(I apologize for the delay in posting. I've had some pretty serious work computer issues I've been dealing with, so I've been pretty distracted with those).
It's patch day. For some reason, I usually feel like playing on Tuesday mornings, which is, of course, the only morning where I can't reliably play. I often play for a couple hours in the morning when it's quiet and there aren't a lot of people on -- one of the definite benefits of being self employed.
And of course, being Tuesday and patch day, the servers are down and will be down until 2:00 in the afternoon, my time.
Sometimes when I get in this mood, I'll go catch up on forums. Or I'll do some work (even though I rarely feel like it on Tuesday mornings). But part of the process of trying to resurrect my work computer got me digging through old disks. This morning, I re-installed and played some Diablo II.
Once again, I am impressed with how well this game has held up over time. The graphics are a bit rough by modern standards, but still eminently playable. The US East server was quick and responsive. I started one of my favorite characters, an Amazon, with the intent of making her a javazon (an Amazon who specializes in javelins, specifically Lighting Fury).
As I played, I began to reflect on how much World of Warcraft owes to Diablo II.
I'm not just talking about some of the obvious things. WoW is full of references to Diablo II -- little Blizzard in-jokes such as the Cow King's Leathers, Wirt's Third Leg, or the loading screen tip "There is no cow level" (there was a Cow King in Diablo II and he did drop pieces for a set called the Cow King's Leathers; Wirt was a hapless kid who got killed, and one of his lootable items was his wooden leg, which was part of the key to the Secret Cow Level. Yes, at least in Diablo II, there was a Secret Cow Level, full of murderous cows ... moo-moo MOO, moo moo ... MooooOOOO!)
Of course, WoW gains its lore, many of its NPCs, and character types from the regular Warcraft series. However, in terms of character creation and development, some of the bugs were worked out in Diablo II.
Class similarities. Diablo II had six basic playable character classes: Amazon, assassin, barbarian, paladin, sorceress, druid, and necromancer. There was no character customization other than name. Amazons, assassins, and sorceresses were always female; the other four classes were always male.
Amazons could pick one of two weapon specialties: bow or javelin. Some of the bow skills bear some minor resemblance to marksmanship hunters, but the similarity here is only minor.
Assassins were clearly an early blueprint for the WoW rogue class, although there was a bit of hunter thrown in as well. The most important innovation with the assassin class was the concept of charge-ups and finishing moves, a system we see today in WoW's rogues as combo points and finishing moves. Like the hunter, assassins also had a variety of traps, although the traps were much more varied and powerful.
Barbarians were, of course, a precursor to WoW's warriors. They could pick weapon specializations that added extra damage and to-hit on various weapon classes. This was the extent of the improvement (no stun damage from maces, for example). This class also used Warcries, which were the precursors to the WoW warrior's battle shouts and thunderclaps.
Paladins in Diablo II would not be unfamiliar to WoW paladin players, as it's clear that there are a wide variety of similarities here. Diablo II paladins had auras that could improve stats, damage enemies, heal, increase party resists, and like in WoW, they could only have one going at a time, but multiple paladins could use different auras and stack them. Spells like Holy Bolt, Blessed Hammer, and Sacrifice bear a more than passing resemblance to similar spells in WoW. Healing is a paladin specialty, but mostly through their defensive auras.
Sorceresses are to Diablo II what mages are to World of Warcraft. The only exception to this is that in Diablo II, there are three schools of magic to choose from (frost, fire, and lightning) as opposed to two in Wow (frost and fire). Some of the spells that may seem familiar to WoW players include Frost Armor, Frost Nova, Ice Bolt, Blizzard, and Fireball. In the lightning tree, there is a bit more resemblance to WoW's elemental shaman abilities (with Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning).
