Check out these old forum posts over a decade old from Bashiok, the old diablo community manager.
We’re glad the changes in 1.13b are being well received. We don’t think we’ve hit every issue obviously, there are still quite a few, as well as feature requests, etc. that we hope to address in future patches.
But, 1.13b won’t be the final version of this patch. Work is already in progress and near completion on a 1.13c that addresses a few additional issues. This new version will require new patches to be generated and tested, but it won’t be making its way to the PTR as we don’t feel the changes warrant it.
We plan to give a one week warning before a Diablo II ladder reset, which will coincide with the release of 1.13. You’re not likely to hear any updates on release schedule before that one week warning.
I also want to impress upon everyone that 1.13 isn’t and never has been intended as a final patch for Diablo II. I realize with the long delays in getting it to PTR, and longer stretches of time inbetween patches that it seems like it’s necessary that 1.13 encompass everything because, well, there’s just no guarantee that anything will come after. Or in a timely fashion. But, there is a solid long term plan of action for future support of Diablo II. There’s obviously plenty of room for skepticism, and I can’t blame anyone for that. But even with that skepticism I hope that we can get the message across that we have no intention of stopping here.
Diablo 2 patch 1.14 will be released after the d2 patch 1.13 later this year, it should be the prepatch in Diablo lore before Diablo 3 release and should be very demonic.
“…I think it’s widely recognized that some new content for end game is a desired addition. It’s not something we could include in this patch for many reasons, but we do have plans to continue full point release patches (ie 1.14). What those could contain is still up in the air, but we have plans. Diabolical plans! MUWAHAHAHAHAHA…”
What I’m wondering what happened to these plans? What happened to the plans of adding new lore to D2 as a bridge to D3 and was any of this old info communicated to the new team?
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Sounds like it fell by the wayside. As to why, who knows.
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Wow.
Back in the day when Blizzard actually cared about their games and communities.
Now their caring is just a tag line in CS ticket responses.
Back in the days I was a Blizzard fan. Now I’m just a long-time disrespected customer.
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wiki seems to say there’s been more after 1.13 (had to edit links out)
Patch 1.14d
Patch 1.14c
Patch 1.14b
Patch 1.14a
idk anything about it tho i was long gone by that time.
Definitely interesting.
I have no recollection from this time, I had to stop playing D2 for real life stuff hehe.
I wish my return in D2R was smoother for sure.
Be very curious to follow what happened in those other patches though, and what happened to the Diabolical plans 
I’m sure a lot of it had to do with how poorly D3 development was going in the background. I Kind of miss the old community managers which gave the player base SOME sort of connection with the dev team rather than the current age of the occasional blue post and then radio silence from there on.
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Yup, the current job of customer “support” and community managers is not to support the customers anymore, it’s now to run interference for the corporation.
Legal department leaves little room for anything other than complete impotence.
Patch 1.13 was the last patch with any real changes. The patch 1.14 we ended up getting years later was just minor bug fixes, fixing a duping exploit and compatibility fixes concerning windows 10.
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1.14 was released 5 years after 1.13d so I guess it got canned, probably has something to do with Diablo 3 development.
Thanks for digging up the information mate.
So the extra patches didn’t do anything.
Still OP’s curiosity has mine piqued as well now hehe.
Would love to know what happened to the, “diabolical plans,” of the original team 
Well, i wonder whatever happened to WC3r? O,o
Im not sure exactly what patches you mean, but there was a few in the games end, that addressed things like it not working properly without setting a bunch of properties, and gl, win8-10 changes, etc. Removing cd required, You know… Not so much ‘gameplay changes’.
I would have to go diggin’. But yea.
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blizzard making a blue post and then hiding and doing nothing they said they would do what?! no way
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Well what they decided to do, in a year where Blizzard had record profits, was fire hundreds of employees including people in the community management teams. So basically most of those old community mangers we had lost their jobs. It’s the usual corporate crap. Record profits, layoff the workers that made it happen and divert the money into the pockets of the executives. As anyone that’s been around long enough to see, this company has been slowly hollowed out for a long time.
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Blizzard is a completely different company now than it was 10 years ago and the guy you’re quoting doesn’t even work there anymore. Blizz DID have an internal “Classics” team working on D2 patches. But they’re not there anymore and D2:R was outsourced to a third party. You’re gonna be in a world of hurt if you’re hanging onto stuff like this
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I interpreted the post differently. I don’t think the OP is looking for anything exactly, I thought it was more just a curiosity, at least that was how I read it.
I think NuttyMike is right though, I don’t think it was so much dropping the plans or changing plans, I think it was just these plans fell to the wayside under the crushing weight of the usual corporate crapola
The plans were obliterated, liquidated. Blizzard doesn’t care about this stuff anymore. They hired another company to do this remaster and I think that’s what they’re going to keep doing in the future.
Probably greed happened, making new content or big changes costs money and if they make changes that are liked a lot chances are less players getting into D3 which also means less money.
While the classic team might want to make nice new stuff, higher ups just want to see money.
Poor Bashiok. He lost his mind due to Kripparian (well, and arrogance)
What do you mean exactly? I don’t remember anything happening concerning those two.