Twelve Years of Diablo May 15, 2012

My first exposure to Diablo came when a copy of PC Gamer arrived in my mailbox back in Summer 2000. In the same issue where Daikatana was reviewed (and received its low score) there was another game reviewed in the exact same issue which took one of the highest scores that PC Gamer had ever handed out at the time. It was my first exposure to the game known as Diablo II. Written by Greg “The Vede” Vederman (who would later become Editor-In-Chief), instead of just a review, he detailed his entire journey to play the game. He wrote about the long nights he would be spending in the offices of Blizzard, his late night triumph over the game’s final boss, and finally he posted up a scoreboard detailing things like the total time it took him to complete the game and his total deaths along with the game’s vital statistics.

I must admit I’ve always been late to the Blizzard game. While I do own plenty of Blizzard’s games including, Starcraft, Warcraft III, and the Diablo games, their difficulty, as well as my preference at the time for action games opposed to role-playing games, made them quite difficult to get into. However, I appreciated the fantastic attention to detail that the games had, the great gameplay, and the wonderful cinematics that made the cutscenes themselves deserve their own DVD boxed set release.

Gamasutra has recently reposted the original postmortem detailing the development of Diablo II, written twelve years ago. It’s a fantastic read which serves as a time capsule for Blizzard and how much game development and technology has changed. I also recommend reading one of the funniest gaming articles I had ever read before, when Dave “Fargo” Kosak decided to stop going to work for one week and instead try camping out in a mall waiting for Diablo II to be released. Ironically enough, Kosak is now working for Blizzard, making the possiblity that he needed to repeat his mall camping adventure slim.

Well, now Diablo III is officially out and I’m sure all new memories will be made from it. Enjoy the games guys, you’ve certainly waited long enough for it.