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Diablo II: Lord of Destruction
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| Developer(s) | Blizzard North |
| Publisher(s) | NA Blizzard Entertainment Sierra Entertainment |
| Designer(s) | Peter Brevik |
| Composer(s) | Matt Uelmen |
| Series | Diablo |
| Version | 1.12 (June 17, 2008) |
| Platform(s) | Windows, Mac OS, Mac OS X |
| Release date(s) | June 29, 2001 |
| Genre(s) | Action role-playing game[1] |
| Mode(s) | Single player, multiplayer |
| Rating(s) | ELSPA: 15+ ESRB: Mature OFLC: MA15+ OFLC: M and R16+ PEGI: 16+ |
| Media | CD-ROM |
| System requirements | Mac OS G3 processor or better, System 8.1 or later, 64 MB RAM plus Virtual Memory, 650 MB drive space, 4X CD-ROM drive, 256 color display capable of 800x600, Diablo II Windows 233 MHz Pentium or better, 32 MB RAM, 650 MB drive space, 4X CD-ROM drive, DirectX compatible video card, Diablo II |
| Input methods | Keyboard, mouse |
Diablo II: Lord of Destruction (commonly abbreviated LoD) is an expansion pack for the hack and slash action role-playing game Diablo II. Unlike the original Diablo's expansion pack, Diablo: Hellfire, it is an official expansion designed by Blizzard North.
More than a standard expansion, Lord of Destruction not only added content in the form of new character classes and an additional scenario, but also dramatically revamped the gameplay of the existing Diablo II for solo and especially multiplayer.
Contents |
Lord of Destruction adds a number of new features to the core gameplay of Diablo II. These include:
There are several boss monsters in Act V.
The player fights Shenk the Overseer in the Bloody Foothills, just outside Harrogath, who is directly in charge of the siege on Harrogath. The player must also rescue Anya in order to gain a valuable scroll of increased resistances. After Anya, the player also has to find and execute Nihlathak, who is sheltered between his minions in the Halls of Vaught. Before gaining access to the Worldstone Keep, the player must defeat The Ancients, which are the three Barbarians guarding the Worldstone and allowing only the worthy to pass.
Finally, the player fights Baal in The Worldstone Chamber, after killing his pack of minions in the Throne of Destruction. Tyrael appears after Baal is dead, congratulating the player and opening a portal to Destruction's End, the conclusion of the game.
After beating Baal, the player can choose to have access to the Secret Cow Level by transmuting Wirt's leg and a town portal tome in the Horadric cube from inside the Rogue's camp. A portal opens in the camp and any player can use it to enter the Secret Cow Level; a grassy meadow filled with polearm-wielding bovines. The Cow King is the electrified Boss of this horde. When a player kills the Cow King, the player who opened the cow level becomes unable to reopen the portal to the level on that difficulty level if he was in the killing player's party at the time of death.
The Assassin relies on a mixture of martial arts skills and the ability to lay passive traps. She can also open locked chests without the use of a key.
Her Shadow Disciplines tree contains a mixture of passive bonuses (such as Claw Mastery or Weapon Block) and buffs (such as Burst of Speed or Venom), along with a few spells such as Mind Blast which stun and confuse the enemy rather than causing direct damage. She also can summon a Shadow Warrior or Shadow Master, which are useful summons that are also capable of dealing significant damage themselves.
The Traps tree provides a few direct attacks, and more importantly, a number of summonable traps. The traps are stationary devices that will attack any hostile target in range a certain number of times before breaking. Traps are either based on fire or lightning, though the Death Sentry trap can explode nearby corpses in addition to shooting bolts of lightning. The blade trap skills are essentially ranged projectiles that cause melee damage.
The Martial Arts tree consists of charge-up skills and finishing moves. Attacking with a charge-up skill increases the number of charges, up to three, then the finishing move releases the charges in a single powerful blow. The charge-up skills include attacks like Blades of Ice and Fists of Fire, which add elemental damage to the finishing blow, and also skills like Cobra Strike, which adds life and mana stealing to the finishing attack. The finishing blows are, for the most part, kicks, such as Dragon Talon, which releases a number of kicks in quick succession, and Dragon Flight, which teleports on to a target and kicks them, releasing any charges.