The Diablo II druid is, depending on the talents chosen, either similar to the WoW feral druid or to a mix between a boomkin and an elemental shaman. Diablo II druids could also choose a shape, but they were pretty much forced into either a bear (tank) or wolf (DPS). Because of the way abilities are chosen, doing both doesn't really work as well. Like the feral druid, when you're in animal form you can use your pet abilities but you can't cast your other spells, which made the elemental abilities for the druid and the shapechanging abilities mutually exclusive. Unlike WoW, where the bear's butt is truly gigantic, the Diablo II bear was pretty odd looking, with huge shoulders, a tiny waist, and this itty-bitty derriere. The elemental tree for druids was never very popular, due mostly to the fact that the spells were not very effective and somewhat hard to aim.
Curiously, the druid was also a pet class, able to summon ravens, wolves, and bears to assist him. The raven pets bear a more than passing resemblance to the birds summoned by the eagle boss in ZA -- they can't be targeted and hit; they simply disappear after they've done a certain amount of damage.
The necromancer was truly a pet class gone wild. They bore some resemblance to the warlock class, but instead of summoning a single demon, they could use bones to summon undead creatures and other items to summon golems. They could have an entire army of undead minions with a golem following them around. The major similarity to WoW warlocks was the ability to curse enemies, and like the WoW warlock, they could only have one curse active at a time.
The talent tree: The big innovation of Diablo II, not seen specifically in any other MMORPG and carried almost directly into World of Warcraft, was the concept of the talent tree. There are some similarities between the implementation of the talent trees, but there are also some key differences. These are probably things that didn't end up working as well as Blizzard had hoped.
The similarities: Each class had three distinct talent trees. At each level (starting at level 2 in Diablo II; 10 in WoW) you would earn 1 talent point to invest. You could invest all your points into one, two, or all three trees. Some skills are prerequisites to others, meaning you must have this talent before you can get another one that depends on it.
The differences: The differences are actually fairly extensive, but it's worth looking at them, just to get a Before and After picture.
First, in Diablo II, there were talent trees that were almost mutually exclusive. If you played an Amazon, for example, you would invest either in the Javelin tree or the Bow & Crossbow tree, but not both. The worst example was the Druid, where the shapeshifting tree and the elemental trees counterindicated one another. You couldn't cast the elemental spells in shapeshift form at all. While in WoW, there are trees that make more sense when paired together than others, you don't find any where if you invest in one tree, another tree becomes useless. They seem to have fixed most of these problems.
Why I think Blizzard changed this for WoW: Early on, the trees were unbalanced, which led to people who only invested in one flavor of the character. A good example of this was hunters, who, for a long time, only had one really viable build -- marksman. There were no survival hunters or beastmasters. By making all three trees viable, Blizzard gave the hunter considerably more bandwidth.
Second, in Diablo II, talent trees are the only way for a character to gain new spells or abilities. There are no level-based abilities that everyone gets.
Why Blizzard changed this for WoW: Diablo II's talent-based spell system limits the available spells to just a handful. Even so, in Diablo II's much more limited interface, handling more spells than what you could get through talents would be difficult to manage.
Third, in Diablo II, you can invest up to 20 points in any single skill, but you also only need to invest 1 point for a prerequisite skill. If you have a skill that requires level 30 and there are four prerequisite skills, you only need to have spent 4 points in each of those skills to get access to the level 30 skill.
Why Blizzard changed this for WoW: Diablo II had fewer items on its talent trees -- usually no more than eight or nine -- but the level limit on characters was 99. There are a lot more talent points, but fewer things to spend them on. Also, at the upper limits, there are significant diminishing returns on abilities. At 1-5 points, you may be improving a skill by 5-6% per talent point spent, but by 15 points, you may only be improving it by 1% or even less.
Fourth, skills become available by level, not by the number of talent points invested, as long as any prerequisite skills are met. New skill tiers become available at level 1, 6, 12, 18, 24, and 30.
Because you can (a) save points (b) only invest 1 point for a prerequisite skill and (b) have full availability of skills at a certain level, you can literally save points toward higher level skills. You could save points and as long as all your prerequisite skills are met, you can get every single one of your level 30 talents the moment you ding 30. You can't, however, save all your points for a level 30 talent and then put all your points in it right away; at level 30 you can only put one point in a level 30 talent, and then you can put in another point at level 31, another at level 32, etc.
