPEN.

Eh, I don't really agree. I replayed without using any such hacks or bots, and I got to high levels and decent gear on my own. There a lots of bots, but they don't really bother you in any way.

Also, I didn't encounter much duping, but I didn't really play with many other people who I didn't know.

Originally posted by: pontifex

Originally posted by: hanoverphist
i have 2 copies of d2 and lod that i bought back in the day. apparently someone stole the disks out of one set, and the other set has a cracked play disk. just tried to reinstall it about 2 weeks ago and found that crack. still have the keys for all 4 disks tho, just need to get off my butt and send in to blizz for replacement disks.

if you have your serial number, i think you can go to blizzard and actually download it.
i forget how it works but i did that a little while ago.

This. You can make an account with blizzard, register your cd key, and then download the game from their site.

 

[Kalmah]

I pulled D2 back out when D3 was announced. Played it for about a month.. but it didn't hold my interest since I've played it so damn much in the past.
I might just continue waiting for d3.

 

[Sheik Yerbouti]

Been playing D2:LOD for a while now (again), going through the game with characters I never completed it with. I don't know why I love this game so much but I do, it's up there with Day Of Defeat for me for all time favorite game and wasting 100's of hours of my life. Actually got to be a beta tester for D2

 

[hanoverphist]

Originally posted by: TidusZ
Hanoverphist, you can just sign up for a blizzard battle.net account, input your cdkeys on the website, and download the game to your hard drive at high speed. I pm'd you the URL. The ladder reset is sc and hardcore, I personally prefer hardcore though. I'm really hoping that they increase the resolution because while 800x600 wasn't so bad on a 17", stretched to 24" its terrible and playing in window mode is kinda meh (though that's been my preferred method for a long time). I'll probably start off with a sorc to run meph, that's what I generally do. It's nice havin ppl to play with who start paladins and barbs though cus they kick ass at the start for climbing the ladder.

got it, thanks

Originally posted by: Zenoth

If I play it too much I actually become dizzy (a very similar feeling to vertigo, which I don't even have) and I feel my stomach goes upside down, which is something that never happened in the first years of play I had with that game. And no I am not exaggerating anything. I simply cannot physically endure that game as much as I did before, it went that far.

i had that feeling for a while too, i found out that in one of the patches they enabled the "perspective" mode for the video card i had at the time, which made the screen almost be 3d-ish. it was making me sick to play that way, so i turned it off. not sure if its still a problem, but it stopped the screen from making my head spin.

 

[hanoverphist]

Originally posted by: Dumac

Originally posted by: ibex333
The problem is, there is simply no good way to play this game without bots and hacks anymore, it's been ruined beyond any redemption. I cant play the game knowing that any rune I trade for could be duped, and an item I grinded for days to drop from a boss, was easily obtained by someone who ran their bot all night.

I wish they would somehow make all bots/dupes/hacks unusable with the new patch at least for a year or so... But let's face it... NOT GONNA HAPPEN.

Eh, I don't really agree. I replayed without using any such hacks or bots, and I got to high levels and decent gear on my own. There a lots of bots, but they don't really bother you in any way.

Also, I didn't encounter much duping, but I didn't really play with many other people who I didn't know.

Originally posted by: pontifex

Originally posted by: hanoverphist
i have 2 copies of d2 and lod that i bought back in the day. apparently someone stole the disks out of one set, and the other set has a cracked play disk. just tried to reinstall it about 2 weeks ago and found that crack. still have the keys for all 4 disks tho, just need to get off my butt and send in to blizz for replacement disks.

if you have your serial number, i think you can go to blizzard and actually download it.
i forget how it works but i did that a little while ago.

This. You can make an account with blizzard, register your cd key, and then download the game from their site.

in the process of doing this now. i was mainly bummed because i had my original 1.0 (or 1.01, i forget now) CD to load off of. the ones they sent to replace the last time was 1.07 and had some key things changed.

 

[zebano]

Is there actually an announced patch?? That would be exciting.

 

[SlowSpyder]

I just started playing this game again a few days ago, then stumbled on to this thread now. Lvl 10 Barbarian... fear me. I only play single player, and have lost my cinematics disc. Am I missing much playing single vs. battle.net?

 

[Zenoth]

Originally posted by: SlowSpyder
I just started playing this game again a few days ago, then stumbled on to this thread now. Lvl 10 Barbarian... fear me. I only play single player, and have lost my cinematics disc. Am I missing much playing single vs. battle.net?

Single-player can be fun if you don't mind playing alone, obviously, but single-player is definitely harder than Battle.net, not because the difficulty settings are actually different on a technical point of view, but because you're alone, simply said. If you play on Battle.net you'll inevitably play with other players, and usually (not always, but usually) you'll receive help, either in the form of rushes and/or free low or non-valuable (for trade) items which despite their low value may still help you on your quests.

If you're enjoying single-player already however I'd highly recommend to stay there and not step onto the desecrated land that is Battle.net (not because Battle.net itself is bad, but because of the hostile, immature players around which you will certainly meet more than once and very regularly so, which in turn always contribute to degrade the image of an otherwise superb, almost perfect game and community).

 

[TidusZ]

Imo Diablo 2 is a multiplayer game, period. Singleplayer is fine to get your fix if your internet goes out for the weekend or something, but the real fun and not to mention the meat and potatoes of the game is in the multiplayer. Yes there are immature player, and tppkers, and botters, etc. It's still infinitely better than singleplayer.

 

[Dumac]

Originally posted by: SlowSpyder
I just started playing this game again a few days ago, then stumbled on to this thread now. Lvl 10 Barbarian... fear me. I only play single player, and have lost my cinematics disc. Am I missing much playing single vs. battle.net?

You might as well play on battlenet. There is absolutely no reason not to, unless you have internet issues. Even on battlenet you can create a game for only yourself, so it's basically single player on line with the option of multiplayer if you so wish.

 

[zebano]

yes hardcore on bnet is the only way to go. Nothing beats the thrill of surviving a LE boss or pk.