The Druid specialises in nature-based magic, with direct damage spells and a variety of minions. The Druid is voiced by Michael Bell.
The Elemental tree consists of the magic of earth and sky. The 'storm' spells have effects like Cyclone Armor, which protects the Druid from the elements, and Tornado, a vortex of swirling winds that moves somewhat randomly and can deal massive damage. The 'fire' spells are more earthly than the Sorceress's, with spells like Fissure and Volcano. The ultimate Elemental spells are Hurricane and Armageddon; both create a storm that follows the Druid, damaging all that come too close.
The Summoning tree governs the calling of natural allies to the Druid. While the wolves and grizzly that the Druid can summon are traditional melee summons, the other summoning spells are a bit different. Ravens do marginal damage, but can blind enemies and cannot be targeted. Ravens disappear after they have attacked a certain number of times. The Druid can summon sages that provide Paladin-like Auras, such as increasing attack or life. Druids also can summon one of three vines. These can poison enemies from below, or consume corpses to replenish the Druid's life or mana.
The Shape-Shifting tree gives the Druid the ability to become an animal himself, with gigantic bonuses to life. Druids may either become a nimble Werewolf or a large Werebear. Each form has its own special attacks, such as the Werewolf's Feral Rage, which causes the Druid to get faster and faster as he continues to attack enemies, and the Werebear's Maul, which makes the Druid swing harder and harder as he attacks. It is worth noting that all of the Druid's equipment functions as normal when shifted, if at different speeds, but the druid is virtually unable to cast spells, except for Armageddon and summoning ones.
Like its predecessor, Lord of Destruction received extremely positive reviews. It is listed at Metacritic with an average rating of 87 (with one perfect score from Computer Games Online).[2] It is described at Metacritic as an expansion that "should reinforce the staying power of an already legendary RPG." Gamespot awarded the game an 8.2 out of 10,[3] IGN administered the game an 8.8 out of 10[4] and Gamespy gave the game an 88 out of 100.[5] The game has also won an award for being in the top 50 most important games of all time according to IGN magazine for its online multiplayer.
Within the Diablo 2 community the expansion caused some controversy when Blizzard patched the original game with a patch that made Nightmare and Hell difficulties particularly harder than before; some players felt that Blizzard was effectively forcing them to upgrade to the expansion in order to find the items and gain the abilities necessary to deal with the new challenges.[6]
The expansion was released in Summer 2001 as version 1.07, the same version as the beta, but the 1.08 patch was available for download on the same day. Within a few months, 1.09 was released. This was the last patch for two years.
Patch 1.10 was released on October 28 2003. The main change was the introduction of "synergy" bonuses, whereby investing points into one skill would increase the power of a related skill. The difficulty of monsters was increased accordingly, making many previously viable builds almost useless in harder difficulty levels. Many powerful items and runewords were also added. While the most powerful runewords required many extremely rare runes, duplication of these rare runes made high-end runewords far more widely available than they would've otherwise been. Gameplay was also changed, and levelling was now done through Baal Runs rather than the 1.09 or older Cow Runs.
A new "world event" was also added to online play. When enough of the powerful (and hence, widely duped) Stone of Jordan rings had been sold back to NPCs on a server, an Uber Diablo or Diablo Clone would appear, dropping a powerful Annihilus charm upon death. It is widely believed that this event was added to remove the widely duped rings from the economy. The patch also introduced the Ladder, officially a competitive mode of Realm play that lets the player record his or her name on a list akin to the "High Score" listing in arcade video games. The Ladder is reset periodically, causing all Ladder characters to be converted to normal Non-Ladder characters. This creates a separate, initially 'dupe-free' economy on Ladder, and a fresh and equal start for all Ladder players. The latest reset took place on June 17, 2008.