Why I think Blizzard changed this for WoW: Builds in Diablo II could get very bottom-heavy, with characters who would grit it out for the lower levels to spend all their points at the top. This could lead to some balance issues.
Fifth, once you have spent a talent point, it's spent forever. In WoW, you can pay for a talent reset that refunds all your talent points, but in Diablo, you can't. This means you have to spend each point very wisely and with great care, or you can end up with a high level character who isn't viable and there's nothing you can do about it. It also means you need to be sure of where you want to take your character pretty much from the beginning; you can't build a fire sorceress and then decide at level 40 that you want a cold sorceress. The only way you would be able to do that is to start a new sorceress from level 1.
It also meant that if Blizzard made changes to the talent tree (and they did in Diablo II also), you were out of luck if that change didn't favor your current build.
Why I think Blizzard changed this in WoW: Blizzard almost certainly learned about this from Diablo II and added the talent redo ability in WoW when they introduced talent tree. People complained a great deal in Diablo II about the inability to change their specs, and a misspent talent point could haunt you forever. Introducing the ability to redo talents encouraged a great deal more experimentation.
Sixth, Diablo II has passive bonuses from having other skills. For example, having points in the lower level Amazon javelin skills Power Strike, Lightning Bolt, Charged Strieke, and Lightning Strike would add +1% lightning damage per level to the top level skill Lightning Fury. By investing a few points in these earlier skills, you improved the top level one.
I think this is what Blizzard did to help make the Diablo II talent trees less bottom-heavy. By making these lower level skills count, at least in part, toward higher level ones, it made players less reluctant to spend points in them. Since lower level talents were how Diablo II players got spells, it would be like asking a higher level player to invest something in improving, say, a Level 1 ice bolt when that character is level 70.
Why I think Blizzard changed this in WoW: Since the talents in WoW are more stand-alone and useful in their own right, it wasn't necessary to make this passive system to encourage people to use lower level talent points. Plus, with the system where you only advance to the next talent tier by investing a certain number of talent points, this wasn't a problem in WoW.
It's clear that the talent system got its start and got its bugs worked out in Diablo II. It's kind of interesting going back to the game after all these years and seeing how this very familiar system got its start.
It's patch day. For some reason, I usually feel like playing on Tuesday mornings, which is, of course, the only morning where I can't reliably play. I often play for a couple hours in the morning when it's quiet and there aren't a lot of people on -- one of the definite benefits of being self employed.
And of course, being Tuesday and patch day, the servers are down and will be down until 2:00 in the afternoon, my time.
Sometimes when I get in this mood, I'll go catch up on forums. Or I'll do some work (even though I rarely feel like it on Tuesday mornings). But part of the process of trying to resurrect my work computer got me digging through old disks. This morning, I re-installed and played some Diablo II.
Once again, I am impressed with how well this game has held up over time. The graphics are a bit rough by modern standards, but still eminently playable. The US East server was quick and responsive. I started one of my favorite characters, an Amazon, with the intent of making her a javazon (an Amazon who specializes in javelins, specifically Lighting Fury).
As I played, I began to reflect on how much World of Warcraft owes to Diablo II.
I'm not just talking about some of the obvious things. WoW is full of references to Diablo II -- little Blizzard in-jokes such as the Cow King's Leathers, Wirt's Third Leg, or the loading screen tip "There is no cow level" (there was a Cow King in Diablo II and he did drop pieces for a set called the Cow King's Leathers; Wirt was a hapless kid who got killed, and one of his lootable items was his wooden leg, which was part of the key to the Secret Cow Level. Yes, at least in Diablo II, there was a Secret Cow Level, full of murderous cows ... moo-moo MOO, moo moo ... MooooOOOO!)
Of course, WoW gains its lore, many of its NPCs, and character types from the regular Warcraft series. However, in terms of character creation and development, some of the bugs were worked out in Diablo II.
