A: The game is coming along nicely and the team is working away on the third act with some others already working on the finale. We just finalized the script and the last day of casting for the voice-overs, which we have already done some recording on. So from a context standpoint we are right where we want to be. And then of course we have the huge new Battle.net components we are working on, so it's a pretty massive project, but so far it looks like everyone is hammering away and things are falling into place.

Always good to hear that they are getting things done quickly and on time.  Already on the Finale with most of the Act III done, and the voice-overs essentially complete.  This will mean that we are definitely moving close to a beta test to test the new Battle.net structure and the multiplayer aspects of the game.

Q: What are some of the new Battle.net components going to be?

A: One of the biggest things that we are doing [is] to address the cheating issue, which we felt was one of the biggest things we wanted to take care of from the first game. We are going to a client server model. That is a major shift in how much of an increased involvement we want Battle.net to have in games that players are in. We are also doing a lot of things to service our community. Things like setting up the ability for players to have Guild Halls, which are ways for players in the game to have areas that they specifically own.

We know about Guild Halls, but a Battle.net that is more centrally located is good thing.  This relates back to the Client-Server model Diablo II will follow, giving Battle.net a larger role in the scheme of the game instead of just being a "matchmaking" service.

An example of how that works is that players can pool gold with one character who is their Guild Master. There will be an NPC in the game who they can buy a deed from. How that works is that character goes in and then he is able to set what the name of the guild is and who the members of the guild are. He can edit the names on the list at anytime. He can also then choose from a preset number of colours and patterns, making a chevron or a placard that identifies the guild. Also, a three letter acronym for the guild.

If we were on the BloodHawk Clan for example, you could go in and type in "BloodHawk" for the name of the clan, you could put all of the character names. You could choose red and black for your colors and then use "BHK." That would be the three letter demarcation to identify our clan. Then whenever we were in a chat room on Battle.net for instance, when our names come up in the chat area we would have this Black and Red Chevron and people would be able to identify our clan. We could also start-up a game type called a "Clan Hall" that you would select from a template. Then you would type in "BloodHawk" as the name of the game. Then it would check your name to see if you were on that list. Because we have unique user IDs each players' name actually acts as a password. Battle.net checks that and recognizes you are in your Guild Hall. If no one is in the Guild Hall right then, it starts up the specific game type. If someone is already in the Guild Hall, it checks and puts you into the game your clansman is in.

Ah, an explanation and example of how Guild Halls will fuction.  This is something we have been wating on for a good while now.  The handing out of Guild plaques and colors to identify members is great, and so is the Clan Hall game type scheme.  No mention of how many players will be allowed in the Guild Hall, though, as well as no mention to as how big it might be.

Now there is a place where you can interact, by trading items back and forth in character. It is also the only place right now that we have designed to have multiplayer game settings where characters can store items. Let's say I am playing a Paladin, and I find the Spear of the Heavens, and it's an Amazon-specific item. Only Amazons can use it or it has some extra special powers if you are an Amazon. As opposed to my character selling it, I can leave it for another member of my clan in my Guild Hall. I can email her and say "before you go on and play, I left something for you in the Guild Hall in my treasure chest."

Q: Diablo really took off as a multiplayer game for Blizzard. This time around did you find yourselves concentrating on the development of the multiplayer game as opposed to the single player game?

A: I don't know if it was more...I think that what it really was is that there were some problems with the multiplayer game in the first Diablo and we wanted to make sure we didn't run into them again. Things like cheating. Another good example would be that in the first game we didn't do a good job of laying out the quests so they worked well in multiplayer. So what ended up happening I think was we only had two or three quests in the multiplayer experience.

All the quests in Diablo II you can play through in single player are available in multiplayer. So you can go through and play the entire game and have the same experience with a group of people as you can just by yourself. We expect to have a lot of people go through and complete the storyline with multiple players in their parties. What we are trying to do is haze that line between single player and multiplayer. There definitely will be things that you will only get in multiplayer--like Guild Halls and things like that--which are added benefits and are added support in the multiplayer setting. But I think there's less of that demarcation between how the single player game plays and the mutliplayer game plays. I think from that aspect we have looked at how we could enhance the multiplayer gaming experience for our customers and give them the richest possible experience.

Blurring the line between multi and single player has always been a point of debate among gamers.  Recently we have seen a rash of "multiplayer only" games like Quake III: Arena, EverQuest, and Unreal Tournament where the single player aspect was reduced to next to nothing.  And now Blizzard is blurring the line by bringing quests to multiplayer, and also many new additions to Battle.net that makes the multiplayer mode seem much more attractive.

A: I don't even know how many servers we have up. I know we are going to be adding quite a few servers. Paul Samm's our VP of business development, and he is travelling around Europe trying to finalize some plans to get some more European servers in place. We are adding a lot, because I know we have purchased a lot of servers.