The first of the ladder seasons began with the initial release of Patch 1.10 in October 28, 2003. In order to play and get your name on the ladder, you would have to create a new character from scratch and would not have the aid of any 1.09 or before characters, so everyone was dealt a clean slate. Ladder characters are not allowed to interact with non-ladder characters and vice-versa. This encouraged a lot more cooperative gameplay initially, but as items were duped and servers clogged, gameplay declined over time.
After seeing how the first season went down, Blizzard decided to perform its first ladder reset on July 7th, 2004 with a promotional contest called "When Worlds Collide," as World of Warcraft was scheduled to be released the following year. The contest began for all users that had a legitimate registered account (for recovery) for all 5 Realms, and it was a ladder race to be the first to reach level 99. The first character to reach level 99 on the ladder, regardless of being on classic or expansion, softcore or hardcore, would be awarded a prize containing a Blizzard T-Shirt, a signed copy of World of Warcraft Collector's Edition, a toy statue, and a Blizzard North CD Wallet. In addition to this, Blizzard also implemented a server-side patch about 1 month into this season which would cause users that created games too fast to see a "Realm Down" screen ; which they later called in patch 1.11 a "Temporary Restriction" in order to prevent the massive bots from clogging servers. The "Realm Down" screen could last for a few minutes to several hours, and it outraged a lot of the legitimate players that had been racing or searching for items quickly (e.g. Pindleskin Runs) on the ladder. Moreover, bots were modified to prevent seeing the "Realm Down" screen and thus were not completely gone. The "ruststorm" program was also run during this season once, and several users complained that their items had been erased unfairly. This season also introduced several new exclusive "ladder-only" runewords later after the ladder race had come to an end just before 2005.
The second reset of the ladder took place in August, 2005, just after patch 1.11 was released, and it also introduced the "Warden" anti-cheat system to Diablo 2. Unlike Season 2, Season 3 did not have a contest, and furthermore, thousands of accounts got permanently banned for using 3rd-party software from Maphacks to Bots. This did not stop bots indefinitely however, as programmers redesigned them to circumvent the "Warden" using different methods. There weren't any new "ladder-only" runewords during this season.
With patch 1.11 and the Third Ladder Season, Blizzard added a new area called Über Tristram which can only be accessed on Battle.net. Players can gain access to Über Tristram by killing designated monsters and following a series of sub quests. Inside Über Tristram enemies have extremely heightened defense, damage and resistances. Three über bosses, Pandemonium Diablo, Über Baal and Über Mephisto can be found inside Über Tristram and upon killing the last of the three Über Bosses, players receive a valuable Hellfire Torch large charm and a standard of heroes, which is an ornamental trophy and nothing more. The Über bosses provide a challenge to the high level characters that face them.
The third reset took place in June, 2006, and not much changed from Seasons 3 and 4. However, an exploit was discovered that made going to the Forgotten sands to get Baal's Eye by sending a special packet to the server. This consequently allowed non-expansion or classic characters to enter Act 5 provided they had a copy of Diablo 2: Lord of Destruction installed. This method was patched in mid-February 2007, along with a patch that would end games if anyone's ping passed a certain threshold. This prevented a common lag-based item duplication method. This generally increased the quality of gameplay, as the number of people attempting to lag the servers to execute the method greatly reduced. However, this caused many players to drop from games unexpectedly. Even after Blizzard attempted to stop duping with the server-side patch, many people have still figured out ways to dupe. Blizzard has yet to release a patch that stops duping permanently.
The fourth ladder reset took place on June 17, 2008, and patch 1.12 was integrated into Lord of Destruction. It allows the players to play without the CD if the game is "Full Installed". No other significant changes have been reported with the release of the patch at this time.
Diablo II is supported by a large modding community, even though Blizzard does not actively support Diablo II mods, the 1.10 patch softcoded many aspects of the game making modding for the game to a greater extent easier. The game does not feature any official editors, but has a plethora of unofficial editors for the text files, string tables, and maps.
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