Class similarities. Diablo II had six basic playable character classes: Amazon, assassin, barbarian, paladin, sorceress, druid, and necromancer. There was no character customization other than name. Amazons, assassins, and sorceresses were always female; the other four classes were always male.
Amazons could pick one of two weapon specialties: bow or javelin. Some of the bow skills bear some minor resemblance to marksmanship hunters, but the similarity here is only minor.
Assassins were clearly an early blueprint for the WoW rogue class, although there was a bit of hunter thrown in as well. The most important innovation with the assassin class was the concept of charge-ups and finishing moves, a system we see today in WoW's rogues as combo points and finishing moves. Like the hunter, assassins also had a variety of traps, although the traps were much more varied and powerful.
Barbarians were, of course, a precursor to WoW's warriors. They could pick weapon specializations that added extra damage and to-hit on various weapon classes. This was the extent of the improvement (no stun damage from maces, for example). This class also used Warcries, which were the precursors to the WoW warrior's battle shouts and thunderclaps.
Paladins in Diablo II would not be unfamiliar to WoW paladin players, as it's clear that there are a wide variety of similarities here. Diablo II paladins had auras that could improve stats, damage enemies, heal, increase party resists, and like in WoW, they could only have one going at a time, but multiple paladins could use different auras and stack them. Spells like Holy Bolt, Blessed Hammer, and Sacrifice bear a more than passing resemblance to similar spells in WoW. Healing is a paladin specialty, but mostly through their defensive auras.
Sorceresses are to Diablo II what mages are to World of Warcraft. The only exception to this is that in Diablo II, there are three schools of magic to choose from (frost, fire, and lightning) as opposed to two in Wow (frost and fire). Some of the spells that may seem familiar to WoW players include Frost Armor, Frost Nova, Ice Bolt, Blizzard, and Fireball. In the lightning tree, there is a bit more resemblance to WoW's elemental shaman abilities (with Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning).
The Diablo II druid is, depending on the talents chosen, either similar to the WoW feral druid or to a mix between a boomkin and an elemental shaman. Diablo II druids could also choose a shape, but they were pretty much forced into either a bear (tank) or wolf (DPS). Because of the way abilities are chosen, doing both doesn't really work as well. Like the feral druid, when you're in animal form you can use your pet abilities but you can't cast your other spells, which made the elemental abilities for the druid and the shapechanging abilities mutually exclusive. Unlike WoW, where the bear's butt is truly gigantic, the Diablo II bear was pretty odd looking, with huge shoulders, a tiny waist, and this itty-bitty derriere. The elemental tree for druids was never very popular, due mostly to the fact that the spells were not very effective and somewhat hard to aim.
Curiously, the druid was also a pet class, able to summon ravens, wolves, and bears to assist him. The raven pets bear a more than passing resemblance to the birds summoned by the eagle boss in ZA -- they can't be targeted and hit; they simply disappear after they've done a certain amount of damage.
The necromancer was truly a pet class gone wild. They bore some resemblance to the warlock class, but instead of summoning a single demon, they could use bones to summon undead creatures and other items to summon golems. They could have an entire army of undead minions with a golem following them around. The major similarity to WoW warlocks was the ability to curse enemies, and like the WoW warlock, they could only have one curse active at a time.
The talent tree: The big innovation of Diablo II, not seen specifically in any other MMORPG and carried almost directly into World of Warcraft, was the concept of the talent tree. There are some similarities between the implementation of the talent trees, but there are also some key differences. These are probably things that didn't end up working as well as Blizzard had hoped.
The similarities: Each class had three distinct talent trees. At each level (starting at level 2 in Diablo II; 10 in WoW) you would earn 1 talent point to invest. You could invest all your points into one, two, or all three trees. Some skills are prerequisites to others, meaning you must have this talent before you can get another one that depends on it.
The differences: The differences are actually fairly extensive, but it's worth looking at them, just to get a Before and After picture.
