# Diablo II - Work: Action RPG - Date: 2000 (Windows, Mac OS); expansion 2001 - Made by: David Brevik (Project lead, designer & programmer) - Houses: Blizzard Entertainment - Platforms: Windows, Mac OS, Mac OS X - Canonical: https://www.lanternhall.org/works/diablo-ii/ > Blizzard North's 2000 sequel chased a possessed hero across deserts, jungles and Hell, and its skill trees, rune-socketed loot and Battle.net economy made it the model every action RPG would copy. **Why it matters:** Diablo II expanded its predecessor's compulsive dungeon into a sprawling five-act journey with deep character builds, layered item rarities and a persistent online economy; it set a Guinness record as the fastest-selling computer game and defined the loot-driven action RPG for two decades. ## Quick answers **When was Diablo II first released?** Diablo II was first released in 2000 (Windows, Mac OS); expansion 2001. **Who created Diablo II?** Diablo II was made by David Brevik (project lead, designer & programmer). **Who published or developed Diablo II?** Blizzard Entertainment. **What kind of work is Diablo II?** Diablo II is an action RPG in the Action RPGs & Hack-and-Slash and Western Computer RPGs (CRPG) tradition, released for Windows, Mac OS and Mac OS X. **Why is Diablo II important?** Diablo II expanded its predecessor's compulsive dungeon into a sprawling five-act journey with deep character builds, layered item rarities and a persistent online economy; it set a Guinness record as the fastest-selling computer game and defined the loot-driven action RPG for two decades. ## Overview Released on June 28, 2000, *Diablo II* took the claustrophobic single dungeon of [*Diablo*](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/diablo/) and opened it into a world. Where the first game went straight down beneath one cathedral, the sequel travels outward across the continent of Sanctuary, through the monastery fields of Khanduras, the desert city of Lut Gholein, the jungle temples of Kurast and into Hell, in pursuit of a hooded stranger. It gave players five classes with branching skill trees, an item system of staggering depth, eight-player games and a persistent online economy on Battle.net. It sold faster than any computer game before it, and its shape, kill, loot, build and trade, became the grammar of the [action RPG](https://www.lanternhall.org/atlas/action-rpg/). ## Origins [David Brevik](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/david-brevik/), Erich Schaefer and Max Schaefer, the founders of Blizzard North, led the project with a much larger team than the first game had. Development took more than three years and ended in a long crunch through 1999 to get the game out in 2000. The team kept the first game's isometric, mouse-driven combat but set out to fix what had frustrated players: short length, three thin classes, and an online service where cheaters could edit characters on their own hard drives. [Blizzard](https://www.lanternhall.org/houses/blizzard-entertainment/)'s answer to the last problem was the "closed realm," in which characters were stored on Blizzard's servers rather than players' machines, alongside "open" Battle.net games for characters kept locally. The story continues directly from the first game. The warrior who slew Diablo beneath Tristram tried to contain the demon's soulstone within himself and failed; as the Dark Wanderer he now walks east to free Diablo's brothers, the Prime Evils Mephisto and Baal. The tale is framed by Marius, a broken man recounting events from an asylum, in pre-rendered cinematics between acts that set a new standard for game storytelling in their day. ## How it plays Each of the five original classes, the Amazon, Necromancer, Barbarian, Sorceress and Paladin, has three trees of skills unlocked as the character levels, and points spent are permanent. That permanence made character "builds" the subject of endless planning and debate: a Sorceress who specialized in cold, or a Necromancer who fought with an army of skeletons, played like a different game from one who spread points around. The campaign runs through four acts and then repeats on Nightmare and Hell difficulties, with stronger, more varied monsters and better rewards each time, and a Hardcore mode made death [permanent](https://www.lanternhall.org/lexicon/permadeath/). The deepest system is the [Loot & loot tables](https://www.lanternhall.org/lexicon/loot/). Items come in escalating tiers, normal, magic, rare, set and unique, and some carry sockets for gems, jewels and runes; the Horadric Cube, a portable alchemical box, transmutes combinations of items into others. The 2001 expansion *Lord of Destruction* added runewords, precise sequences of runes that transform an ordinary socketed item into something extraordinary, and with them a new currency. Because items never lost their worth in a closed realm, Battle.net developed a full economy in which players traded rare drops, famously using a small unique ring, the Stone of Jordan, as a de facto unit of exchange, a phenomenon that sits early in the story of [virtual economies](https://www.lanternhall.org/culture/virtual-economies/) and real-money trading. ## Reception & impact Critics rated *Diablo II* highly (it holds a Metacritic score of 88) and players bought it in unprecedented numbers: more than a million copies in its first two weeks, a Guinness World Record at the time, and four million worldwide by June 2001. It won Game of the Year at the 2001 Interactive Achievement Awards. *Lord of Destruction*, released on June 29, 2001, added the Assassin and the Druid, a fifth act on Mount Arreat, where the heroes defend the Worldstone from Baal, and support for higher resolution. It passed a million copies within a month and was the fourth-best-selling computer game in the United States that year. ## Legacy *Diablo II* is one of the longest-lived games of its era. Blizzard kept patching it for years, and in 2016 released a patch that let it run on modern Windows and macOS. Its ladder seasons, trading culture and theory-crafting communities anticipated the live games of the next two decades, and its item tiers, color-coded rarities and loot showers flowed directly into [*World of Warcraft*](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/world-of-warcraft/) and into the many games that tried to succeed it; [*Path of Exile*](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/path-of-exile/) was built explicitly by fans of its dark tone and deep builds. Its studio did not last as long. In June 2003 Brevik, the Schaefers and producer Bill Roper left Blizzard after a dispute with the parent company, Vivendi, and founded Flagship Studios; Blizzard closed Blizzard North in August 2005. The game they made was remastered as *Diablo II: Resurrected* on September 23, 2021, with new three-dimensional graphics laid over the original game logic, a sign of how little anyone wanted to change the core. ## Facts - More than a million copies sold in its first two weeks, a Guinness World Record at the time for the fastest-selling computer game. - Its hero-turned-villain, the Dark Wanderer, is the warrior who defeated Diablo in the first game and took the demon into himself. - Lord of Destruction (2001) added the Assassin and Druid, Act V, runewords, and 800x600 resolution, up from 640x480. - The expansion sold more than a million copies within a month, billed as the fastest-selling computer game expansion to that date. - Hardcore mode gave each character a single life: death was permanent. - A 2016 patch, 1.14a, updated the 16-year-old game to run on Windows 7 and later and on modern macOS. - Blizzard remastered it as Diablo II: Resurrected in 2021, keeping the original game logic beneath new 3D graphics. ## Sources and further reading - [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diablo_II) - [Wikipedia: Lord of Destruction](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diablo_II:_Lord_of_Destruction) --- From The Lantern Hall (https://www.lanternhall.org/), a museum of fantasy literature and roleplaying games.