Just to give you guys something new to eyeball today, once you get sick of playing with whatever new version of American Rock Band Guitar Idol Star Hero you’ve been inflicted with, here’s a nifty new piece of fan art by Guardian Hadriel, and a Christmas-themed jigsaw of the Rogue Encampment that we made back in 2000. Click to see it large for all the details and funny captions.  We may have a new Xmas special wallpaper as well today, since HK said he was working on something. Enjoy your visual presents!

 

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This week’s Slab subject cannot seem to use a bow properly. I must admit, though, she is a little tied up right now. Although I am discussing the Diablo 1 Rogue, her problems expand much deeper into the Diabloverse which calls for an all out dissection of archery in every Diablo game. We might even get a peek of our favorite target: a bearded someone who is fat and jolly…but with the strange initials of JW. Be sure to read to the very end and learn more about Stillman’s personal past, his Holliday Hell,  and his path to complete madness. The first paragraph is below. Click through to read the rest. 

The Rogue

No more messing around. We are talking about Diablo archery today. This is not to be confused with archeology, even though both involve broken tools and buried mysteries. Yes, archery in Diablo games has always been very problematic, beginning with the Rogue’s neglected and broken bow use. But who else is going to bring you a broken arrow? The Amazon, that’s who. Both of these famous archers have been plagued with more problems than, well, Plague Javelin (the poison trail cloud on Plague Javelin still does not do any damage, just so you know). No matter who is working on Diablo missile weapons, whether it is old Blizzard, Blizzard North, or Jay Wilson, you can be sure of one thing: our little archer characters will get neglected while melee and caster characters hog the center stage. Even though mankind has been expert at shooting pointy things at furry things for thousands of years, no one can ever seem to get it right in a video game.

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It’s gone well past midnight here in the UK so it’s now officially Christmas day. On behalf off the whole Diablo: IncGamers team I would like to wish you all a very Merry Christmas and we hope you all have a great day.

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Another Games of the Decade list has popped up, this one on GameZone.com, and since they’ve got Diablo II at #5, here’s a link. (WoW made #3.) Here’s a quote: click through to read the whole thing.

Diablo II succeeded in an area that many other genre leaders haven’t – it set the bar so high that everything else has paled in comparison. Yes, that’s right. Every hack and slash and/or dungeon crawler is still being compared to the nine-year-old Blizzard title that hasn’t fallen from the position of being the king of the mountain.

Online gaming and Battle.net pushed Diablo II above and beyond the expectations of the hack and slash genre. The advancement of multiplayer is always a welcomed feature in the gaming industry and Diablo II did just that with a cooperative experience that gamers are enjoying still even to this day. Even Blizzard has realized this and updated the title earlier this year with a new patch.

Blizzard perfected their mistakes from the original with much larger world maps to explore, less loading, and adding even more longevity to the series. The longevity was beyond anything ever seen in the genre at the time with new role-playing aspects for increased satisfaction with deeper skill trees and strategies to learn and master due to new powers. Beyond that, gamers are tempted to keep playing in order to find and collect rare items.

 

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Continuing the holiday-themed Diablo 2 fan fiction resurrection I began on Thanksgiving, here’s a repost of my humorous Christmas “Secret Santa” story. This one was originally posted in 2002, and it features the seven characters exchanging gifts with seven of their favorite demons. Good times and appropriate gifts are had by all, except perhaps for the Necromancer and Duriel, whose feud continues to simmer. Also, what’s that Dire Wolf doing to the Xmas tree?

Here’s a short quote; click the pretty yellow letters to read the whole thing in our Fan Fiction Forum.

“Rakanishu!” said Rakanishu, sounding quite pleased with himself.

“Uh huh.” the Amazon said blankly.

“Rrrrrrrakanishu!” he said again, rolling the “R” and leaping up to wave his scimitar overhead. “Rrrrr…” he began again, before Diablo clapped one massive clawed hand over the excited Fallen’s mouth. A few small Charged Bolts snaked away from him and across the room at this, but everyone just stepped over them without any worry.

Just as the Paladin opened his mouth, a high-pitched yelp came from across the room and the demons burst out laughing at the sight of one of the Druid’s wolves bristling in surprise, having been shocked awake by the errant Charged Bolt. “Rakanishu!” Rakanishu began again. “Grr rimm burr ladoo.” he added, trying to wrestle free of Diablo’s grip to wave his sword again.

