Fourth
of July is done and over with...boohoo. Anyway, wasn't
to eventful over at this end. Although I did manage
to dip my feet into the world of Linux over the past
few days. I won't bore you with the details - but, let's
just say I'll be sticking with my Windows partition...
This leads me to another topic: my nickname ("Root"
for all you playing at home). Some of you may think
it derives from Unix (the superuser),
when in fact it does not! I will leave the true origins
of my nickname a mystery for now.
Ok, let's move on:
Next Week's Topic Will Be:
We continue our topic on the
expansion: What were your initial and/or overall reactions
to the Lord of Destruction expansion to Diablo II. Any
surprises? Can't get enough of it? Love the new mercenaries?
Tell us!
I also encourage any and all your comments on anything
Diablo-related. The Mailbag is here for you!
Now onto the feedback from last
week's topic in which we talked about your initial and/or
overall reactions to the Lord of Destruction. Again,
most of these require no comment from me (we'll get
to those later). Off we go...
From: KC5SHO
Subject: DII: LOD
While, I got the X-pack Wed. (gotta
love EB!) and converted my Barbarian, L27, to a x-pack
character. First thing I noticed: one of my two swords
now had a clvl requirment of 29. Very annoyed, I went
out and bought the best one hand sword I could form
the blacksmith to hold me over, and got my first quest.
After going out in the highlands, I realized that the
catulpiults werent much of a threat. The main problem
was sheer numbers; all these people got up in your face,
while another monster drove spikes into you through
the ground. These new monsters take a few hits to kill
too... so it takes time to wade through them. But, after
playing just 2 games, I leveled up... you will find
act V gives you a whole lot of exp.... those are just
first impressions........
From: Mark R
Subject: My initial response...
was "What the hell are they doing?!"
then I calmed down and started to think. I had become
bored with CD2 this could be interesting! So I played
the patch, found what worked and didn't, then bought
LoD two days early from EB...I've hardly stoped playing
since. ALL my characters where converted old cookies
are now new mules and there is a fresh new account just
for LoD. My one and only gripe though is this, not enough
variance of the unique boss packs. I am CONSTANTLY running
into three or four packs of unique bosses with the same
mods! i.e. Blood Raven's quest, (hell mode) not three,
not four, but SIX boss packs with basically the same
mods! All lightning enchanted, all fire enchanted, the
difference was either MS or mana burn...sorry but that
does NOT constitute random monster generation. It seems
as though the game itself was chocka block full of these
monster packs I could see people talking about them
in other acts as well. BAD BLIZZARD!! All in all its
been great! A few bugs to iron out yet though, now if
I could only get back on USeast.
From: Sean
Subject: Expansion Reaction
My
reaction to the expansion is this. I bought it on Wednesday
and beat it on Thursday. I expanded a whole day! Well
actually a few hours. I worked all day and came home
to a 3 hour game session with a Necromancer that laughed
at everything Baal threw at him including Baal himself.
The thing that took the longest was finding waypoints
and doors to the right area to progress. I noticed alot
of sub areas that got no mention by people in town and
look as if they were thrown in there for the hell of
it. I knew there was going to be a return to hell in
the expansion figuring it'd be Baal's part of hell.
So far all I've found is random areas with a champion
or unique monster guarding a yawning treasure chest.
I did notice that the 800x600 makes the game quite nice,
but on a 32meg video card with it's latest drivers.
ATI rage mobility on a P3 700 laptop with 192 megs of
ram. There should be no slow down. There is... oh well.
Optimization would be optimal. I'm hopping it's Intel's
problem with that speed step crap that slows a processor
down and I can shut that off (Hopefully). Not that it
should have anything to do with video but who knows?
I could definatly say that I was hoping for more, while
it's fun. When you pay about $40.00 and almost reach
the price of a new game I'd hope for more. This game
would have done better if it was released complete with
all the classes to begin with. It feels more like an
after thought now although there were parts of the new
classes supposedly in the original game.
One thing not fixed. When I beat Andarial and go East,
Warriv has his compass all messed up. When i'm in the
rogue camp he says, "if you ever want to return west..."
when it's east. I need to double check what he says
when your in Lut. [?]
For as much as I got out of this expansion. I'd say
it's only worth about $20-25 especially since Realms
are all but non existant to me because of lag and such.
But it's fun for the most part. Oh yeah, can the Sorceress
have a bazooka or a BFG since her skills can be somewhat
rendered useless by immunities. Especially those that
have some elemental and physical immunities? Or atleast
give me an Acme Portable Hole that Bugs Bunny uses so
I can have them walk over it and fall to their deaths
or out of my way. :)
From:
Gabriella
Subject: [none]
hi
well done. fantastic site.
does anyone know what has happened to my valkyrie? she
used to be useful (summons a powerful valkyrie ally,
i think not, summons a clown it should now say) has
the code been swapped with the old code for the lut
gholein mercenaries? the way she acts now is as if shes
on drugs or something. heres a few of the things ive
noticed since the 1.08 patch that have changed.