One of the biggest things we are doing in that process right now with how Battle.net will work with Diablo II is to try and find ways to get our package stream even smaller. One of things we have run into in the past is that at times we have run into problems not with the servers, but with how the pipelines run off of the countries. For instance, we had a server in Australia that we were having problems with and we couldn't figure out what the problem was. We figured out that there are a tremendous amount of Internet users in Australia and they were just choking their pipeline off of their continent. We were getting these weird reports, where in StarCraft people's matches were not matching up correctly. People were telling us that they played four matches the day before and they won them all. But their record was showing that they had only won two. So we started doing some tests and we found that there was such an increase in Internet users that their actual physical Internet pipeline off of their continent was really jammed up and it was taking a lot longer for things to come off.

They would connect to a local server and they would play a game and they would win, and then it would start trying to distribute that data across our server base. Then they would log off to take a phone call and log back on after 10 to 15 minutes, but this time they wouldn't get onto an Australian server, they would be logging on a US server, and they would play a game. It would log their game and distribute it immediately and then five minutes later the Australian game would show up. Then it would look at the time stamp and say it was 45 minutes old. I must already have this information. So we had to fix that and in some instances we had to remove a couple of servers. We just couldn't get the information through and out of Australia. We have also been work on ways to address that type of a problem--how to either distribute that data or encapsulate the data where it is, so we don't have to worry about the delays in messaging.

Another good thing to hear, the Battle.net service is often a volatile affair, threatening to trash your game on the bad days.  We must all remember that this is a free service, though, which Blizzard runs out of a sense of altruism and for the chance to give everyone a chance to experience multiplayer action.  Even as a free service, Battle.net has done well for itself financially, but we must all remember that when Blizzard began the service it expected to take the loss.

Q: Are you going to concentrate on distributing servers internationally this time around?

A: I think we are trying to concentrate on both, the US and Internationally. Part of the issue is that we feel we are finding some good solutions for being able to make sure that information about players' characters is kept secret. The difference between the StarCraft example I just gave and what we are doing with Diablo II: Diablo II is a different type of game and it is not as vital to have a constant up to date win/loss record. So it is okay if we have a little more of a delay reporting, if somebody knows what your character name is they can send you a message and stuff, because the gameplay doesn't lend itself to a game being played every 15-minutes and updating a win/loss record. So if it takes 15-minutes for the fact that you went from level five to level six to be known around the world, that isn't as potentially disruptive to your Internet gaming experience as it is in a game like StarCraft and whether your win/loss record was affected or not. That could potentially cause problems with your worldwide ranking. Yes, we are definitely looking to have a lot more servers everywhere including here in the United States and Internationally.

Q: I understand this time around you are going to be adding more unique weapons with unique artwork. How many weapons will there be and can you give us an idea on how the weapons system work?

A: I think the answer is going to be "as many they can get done, before the game ships." There is already a lot of flaming weapons, which are unique. The Sorceress has a spell where she can temporarily make flaming weapons. The list keeps changing on a daily basis as [the designers] come up with new ones. The nice thing is that they have a script system built. The limitations are how many they can designand how many they can draw, because the one thing we want is that when you have those unique items, they have an individual unique look on your character. Diablo II has a character component system which means when your character is wielding an two-handed sword that has red glowing runes on it, that is what the weapon looks like when your character is holding it in the game. So players can have that sense that they have that powerful item and have bragging rights. People will come up to you and ask you where you got it and you can tell them your story.

There's also another thing that is very cool that follows along these lines is that some weapons have a "Socketable" ability. There are places on the items--"sockets"--where players can put items inside other items, specifically gems. You will be able to buy gems that have magical properties. Using these gems will enhance the weapon or the items you use them on. So if you find a lightning diamond and you put that onto a sword, that will add additional lightning damage to a sword. Your character will have the ability to create and customize their own magic items. So if you know you are going to go into an area where the monsters are very susceptible to lightning. You can buy gems to make your own special unique weapons.

A: I can give you the new realms that they are in. We have a lot of things dealing with poison now. We have a lot of things dealing with speed. We are able to do it in a much broader sense now. We not only have armor, necklaces and rings and one or two handed shields, but there are also belts and boots now as well. So we can do a lot of things like Boots of Haste and adding more specific properties. Before we had a King's Sword of Haste that increased the speed with which you could attack or recover from an attack. So we had to find different suffixes to increase your character's movement. We also added endurance now. Because characters run, we have boots that can give your character endurance. We are targeting different characteristics like a Belt of Demon Strength or Belt of the Heavens which might give you more intelligence.

I don't have the big master list in front of me. We are trying to be more specific this time and where things are laid out.

A: The list of items is currently about 10 pages, depending on what font size I print it out at.

A: We are going to have about 20 to 25 minutes of cinematics. The way they are laid out is that before every act there is a cinematic setting up what is going to happen and tell what has come before. It tells it from a very different viewpoint than what your character is experiencing in the game. So we are trying to round-out the telling of the story of what you are going through by giving you a different perspective.

Each cinematic runs about four to five minutes. There's one for the introduction, then there is one between acts one and two, one between acts two and three, one between act three and the finale and then a closing or a victory cinematic. So five cinematic sequences total, and our goal at the end--when you have completed the game--you can then go back and with the addition of a couple of other little segments you can watch a 24 minute movie. The cinematics can be played together and viewed as an overall story. The cinematics team is just like everyone else in the development process--They are never happy just doing the same thing again. The cinematic work just keeps getting better and better every project. The face animations are really unbelievable and are pretty amazing. I am always constantly impressed by how good of a job the cinematics team does.