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Blizzard has revealed the winners of their first annual World of Warcraft Blizzard Holiday Card Contest. The cards are presented with jpg samples and .pdf full versions, so you can download them suitable for printing and using in your real life. Though given the date, you’d better be planning to hand deliver them, at this point.

Cool contest concept and format aside, the winners are fairly meh, even aside from the “I hope you like elves” aspect of every single winner and honorable mention being Warcraft themed. Our gallery hosts dozens of pieces of Diablo fan art that would have done as well, or better, than the stuff on these cards, and since I don’t think Blizzard has some evil scheme to only promote WoW via their contests, I can only assume that no one submitted anything good with a Diablo or Starcraft design. I know I didn’t, so blame to go around, but let’s see if we can’t do better next year?

A few of the winners are thumbed below. Visit the contest page to see these and many others in downloadable format.

   

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When I first played through Diablo and Diablo II, I never read the manuals. the games still managed to give an immersion into the game, and the lore just seemed long-winded and boring. More so in Diablo I than Diablo II. Not because it was actually boring mind you, but I was a whole lot younger then, at least in terms of maturity level.

Regardless, Tyrael is one of the coolest video game characters ever made, and through interest in him, I got sucked into the rest of the lore. Let's see if the same works on you!



Something most people don't know is that Tyrael actually was in charge of destroying Sanctuary, obliterating all life on the planet, and was quite happy to oblige as well! He is the Archangel of Justice, and it was his job to direct the Heavenly Host to tear the world asunder, and getting rid of the "abominations" - the humans (or Nephalems, as they were still then).

The human (or Nephalem, whatever) named Uldyssian showed Tyrael that humans can show compassion and goodness, and in the end he changed his mind. Instead he later was the the last council member within the Angiris Council voting for definitely saving Sanctuary. After this, he has also been helping the humans more, especially in creating the Horadrim to fight the Prime Evils when they were banished from the Burning Hells by the Lesser Evils and even been in trouble with his own kind for "meddling".

After decades of hunting the Prime Evils together with the Horadrim, they finally caught Mephisto in the Khejistan jungles, and later Baal in the Aranoch desert (close to Lut Gholein, in fact). As the Horadrim had been badly hurt, and Baal had managed to shatter the Soulstone meant for his imprisonment, the powerful mage Tal Rasha offered to contain the demon within him. Tyrael had the dubious pleasure of forever sealing the demon within the mage. Diablo was found shortly thereafter, and imprisoned in Horadric catacomb of what later would become Tristram.

A few hundred years later, the Prime Evils had managed to corrupt nearby humans and Tyrael assisted the heroes in permanently destroying the Soulstones. He followed the heroes, unable to assist in the final battle against either Diablo or Baal. After the fight, he declared the Worldstone to be irreparably corrupted, and destroyed it, resulting in a massive blast. He has not been seen since; it's over 20 years ago now...



Agenda?
There has been much speculation and rumours that Tyrael in fact cares nothing of humans, and the destruction of the Worldstone is for some devious purpose. Seen from a certain light, it seems strange he first supplied Soulstones to the Horadrim, only to ask the heroes to destroy them a few hundred years later. What implications will the destruction of the Worldstone have on Sanctuary and how do we know it really was corrupted beyond salvation? Baal had not spent THAT much time in the chamber, and was the stone really so easy to corrupt?


This and more has been added to the DiabloWiki Tyrael article.


And now just before Christmas, I also want to tell everyone how much it is appreciated with the help you do in the wiki. The thousands of visitors we have every day could not access all this knowledge without you. Thank you Cogo, Masofarian, Newbie, Holyknight3000, Belushi81x, Asteria, Flux, Vipermagi, Onderduiker, Cgb and Veskin7 Bukito!

And to everyone: Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! See you in 2010. We had a fun noughties decade!

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With the Blizzard news slowdown that always comes around the holidays, today seems like a good time to revisit a topic that I wrote about last Christmas, in a rambling installment of On the Drawing Board. The issue of seasonal bonus content in online games.

In that article last year, I ran down some of the ways other online games, especially World of Warcraft, insert bonus content like new Google logos; to coincide with real world holidays. The problem, as I saw it, was that while the world of WoW is fairly light and full of humor, the world of Diablo is darker, with more gothic and horror influences. Halloween in Sanctuary would be great, but how about other holidays? Demonic Easter Bunnies? Christmas = high-stepping NPCs in Santa hats and Xmas trees, which work fine a game full of Murlocs and motorcycle-riding dwarves—but in Tristram? Light some candles and hang some wreaths on the meat wagon?

