Swedish Diablo II Translation

Prelude: "Including with some other people they are a small group of chosen ones, game designers who have succeeded in capturing the players hearts. It seems like they can't make any mistakes and they have produced hit game after hit game, which have been celebrated by reviewers and loved by the gamers. Their latest project, Diablo II is under full developement and we traveled over to the USA to visit them. Follow us on a tour at Blizzard Entertaiment."

Irvine, Los Angeles, I'm sitting in a dark room, in an office of steal and black glass, and on the other side of the gigantic treedesk, sits Bill Roper, the mainhead and syringe of ideas of Blizzard Entertaiment, and father of the modern classics, Warcraft: Orcs and Humans, Warcraft2: Tides of Darkness and not least, Diablo and Starcraft. The games mentioned above have been hits in many countries, of reasons most of the gamehouses don't understand: a good game of the type Blizzard makes, always begins with a story that engages the player and which seems belivable to the player in the frame of reference which is described in the gameworld. The latest example is of course Starcraft and the expansion, Brood War.

Here we move to an optional future which has been inspired from all kind of science ficton which has been produced the past years. The Warhammer 40.000 universe and the Alien movies are probably the most obvious sources of influence, but professional analysts can for sure find more sources of influence. Not least, the folks over at Blizzard have got a wonderful imagination and creativity which you can't help noticing when walking around in the offices, located in the middle of a middleclass area, Orange County, south of Los Angeles.

Office after office is filled with Star Wars objects, Blizzard's own action figures from Warcraft and Starcraft, old rockposters, X-men stuff, boardgames, PC-games, gigantic movieposters and all kind of other stuff that can be rated as pop- and trashculture. Heaven for all healthy people in other words. An intresting detail I noticed was that every employee who has worked at Blizzard for five or more years, gets a sharp, personal sword, which is directly taken from Diablo. This sympathic tradition has resulted that there are hanging all over of sword of different employees. Also, someone has made a big rock of foarm rubber, where a sword is inserted, in a middle of a room. That's called fantasy.

While I'm sitting in the big and elegant conference room (with the text "The Batcave - No sidekicks allowed" on the door), listening to the big and talkative man opposite to me who is giving me the text of Diablo II, I realize how much Bill Roper's personal energy means for the process which is fully going on. He's babbling of ideas and you just can't understand him wrong.

When we've finished a product, we always think of what we could have done differently, and we always got a long list of things we could have want to include in the game, and things we should have thought 6 months ago. All kind of ideas lies in the background when making Diablo II. We made a list of things we did want to include, checked out for the newest techs, thought on five or six new ideas for a new game and shortly after that the Developement Team decided to make a Diablo II. Apart from that we got a lot of feedback from the players themselves after the game had been for sale a few months, with the help of Battle.Net (Blizzard's own free multiplayer service over the Internet).

Naturally Battle.Net advertising works better in USA because of the cheaper "tele bills", that's why we are working on to improve the single player mode fairly in Diablo II. This is one of the reasons I think of when Starcraft worked out so well in the Europe, becuase of the really good single player mode, says Bill Roper. For example, you can play with NPCs (Non Player Characters) who will follow you and help you in your quests. There will be much more NPCs in Diablo II than there was in original Diablo. We have not yet decieded if you will be able to have control over the NPCs or if they will independently control themsleves. We will be careful with inveting too much "micromanagement", we are not going to make it a strategy game. We will anyway work hard to get the single player mode better.

More Roleplaying

When Diablo got relased, many people got dissapointed because they thought that the game wasn't a role playing game as much as it was an action game, and that's why they thought the single player mode was weak. Blizzard has listened to the captious voices and worked much harder with the single player story this time.
-We've invented much more RPG (Role Playing Game) elements, especially to the story, and in any case, every time you get a level up, you choose on which skills and spells you want to put your points to. The drawback with the old system was that you got the feeling that it wasn't you, who controlled over your character. If you for example choose to play with the sorceress, you can choose if you want to specialize in -fire, -ice or -lightning magic and if you want to focus in one magic style or more. If you play with the amazon you can choose to specialize in bow or spear. The important thing is that it's you who choose where you will place your points.
Another important part of the game is that all the quests avaible in single player are also avaible in multi player. Characters will be able to generate quests to each other, trading will be used and other things that will make it work like an economy online. Let me give an example: you're a Necromancer who finds a Shield of Holy Defense. Then you can tell to all Paladins on Battle.Net that the first person to find and give a Command Demon-book gets the Shield of Holy Defense. That way you've generated a quest for intrested Paladins.

Another new feature that's only avaible in multi player is "clan halls". You'll be able to buy the right to make a clan/guild and the person who does this will be "clan master" and they've got the right to give a name to their "clan hall". When you login to Battle.Net you write the name of the "clan hall" and you will start there automatically. In the clan hall you can meet other clan/guild members and in the clan hall there is also a common storeroom for gold and equipement. Eventually, there will also be a possibility to vote a "clan leader".

It's not a secret that there was a lot of cheating in the Diablo multi player mode. The game was simply built in a way it was too easy to hack, and "angry fights" took place where people died with one hit and were stolen with all their equipement. No developers in the world can be completely safe from angry hackers who sometimes even has got same tools as the developers. Even this is Blizzard trying to change, they want to give their fans a better and a nicer gaming experience. For example, Battle.Net is itself partly going to decide if an action was moderate or not. If someone kills somebody with a short sword that makes 2.000.000 points damage, Battle.Net is going to reject the action. Bill Roper Explains:  We are working on many different methods to eliminate the cheating, among other things using client/server solutions, which we didn't use in Diablo. When the game is ready we will probably have 15-20 people who has been involved in this. Directly when the game is relased, thousands of hackers are going to start trying cracking the game, and that's why I don't want to express anymore of this. We are extreamly focused on stoping the cheaters. The big majority of gamers don't want to cheat, but the thing we want to affect is what affects other than your own character. This is the condition for the economy to work in the Diablo II world.

New Monsters, New Spells

It is still unclear which monsters are going to be found in the final version of Diablo II, but it's sure that two or three monsters from Diablo will be found in the sequel and now there is over 50 different monster types designed, Sand Maggots, Claw Vipers, Skeletons, Zombies etc. Even unique monsters like Andariel and Baal are going to be included as bosses in some of the four acts or areas in the game, which is about four times bigger than the original. Some of the monster are probably going to be replaced before the Relase in September.

Every one of all the five classes will have over 30 unique spells and one of the most speculated spells are the Corpse Explosion, which makes a dead body explode and make damage for all who are near the explosion, Meteor Rain, which makes meteors of ice or fire to rain over the opponent and a lot of other neat things. On the "Mana-side" Blizzard is planning a radical change. Probably a system where the "mana ball" fills itself automatically in a quite short time, will be used. Anyway, this is something that may be different in the final product. When we are talking about the "Graphic Support" Blizzard shoots with having support for Voodoo-chipset ever since the beginning and I admit that it looks really delicious with a Fireball in the middle of the night. The water in tha game will glitter and slowly floats past in rivers and brooks. One neat detail. We must wait what will happen in the future, now when it seems that Riva TNT 2 are going to "win" the Voodoo 3 cards. Anyway, the 3D-cards are going to help the CPU really much, even if the recommended system is P166 and 32Mb RAM. Anyway, this isn't something Bill Roper or other Blizzard employees want to confirm when the interview was made. Whatever happens, we can look forward to a good game and a good sequel when the game is ready.

 

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