A: As huge as we are trying to make the world, adding a lot of hardcore story elements and adding a lot of multiplayer support and putting in these fantastic cinematics and adding support for 3D cards and all of the, I don't want people to lose sight of the fact that we are doing everything we can to make the game as fun as possible.

We have been playing Diablo II around the office, and we are well past the point where we feel we are playing a new build that we are testing. It is more like "What cool new thing is in, what new spell do we have working?" People don't like losing their characters. There is already that kind of desire to continue to play the game for hours and hours and hours in there now. If something happens and we have to wipe characters and start over on a build, everybody is upset not because something is wrong, but because they cannot use their characters anymore.

I really think that amidst the huge changes in technology we are all seeing in projects across the board as an industry, the one thing that we hope we all never lose sight of as developers is that the game is fun. When you put Diablo II in, through all the new cool whizz bang stuff that we are doing, our goal has been from the beginning to make the game fun. It is kind of a nebulous term--everybody knows what having fun is. But I think a lot of times that concept is something that falls through the cracks, and hopefully we are not letting that happen.

Not much can be said here, Bill Roper states the Blizzard philosophy plain and simple, games are supposed to be fun.

Q: You just mentioned that the new Diablo II world was huge. Would you then consider then maybe in a subsequent edition of Diablo something like what Asheron's Call and Ultima Online have done, a persistent Diablo II universe?

A: Obviously that would have to be an entirely new project. That is a much more different thing that we are doing with Diablo II. The vast majority of us are EverQuest fans. We have felt for a long time that a persistent online world would just be the most amazing, challenging, fun and rewarding thing we could create. It is something that takes a lot of work. You have to put a lot of time, effort and resources in maintaining it, in a way that keeps people exciting about playing it for a long time. Because that is what you are trying to build when you make that persistent online world.

Certainly it is nothing that could be ever by done to Diablo II, to make it that way when the game ships. In the future past that, who knows? I don't think really we are at the place where the Diablo II team is focused on getting anything much more than getting Diablo II done and under people's Christmas trees.

A little forecasting on our moderators part, hinting at the success of such games as Ultima Online and EverQuest.  No, Diablo II won´t be an online world, but Roper does leave open the door to speculation on a future Diablo-based title.  It wouldn´t be unlike them to try their hand at it, and with Blizzard´s excellent track record I think I can imagine the result.

A: It's so tough, because every time we get a new build, everyone likes different characters. My favorite character right now is the Barbarian. He has the most skills that are coming online. Every time we get a new build he gets two new special attacks.

I think when all is said and done, I think I am going to like the Necromancer the most because he is a very subtle character class and almost all of his skills and spells deal with having to use something as a reagent. He does have a few spells like summoning the undead, which is just like summoning a skeleton. But a lot of his things are like animating corpses or creating Golems out of other things. Like turning monsters against themselves or using curses. A great combination is to create a Golem that then goes out and fights for you and then you curse the monsters that he is about to go and fight making them weaker so they do less damage. So your Golem has an easier time defeating them. The entire time you are being the Puppetmaster, running everything. It is very challenging and it is a lot of fun to play that way and is very different than getting the Barbarian and picking up an axe or a club and going out and beating the garbage out of the demons. Each of the character classes has their own subtleties that I think you are going to see people exploit.

Bill Roper, a Necromancer fan.  He does have a point many of that character´s detractors lose sight of, the value of playing the character.  Too many people are lost in the rut of disagreeing with his look that they don´t even think about his gameplay value. 

Q: Will there be a public Beta for Diablo II and when will it take place?

A: We are still looking at hopefully conducting a Beta test in mid to late August beta test on Battle.net, but that could change. More than likely we will run it as we have run all of our Betas to this point: ee will pick randomly from the people who have signed up. We have a group of Beta-testers that we have gathered over the years. They are rabid when they play, they play a lot and they give us a lot of great feedback. So we keep inviting them back to our Betas. Then of course we try to include as many journalists as possible to the Betas because it gives them a really nice way to see where the game is at from a multiplayer stand point as well as give them some real world players who are playing the game and experiencing the same things they are. So it usually turns out to be around 1,000 to 1,500 people who take part in the Beta test.

Q: When will the game be released?

A: Sometime this year. I am hoping it is earlier this year than later this year. It is dangerous to put a time on when the game will be completed for sure. We still have to complete the Finale area. There are some balancing issues and multiplayer work to be done. We have tons to polish and a lot of the quests to be done. Then adding more content. A lot of the Battle.net stuff still needs to be done. Simulations only tell you so much. We can simulate 50,000 users playing. But until you get 1,000 to 1,500 people online playing from all around the world. You don't know where you stand.

More sly dodging on Mr. Roper´s part, trying to avoid getting trapped up in a fiasco.  Still, despite all that must be done, the game is near completion, and the release date draws ever closer.  Thanks for reading our analysis. and we hope you enjoyed it.