1. she now seems to have the ability to teleport
2. when in battle in act4 she will suddenly decide to
go for a walk.
3. she has also just stood watching me struggle on several
occasions
4. although she now has double life in nightmare and
triple in hell she lasts a fraction of the time she
used to before the patch
5. with her level at 21 a venom lord in nightmare heals
quicker than she can damage it
6. she is quite good at attacking trapped souls avoiding
the real enemy
7. come on blizzard all that shouting and screaming
she does now dosnt frighten the monsters 1 bit. it seems
to me that she has transformed from the powerful ally
she was to a screaming spectator like the ones you see
at a spoting event. next thing i dont understand is
why blizzard wants people to party more. its unfair
for the sorceress, necromancer and amazon and possibly
the druid. while they all stand back and use there ranged
attacks the barbarian or paladin (with their alt button
jammed down} can right click to attack while picking
up the best of the the dropped items left clicking.
i have seen this happen too often. thats why you always
see the barbarians and paladins in the trade channel
offering the items and the others saying they need the
items.
another thing. hearing that you could gamble the better
quality items in the expansion pack i decided to save
approx 6,000,000 gold to take with me when i moved my
chars there. well thats all gone. i gambled the whole
lot and all i got for this trouble was 1 half decent
amulet. ok this is the last. why have the imbue quest
in act 1 when there is no chance in hell you will find
anything usefull to imbue till you get to act 4 in hell
dificulty. come on blizzard people only fall for that
when they first play the game.
From:
Chris S
Subject: thoughts on LoD
I have to say that initially I
was very confused. I was playing with the 1.08 patch
for a day or two before I got LoD, and enjoying the
improved drops from monsters and such. Then I got LoD,
and got absolute crap from both Andariel and Duriel.
That was fixed a few days later in a server-side patch,
but left me feeling a little sour towards LoD in general.
I really like the Assassin, the play style is very different
and fun. I enjoy the greater attention you need to pay
to combat, making sure to charge and finish at the right
times. It's a lot more interesting than the old way
of simply selecting a powerful skill and using it repeatedly.
I think Blizzard's intent of forcing all characters
to be more well-rounded is a good idea.
Diablo himself was absurdly difficult to kill. He wiped
out my shadow and hireling in a single ring of fire.
I was about clvl 28, and couldn't go anywhere near him.
Needed to kill him exclusively with traps. Having said
that, Baal was even harder, but in a manageable way.
He was difficult, but I was able to cope with him. I
think my major problem with Diablo was expecting him
to be as easy as he used to be.
Act V is very nice. It provides a transition from Act
IV to Nightmare, and does it well. It was always very
jarring to go from Act IV to Nightmare, and I often
had to spend extra time in Act IV to improve my character
to the point where I could handle Nightmare. The transition
is much smoother now, and I was definitely ready for
Nightmare when I got done with Act V. It's also nice
to actually be clvl 30+ after killing Baal. I always
thought it was weird that you could kill Diablo without
actually reaching the last tier of skills for your character.
In the end, I'd say that the game plays far better now
than it did before. The whole thing, start to finish,
is more smoother and more polished. Item drops, skills,
experience all work better. The only problem is that
after playing LoD, the original D2 now seems unfinished,
as if they ran out of time and just cut Act IV short
to release it. It feels like LoD is how D2 was supposed
to be from the start, and I don't like having to pay
another $40 for an expansion that feels like it is just
finishing off what the original game (also $40) should
have been.
From: Kyeong
Subject: What a waste of valuable time.........
I cannot believe how much blizzard
has changed diablo2. Being a 'one of the very few,very
nice, very sociable ,english speaking and not hostile
diablo addicted korean' I started workin my @$$ off
wheh dII entered the markets appx. one year ago. And
during the course of a long year, I went through over
20 clvl70+ chars trying to create the best possible
chars for my favourate classes, the sorc and the zon
(woman rock). So by now I managed to create the 2 best
characters in my arsenal. They were my clvl86, max warmth,
cold mastery and orbing/static sorc and myclvl 84 multishooting
zon. they both had no problem at all handling hell single
handedly in a 8player game AND it took me a LOT OF TIMEEEEEEE
to raise them. Now the patch has come out, being one
of the people who wern't gonna get LoD, all of my hard
work has gone down the drain. My sorc cannot even complete
nightmare cuz of casting delays and my zon is having
a LOT of trouble in hell. Now, how are blizzard gonna
get out of this one? If they were going to make an expansion
that was goign to be released 10 days after this patch,
what was the whole point in the patch??!?! A lot of
people were NOT going to get LOD.
Classic diablo2 was good enough and i loved the feeling
of picking up many rare items when cleaning hell act4.
But now I cant even enter hell act4 without getting
killed and I havn;t found a rare in over 4 days!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Blizzard really messed up this time and I'm sorry to
say this but there are going to be a lot of people leaving
the diablo World unless they make a new patch for the
classic diablo2 or they make diablo3 and by the time
its made if they do make it, there will be far beter
rpg games to play
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