Now that is a post =) Finishing Diablo II on Normal difficulty is nothing. Really nothing. No fun. Fun starts at Nightmare when you character build begin to shape. Fast killings, difficult and variable monsters, great items especially the Exceptional Uniques. And Hell is another beast. It is when you start to really play Diablo II. Now where is my Level 96 Javazon? =)

When I first played it (a pirate copy) back when it was released, I played a paladin and found the game pretty hard and didn't quite fall in love with it, though I didn't hate it either.

A few years ago I bought a gold edition copy and played through with the Assassin and using /players8 (or something like it), a command that would set the difficulty the same as if there were 8 players playing together.

I found it rather fun and challenging without being frustrated.

The problem is that the paladin IS a support class in many aspects.

i hated the hammerdins people wanted that class to be nerfed for a reason.

The builds i loved and played the most were

orb/lightning high mf sorc

duel wielding - whirlwind barb

machine gun amazon .

finishing the game in normal requires no special build or skills the fun begins in nightmare or hell

To be fair: two if not all three of these examples are actually of a character being beaten into submission by an external force, without the gradual descent into unethical behavior being driven by a character flaw.

Also - The rogue from Diablo 1 is Blood Raven in Diablo 2 Act1, and the Sorcerer from D1 is The Summoner in D2 Act2.

I found the beauty of Diablo 2 was in closed b.net games. Single player it was incredibly boring after patch 1.10 hit. There were literally builds that were crippled in parts of the game without being in a party, such as melee in the chaos sanctuary being surrounded by 20 death knights all hitting you with Iron Maiden as you're in the middle of Zeal or WW - before you can stop you're dead, taking whatever the return damage was

Diablo 1, I have never beaten. I'm going to attempt to play through it if I can get it to behave with Win 7, now that I downgraded from 8 where it is very difficult to get to run properly.

Diablo 3? I had a little bit of fun with it, eh maybe it was my surroundings not being in a good place at the time, or having a nervous breakdown right when the game came out, but I don't have much love for it. The way loot is designed hinges on a few select 12 hour a day farmers loading the auction house with loot that everyone else buys for gold or $$ - that is NOT my idea of fun.

This is just my opinion and what I feel is going on with each game. Take it with a grain of salt ;)
~Cym

Doesn't change the fact that they're recycling the same plot device. The gradient of willingness of the "victim" may vary, but the general approach is the same.

They're also really nasty about killing off player characters.

Warcraft 1 - it's canon that the human campaign ended in failure (every mission up to the "killing" of Medivh is canon; presumably a later mission was failed) so the player character is presumed dead, the orc campaign's player character is identified as Ogrim Doomhammer, who dies in the intervening period of Warcraft 2 and 3.

Starcraft 1 - the terran magistrate, zerg cerebrate, and protoss executor are all confirmed dead by word of god. The UED commander died at the end of the Zerg campaign.

Diablo 1 - Warrior was possessed by Diablo, rogue became Blood Raven, sorcerer became insane Summoner

Diablo 2 - heavily implied that every one of the heroes from this game died in the intervening years.

Warcraft 2, Warcraft 3, and Starcraft 2 don't give the player an in-universe avatar.

And the source to this is....? According to the Diablo lore as told by the Book of Cain (the latest I've read), there is only one Diablo 1 hero that became the Wanderer and brought the Diablo essence through Sanctuary to meet his two brothers Mephisto and Baal. No specific class defined for that hero btw.

Lore-wise they aren't the characters from D1, but it is correct that they are put in D2 as homages to the original three classes.

Indeed, it doesn't. Some parallels can be drawn between their universes. Is that bad ?

Blood Raven:

http://diablo.wikia.com/wiki/Blood_Raven


The Summoner :

http://diablo.wikia.com/wiki/The_Summoner




This was confirmed at Blizzcon 2011.

Blizzard themselves. The rogue became Blood Raven that appears in Diablo 2. The warrior that you play in Diablo 1 is Aidan, one of Leoric's sons. He takes Diablo's heart into his head and in turn becomes Diablo himself. The sorcerer became the Summoner that appears in Diablo 2.

About Diablo 2 heroes... I don't remember this well, but I think the Necromancer went on to open the Necromancy school and way of teaching. The Assassin from Diablo 2 is actually Natalya that partly appears in the docks during the third act of D2, and in D3, you can find her set / items, so it is safe to say that she died some time between D2 and D3.

Not sure about the rest of the D2 heroes, I have not read the Book of Cain.

grats. I'm on act 5 (Hell) and haven't looked at this in a while, but its still on my list to finish. I lost my coop partner and am stuck with a necromancer, which makes getting minions solo a touch tough on this level of difficulty.

I should finish... iirc I may be on the last waypoint.

*Diablo's Soulstone