What the mod scene may look like in D2R (not looking good)

Diablo II: Resurrected General Discussion
1

Hi! I’m the creator of Median XL, one of the “top three” mods for D2 (now maintained by community members). There has been some misinformation about mod support in D2R, but the bottom line is that it is probably not viable, partly (but not entirely) due to the removal of TCP/IP.

Diablo 2 has a single player mode, but let’s be honest, most people want to play with others. There are three ways to do so:

  • TCP/IP, either locally or using Hamachi to set up a virtual LAN and play with others over the internet. This feature has been removed from the game a few days ago.
  • Open battle.net, where you can take your single player character and create/join lobbies outside Blizzard’s servers. According to a Blizzard rep on a beta stream, there will be no open battle.net in the game.
  • Private servers. This is what people point to as the saviour of modding. After all, Median XL uses a private server, as does PD2 and PoD. The problem with private servers is that they violate the Battle.net Terms of Service.

Nowdays, D2 mods can get away with openly promoting their private servers because the game is abandonware and Blizzard has nothing to gain by shutting them down, but this was not always the case. Back in the days, private servers were a closely guarded secret due to the potential legal consequences.

Keep in mind that private servers can be used to play pirated copies of the game online, and Blizzard already served the hackers who cracked the D2R alpha a cease and desist letter. They have every reason to go after people who develop or run a private server for D2R.

There seems to be this widespread idea that Median XL, PD2 and PoD will be immune to the removal of TCP/IP because they have a private server and only the less popular mods will suffer. However, not only are none of them compatible with D2R out of the box, but there will be no private servers.

That leaves single player, and frankly not many people would be interested in a single player mod.

It is all a bit unfortunate after Blizzard hyped up the new modding possibilities in a series of Twitter posts. It is true, you can do some cool things with the game… but there is no reason to do so beyond low effort single player cheats. Alas.

110 Likes
3

Thank you for posting this and explaining things from a modders perspective, personally I don’t use mods/modded versions so it doesn’t affect me. It just shows that Blizzard wants to keep D2R as they have intended without mods.

5 Likes
4

Blizzard advertised proper mod support on Twitter a few months ago.

Then again, they advertised TCP/IP on Twitter too. I knew companies sugar coat their public statements, but straight up lying is something else. Welcome to 2021, I guess.

50 Likes
5

If that’s the case, then they need to implement some changes. The mod community has kept the game alive in the recent years and has done some really good changes that Blizzard can take inspiration from.

21 Likes
6

I don’t think it has kept the game “alive”, mods are ultimately a small percentage of the total playerbase. The thing is, Blizzard promised mod support in February and now it’s effectively gone and people are still like “[mod X] has a private server so everything will be fine”.

13 Likes
7

That “small percentage” is active, and thriving, and out-numbering the vanilla Bnet games / activity right now. You log in to PD2 at 7 PM EST, it’s thriving. You login to vanilla Bnet at 7 PM, it’s a ghost town.

22 Likes
8

Thanks for the info. Now hopefully people will see that them removing TCP/IP burned a lot of players. I don’t see them allowing private servers for D2R either. And with them removing open bnet, SP chars will always have to play alone… that sucks.

9 Likes
9

Yeah, unfortunately the remaster seems to become much worse on the last meters of its development.

16 Likes
10

They never “allowed” private servers. They only condoned them once D2 was so old that it was no longer worth the effort to shut them down. They are absolutely going after them until D2R is no longer profitable.

12 Likes
11

Yeah, that’s what I mean. So, effectively multiplayer modding is dead in D2R… oof.

8 Likes
12

Also, I read some modding discords and basically no one is porting their mod to D2R (and some openly laugh at the remaster).

Unfortunate.

11 Likes
13

I got laughed at for saying the same thing a few days ago, to expect them to not care would be a huge departure for a product in their active lineup.

Since the blizzcon video when asked about modding you could tell not everything was being said. Since then it felt like the two groups(players/blizz) had a different idea of what a mod was when talking about them and that’s why I assumed it’s mostly UI and HUD modding that will be allowed. Maybe some add-ons for showing drop chances and so forth but nothing that can add to the content itself.

1 Like
14

Nah, the majority of exploits can stay in the original. Thank you. Yep, the Jamella Editor mod ruined the game for many players in the original.

15

So, does that mean I won’t get banned if I used cheat engine on single player? I am one of the few from the original blizzard days of diablo and know how much cheaters were despised, but I still like cheating in single player games when I get bored…

1 Like
16

I remember people buying bugged items such as +1000 str on them for real money, and then destroying everyone in PvP. Why would people want this experience again? LOL.

1 Like
17

I prefer playing mods in singleplayer - no lag, no disconnects, no server crashes. So, I don’t really care about the possibility of playing a modded D2R in multiplayer.

But if the removal of TCP/IP means that modders won’t even bother porting their mods to D2R, well … then bring it back!

I really hope Blizz listens to BrotherLaz and all the other modders :frowning:

18 Likes
18

i am totally against that type of trash… all I am saying is, sometimes I get bored and would like to build some levels or need some gold and would like to put certain things to a test of some sort… but, I wouldn’t want to waste time doing it, so single player and my own tests would be of great benefit to a multiplayer character I would like to play… not use cheater hack to best opponents in pvp… my old hands couldn’t handle pvp even if I did cheat, so there would be no point…

19

Open battle.net or TCP/IP has no impact on your closed battle.net experience.

11 Likes
20

Unpopular opinion but I think D2R is better off without mods. Let the devs keep it true to the original. Already we’re seeing the games integrity being compromised with stash tabs and personalized loot drops (I just heard that but I hope it’s not true).

2 Likes
21

I suppose the only thing D2:R mods can hope for regarding multiplayer is if Blizzard is willing to host a secure connection service for mods. It would be a slap in the face to the modding community if they didn’t. Time will tell sooner or later.

The only other option would be to stick with the original game.