A little known fact about D2, you can actually comb through the old files, and see guild halls, as well as PVP maps, including capture the flag, king of the hill, highlander, and free for all.
The guild hall would get continuously upgraded and expanded as members donated gold, and you can actually open and move around in the guild hall if you know how, even to this day (on D2 LoD, not D2R, obviously). You can also play on a couple of the PVP specific maps.
So when people say “This game wasn’t meant for PVP, it’s just a nice bonus.” they’re dead wrong. The entire end game would have focused on PVP modes and guilds, if the original developers were allowed to continue working on it and see their vision come to light.
And the people saying “This game is perfect, it doesn’t need changing.” are not only wrong, but praising an unfinished product, lacking a slew of features the original developers had planned.
Pretty interesting to know how grand the plans were for this incredible game. But even during Blizzard’s golden era, apparently they were too difficult to work with, and this game’s true potential was never realized.
If Vicarious Visions wants to truly bring this game to its optimal potential, they should look into both of these features.
Me, I don’t care about PVP in Diablo… It’s not really my cup of tea. I like to PVP in a more first-person setting, like in a Pyro-GX in a game of Descent or in any one of the thousands of first person shooters. But if they brought these PVP features to the game, I’m sure all of the folks who like to PVP wouldn’t mind spreading others ears somewhere else other than the Blood Moor. It wouldn’t affect my gameplay.
PVP and guilds being left out are comparable to classes or levels being left out. They’re additional features and content, not gameplay decisions made in pre alpha solely to improve the game.
Brevik had entered development on D1 thinking it would be turn based, but that changed during development, and he ended up liking it much better afterward. That’s entirely different than specific features being left out of the game in order to push it out sooner, then the entire original team leaving before they could finish the game. Those features weren’t changed for left out as a gameplay design decision, but rather, because the team’s corporate overlords didn’t allow them to actually finish the game.
Yeah man, alot of people just play D2 for the PVM. Nothing wrong with that. Nothing wrong with playing it for PVP either.
This isn’t a little known fact.
What is a fact though is someone posted a video about cut content in diablo II about a month ago and the info you posted was in that video.
Okay hipster. Everyone thinks you’re really cool for being exposed to this a month ago. Enjoy your skinny, soy, sugar free latte with no foam and a splash of ethically sourced cat’s milk.
Don’t worry about Stanner. He likes to stir up drama in the forums. Looks like he’s fresh off his recent forum vacation, and already back at it trying to earn another one it seems. The best place for him is on everyone’s ignore list.
For sure…but the level requirement always made me wonder if they had other plans for it…maybe related to the Guilds removed content Diabolical was mentioning.
A definite possibility they had additional plans for the Standard of Heros. Patch 1.11 was released August 15, 2005. Blizzard North went defunct August 1, 2005. Patch 1.11 was Blizzard North’s last contribution to the game, and was the beginning of the end for the original game. Sure there were other changes afterwards, but it was just tweaks to the game tables, major glitch/bug fixing (dual dream merc swap stack glitch for example) and keeping the game playable on modern systems.
The point that you miss is that original intent doesn’t matter when looking at the final product.
The PvP assets were removed or undeveloped for a reason, and unlike other games there aren’t even relics in-game to suggest they had wanted to flesh out the PvP aspect more.
Blizzard North effectively collapsed in early 2003, and one person stayed behind to finish and release 1.10 later that year before also leaving the company. So 1.10 is typically considered the last Blizzard North patch. The problem with 1.10 is that it was such a massive patch mostly at the discretion of a single person, that it didn’t get the level scrutiny and refinement before or after release that it should have.
Everything after 1.10, including the infamous OP ladder-only runewords (which were released server-side in mid-2004), Uber Tristram (by reusing a bunch of existing assets), etc., was done by other people.
fact are diablo 2 always have pvp in mind and also in is core gameplay
some hater try to deny pvp in diablo 2 at any cost
back them player only looking for fun and have a good time and make pvp all day long outside blood moor no need ranking or arena , pvp use to be the end gameback them
some clueless user dont understand 20 year ago he just dont have all feature pvp have today ranking arena , but he have a dam good game , something you dont have today with d3 that why you are here and oh d3 pvp what a joke
