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Diablo II Review
Sunday, August 20, 2000
Multiplayer
Diablo
II is supported by Blizzard's own Battle.net, the free online
gaming service exclusively for their games.
Since Diablo II was released, there have been many server problems
and a lot of downtime with Battle.net, leaving many customers
angered. Blizzard has upgraded the servers since, and is
continually working to improve them. They didn't expect to be
hammered with as many connections as they had, which explains the
problems.
When you can connect, however, Battle.net is simply awesome. You
can create a regular or Hardcore character; a Hardcore character,
once he dies, is dead forever.
Instead of storing your Battle.net characters on your computer as
with the original game, Blizzard now stores your characters
directly on their servers, meaning you can't hack them. This was a
major concern, and has been remedied. No longer will there be
level 500 hackers running around, killing people in one hit.
This brings up another issue: player killing. It is much harder to
"PK"
someone now; you must be in town to activate your PK switch, at
which time it broadcasts to everyone in the game that you are now
hostile towards a certain person. It has taken some of the
"rush" out of player-killing, but on the same token, it
has made adventuring much safer for your average player.
Diablo II also supports TCP/IP, where you and up to eight friends
can
connect to a single computer and play together, either using your
single-player character, or a new one. TCP/IP characters are
stored on their user's hard drives, so make sure your friends
aren't hacking;)
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