In comments to last year’s article, a few fans thought seasonal bonus content in Diablo 3 would be cool, and could be integrated smoothly. Here’s evolutionxtinct:

I honestly think if they add seasonal stuff, they will do it w/ class and style. For instance..
—Christmas - Will have a wilted tree in the Center of New Tristram, with eerly lit candles.
—Halloween - Will have eerily lit jack-o-lanterns stacked on the broken down fence.

Most fans though, were strongly against the concept. Here’s Galtrovan, quoting Kunzaito:

>> I say “No,” “No,” and “Absolutely not.”
My sentiments exactly.

That fiercely-divided opinion is why I bring this issue up again. What do you guys think? Less against it than you were 364 days ago? Or are most of you still dead set against seasonal bonus content in Diablo 3?  And if you’re against it, why? Do you dislike the idea entirely, or do you just think the WoW-inspired, Bliz Irvine D3 team would make it wacky and comical, instead of grim and Diablo-appropriate?

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It's been freezing cold in the last week or so, and perhaps this affects people's minds, because there seems to be a certain winter pessimism in terms of Diablo 3's release date. In worst case, perhaps in 2020! Something we perhaps shouldn't even joke about...

Other than that, I am still amazed by the Morlu Caster, which appeared completely by surprise - at least for me. Hopefully a precursor of more info to come!

In the meanwhile, we hope people stay long enough in the forums to get all the cold out of their fingers and start writing.


"When It's Done" - DNF puts things into perspective

• You would almost think it's Halloween with all the scares, perhaps the winter cold makes us think the worst, like reyoo, who found an interesting, and possibly quite scary article about Duke Nukem Forever...

Diablo 3 beta?

• On a more positive note, Gamekk's Diablo 3 Beta thread has been resurrected for discussing just that - The Diablo 3 Beta.

Tree skills begone discussion

• This discussion by Bandreus from a month and a day ago is still interesting, attracting discussion. Is it good or bad with no skill trees, and how else can the skills be sorted?

More Useful Mercenaries

• Since LoD they did become useful, but still a hassle, and at a price - getting stuck in places and refusing to disengage from pointless combat etc. Diablo III mercs might be a completely different thing. For one, they are not called mercs any more! Join in xxcue's thread to dissect the topic!

SoJ +50 to defense!

• Peculiarly named title really talks about "How can a ring give armour bonus of any kind?" by DiabloCalibur. Or, perhaps you just want to hear more about the puppy?

Thanks everyone for reporting on interesting threads. That's all for now, and remember to continue to send cool/fun/interesting/sad forum links to !

Oh! And Merry Christmas!

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Welcome to the next installment of The Dark Library. This week we explore an old fan fiction that was posted back in 2004 and completed in 2006 and that was called the Winds of the Kae Huron. Set after the fall of Baal at the end of the Diablo II Expansion. Winds sets a stage of what events transpired and many characters you knew in Act 5 you meet again with others. Here's a snippet of the first two chapters. Chapter 1: Last Man The scream that shook the mountains. M'avina had been inside of Malah's infirmary, at the time. She wasn't as bad off as many of the others. Many from before they had arrived, with grievous wounds they weren't expected to recover from. It had been an injury of folly that had landed M'avina here. She had been bringing up the rear of a war party with ranged support and hadn't seen the overseer clumsily climbing the rocks up towards her. It lashed its whip around her ankle and yanked her off her perch, breaking her leg and fracturing her shoulder in the fall. Now, she had to rest, and allow Malah's soothing medicines to do their work. Chapter 2: Parting Ways Malah was a very talented woman. She would always swear up and down that her subtle manipulations of magical energies were terribly inadequate, but what she did know, she knew very, very well. M'avina was admittedly not very refined in the department of healing. She knew the basics, but she had no aptitude for how a bone was so easily mended with the right herbs and wraps from Malah's store of exotic plants she bought from the traveling merchants. With the state of crisis, though, no caravans had been able to make it to the Highlands, and so Malah's supplies had begun to run dangerously dry. Hopefully, though, they would no longer be in such demand. It was only a week before M'avina was on her feet again with little more than a limp. When she tried to express how miraculous it seemed to her to Malah, though, she shrugged it off with: "Well, at my age, I've got to be good at something." Next week we will bring you more from the fan fiction community in the same conveniently posted bitesize format. If you have made fan fiction that has not yet been posted in the Diablo fan fiction forum, or just got inspired to do so, head over there and post your material, or ask questions to other fan writers regarding lore, writing style or other input. See you next week!

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