Letter to the Developer

[Yavanna]

Dear Sirs:

I am writing this letter concerning your computer game, Diablo II, and its expansion, Lord of Destruction. Seen objectively as a fantasy roleplaying game, which is no doubt how you see it, the game is quite good. But you seem to have forgotten that to the people of Kehjistan, this is their sacred history you're playing with. This is akin to making a game about the Civil War that has a single Union soldier go out and defeat the entire Confederate army single-handedly. Even if that single soldier is General Grant, the concept is ridiculous.

The entire true history of the Second Sin War is too long to recite in a letter, so please find enclosed a copy of Hell on Earth: The History of the Sin Wars, vol. II. (The first volume encompasses a period only briefly mentioned in your game). The playable characters and the places in which they fought show varying amounts of inaccuracy as well (though I must compliment your extremely accurate depiction of the Kurast dockside of the period - would that you had applied so much research and effort throughout).

First of all, Necromancers were not mostly skeletal practitioners of nearly demonic magics. The bulk of necromancers, then as now, were primarily healers and only secondarily fighters of any kind, and they looked much the same as everybody. They were capable of restoring a fresh corpse to life (full life, not undead slavery), which I think would have been a phenomenally useful skill to have in your game, but very few of them would have been so foolhardy as to try to reanimate and force into service the corpse of an enemy - for one thing, it carried an automatic death sentence from the rest of their order.

Necromancers that did summon creatures into combat relied much more heavily on golems than on skeletons (there was no taboo against raising a skeleton, because the soul of its owner wasn't chained along with it; it was merely animated with a weak pseudospirit). No necromancer in history could possibly have maintained control over as many skeletons as may be allowed in your game - the record is ten footsoldiers plus five mages at a time. They could, however, maintain control of multiple golems of a type, or multiple types of golems, at once - up to four in whatever combination - which is not allowed in the game.

A necromancer's control over poison as a weapon is not nearly so great as you make it out to be, although poison daggers were a favorite weapon of those who engaged in combat. People will name their children after the first necromancer who can make a corpse explode into a cloud of poison gas (not really, but hopefully you get the point). Necromancers are, however, immune to most types of poison. If any of you ever travel to Kehjistan, always find out what a person does for a living before you get into a drinking contest with them. If he or she is a necromancer, there's no hope for you; alcohol is one of the poisons they're immune to.

All the cursing power you attribute to necromancers is quite cool in the context of a game, but only half of those curses actually exist: Amplify Damage, Dim Vision, Iron Maiden, Life Tap, and Decrepify. The rest are nothing more than imagination. And Iron Maiden was never actually called Iron Maiden; there was no such thing here then. It's more correctly called the Curse of the Avenger.

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[Disco-neck Ted]

Nice to see something from you again, Yavanna.

Interesting approach, the contrast between the "real" world of Sanctuary and the game. Good reading. I hope there is much more.

[Yavanna]

Of course there will be. I've only had a chance to complain about one character yet, and then there are the locations, the demons, the storyline...

[RevenantsKnight]

Heh...excellent. You really got the tone of this down, and this alternate view of Necromancers is enjoyably imaginative yet quite plausible-sounding to me. I'm definitely planning on reading whatever comes next. A few overly pompous and harsh comments:

Originally Posted by Yavanna

But you seem to have forgotten that to the people of Kehjistan, this is their sacred history you're playing with.

The last clause sounds a little awkward to me; I'd suggest something like "...you're playing with a sacred piece of their (our?) history (heritage?)."

Originally Posted by Yavanna

This is akin to making a game about the Civil War that has a single Union soldier go out and defeat the entire Confederate army single-handedly.

Though I suspect most people will get this, you may want to clarify that as the "American Civil War" since not everyone on the forum necessarily assumes that if he or she hears "Civil War."

Originally Posted by Yavanna

The entire true history of the Second Sin War is too long to recite in a letter, so please find enclosed a copy of Hell on Earth: The History of the Sin Wars, vol. II.

"Please find enclosed" sounded a little awkward to me; I'd revise this to "please refer to the enclosed copy of..." or simply "...so enclosed is a copy..."

So what's next? Barbarians who break for teatime and poetry readings? Druids who actually use Firestorm? The truth about magic find? I'm looking forward to more, and thanks for posting!

[Snowglare]

Nice post, though I feel it tapered off a ways in. The problem, or what I perceive to be a problem, can be traced back to the third paragraph, or perhaps the fourth, where the focus shifts from the game in general to spotlighting necromancers. Definitely the fourth. The third paragraph meshes well with the first two, as you speak of things that I can imagine happening in a reality similar to our own.

With the fourth paragraph, you begin to use numbers and lists ("ten foot soldiers plus five mages," "alcohol is one of the poisons they're immune to"). It starts to sound more like a creative fan's suggestion for gameplay changes than a fictional letter. I do hope you'll write more, though I would prefer it to read more like your first three paragraphs than your last three.

[Yavanna]

I came in with the next installment mostly ready in my head, but then I read the reviews...must refocus now...rrrr.

Assassins were next. Maybe more Wednesday.