16th
D2X 1.13
The 1.13 Patch for Diablo 2 just hit the PTR. This is sort of a big deal to me but its also frighteningly anticlimactic at this point. The patch is more than just a few little upgrades or whatever it has two other very important elements. First it is most likely the last patch Diablo 2 will ever get. It is almost certainly the last patch before Diablo 3 comes out and odds are good that at that point Blizzard will stop actively supporting Diablo 2 in the way that they have previously. Secondly, this patch release (along with most of the other major patches) will coincide with a ladder reset. For those who don’t spend all their non-videogameplaying time reading about video games the ladder is something Blizzard introduced to combat hacking. Basically, you can play Diablo 2 online or offline but certain content you can only get online and only through playing on Blizzard’s servers. However, for some totally unknown reason Blizzard sucks dick at keeping people from figuring out ways to circumvent the system even on their own servers. Seriously, the duping was rampantly out of control. The duping was so prevalent that one of the unique rings called Stone of Jordan (which was just plain a good ring for basically every possible class and build) was so heavily duped that they began to be traded as currency. High level rare items were worth so many SoJs and if you were just starting out you would hope to gather enough other tradeable items to get your first SoJ yourself and trade it for some really good item. SoJs were universally accepted as the metric by which value was measured even if you personally refused to trade in them. And Blizzard has this sort of constant overshadowing claim that they were going to nuke all the duped items on all servers causing people to become very nervous trading the really great mace they got for a few rings that could disappear at the whim of Blizz. When Blizzard finally did nuke all the dupes they actually left all the Stone of Jordans for this very reason. The item was genuinely so thoroughly duped that they felt obligated to keep the dupes around. Since then things have gotten crazier with runes being very heavily duped and some seriously crazy items being created by hacks. Blizzard’s final response to this was to create the ladder system. Basically all the the old characters continue to exist and the only way to be on the ladder is to create a new character. Then those new characters all sort of race to be the first to level 99. And any new items or runewords or quests or whatever that Blizzard adds are always for the ladder only. So if people want to see the cool new stuff they have to start again but it also moves them away from all the hacks and dupes and resultingly destroyed economy that exists outside of ladder. The long and short of this is that the ladder is actually probably a really good idea and handles things pretty well. Also, right after a ladder reset is a great time to play. First, obviously you know you will have plenty of time to accomplish whatever it is you feel like doing before another ladder reset comes. Second, the economy is generally thriving. There are just plain a lot less of any particular item around so if you happen to get one as a drop its worth a lot more than it would be at a future point. So once the ladder resets I fully plan on making a new character and playing me some old school Diablo 2. On US West if anyone was wondering.
The problem though is that Blizzard has been fucking around with this patch for ages. They announced months ago that the patch and resulting ladder reset could be ready as early as April. So 8 months later it really might be coming out soon. However, in those 8 months the Diablo 2 servers have increasingly become a ghost town. The motivation to play a game goes down when you know you are going to lose all your progress. And like me I am sure many other players decided not to start playing again now knowing they want to be on ladder but don’t want to just be getting up in level when the reset happens. So by telling the community about the possibility so soon and then taking so long to actually make it happen they effectively wrecked a portion of the game for 8 months. The original post that contained the possible April start date is gone now that its actually on PTR but they updated every month or two with various excuses for why they had other stuff they needed to work on. Now don’t get me wrong I realize Diablo 2 is not at the top of their priorities compared to other games that have came out more recently but I don’t want to hear excuses about why I can’t play the game I want to play. I want to hear they are hard at work making it as awesome as possible. I can wait a few months for a even awesomer patch but “oh hey this other game had this super major problem guys so we had to fix that. Keep waiting ok?” does not work for me. Also, one of the major technical difficulties was that they planned to increase the stash size. They said hey we are gonna make the stash bigger then whoops turns out that fucks things up somehow. So they spent a few months making it work. Cool, right? Actually nope turns out they can’t make it work. Sorry guys. I mean presumably other stuff was happening during that time but from their posting it really sounded like they spent two months realizing they can’t add this feature. I know thats totally how things go sometimes, shit doesn’t always go down the way you want it to but c’mon. This is really a situation where you just look stupid. You don’t have to tell us you screwed it all up Blizz. And if you do tell us that try not to be so matter of fact about it. Excite us. Tell us how you realized the new stash wasn’t gonna work but to make up for it you are doing something different. Anyways, after over half a year of waiting the patch is really, maybe, totally, almost, nearly imminent and I’m consequently considering being excited about it.