First, in Diablo II, there were talent trees that were almost mutually exclusive. If you played an Amazon, for example, you would invest either in the Javelin tree or the Bow & Crossbow tree, but not both. The worst example was the Druid, where the shapeshifting tree and the elemental trees counterindicated one another. You couldn't cast the elemental spells in shapeshift form at all. While in WoW, there are trees that make more sense when paired together than others, you don't find any where if you invest in one tree, another tree becomes useless. They seem to have fixed most of these problems.
Why I think Blizzard changed this for WoW: Early on, the trees were unbalanced, which led to people who only invested in one flavor of the character. A good example of this was hunters, who, for a long time, only had one really viable build -- marksman. There were no survival hunters or beastmasters. By making all three trees viable, Blizzard gave the hunter considerably more bandwidth.
Second, in Diablo II, talent trees are the only way for a character to gain new spells or abilities. There are no level-based abilities that everyone gets.
Why Blizzard changed this for WoW: Diablo II's talent-based spell system limits the available spells to just a handful. Even so, in Diablo II's much more limited interface, handling more spells than what you could get through talents would be difficult to manage.
Third, in Diablo II, you can invest up to 20 points in any single skill, but you also only need to invest 1 point for a prerequisite skill. If you have a skill that requires level 30 and there are four prerequisite skills, you only need to have spent 4 points in each of those skills to get access to the level 30 skill.
Why Blizzard changed this for WoW: Diablo II had fewer items on its talent trees -- usually no more than eight or nine -- but the level limit on characters was 99. There are a lot more talent points, but fewer things to spend them on. Also, at the upper limits, there are significant diminishing returns on abilities. At 1-5 points, you may be improving a skill by 5-6% per talent point spent, but by 15 points, you may only be improving it by 1% or even less.
Fourth, skills become available by level, not by the number of talent points invested, as long as any prerequisite skills are met. New skill tiers become available at level 1, 6, 12, 18, 24, and 30.
Because you can (a) save points (b) only invest 1 point for a prerequisite skill and (b) have full availability of skills at a certain level, you can literally save points toward higher level skills. You could save points and as long as all your prerequisite skills are met, you can get every single one of your level 30 talents the moment you ding 30. You can't, however, save all your points for a level 30 talent and then put all your points in it right away; at level 30 you can only put one point in a level 30 talent, and then you can put in another point at level 31, another at level 32, etc.
Why I think Blizzard changed this for WoW: Builds in Diablo II could get very bottom-heavy, with characters who would grit it out for the lower levels to spend all their points at the top. This could lead to some balance issues.
Fifth, once you have spent a talent point, it's spent forever. In WoW, you can pay for a talent reset that refunds all your talent points, but in Diablo, you can't. This means you have to spend each point very wisely and with great care, or you can end up with a high level character who isn't viable and there's nothing you can do about it. It also means you need to be sure of where you want to take your character pretty much from the beginning; you can't build a fire sorceress and then decide at level 40 that you want a cold sorceress. The only way you would be able to do that is to start a new sorceress from level 1.
It also meant that if Blizzard made changes to the talent tree (and they did in Diablo II also), you were out of luck if that change didn't favor your current build.
Why I think Blizzard changed this in WoW: Blizzard almost certainly learned about this from Diablo II and added the talent redo ability in WoW when they introduced talent tree. People complained a great deal in Diablo II about the inability to change their specs, and a misspent talent point could haunt you forever. Introducing the ability to redo talents encouraged a great deal more experimentation.
Sixth, Diablo II has passive bonuses from having other skills. For example, having points in the lower level Amazon javelin skills Power Strike, Lightning Bolt, Charged Strieke, and Lightning Strike would add +1% lightning damage per level to the top level skill Lightning Fury. By investing a few points in these earlier skills, you improved the top level one.
I think this is what Blizzard did to help make the Diablo II talent trees less bottom-heavy. By making these lower level skills count, at least in part, toward higher level ones, it made players less reluctant to spend points in them. Since lower level talents were how Diablo II players got spells, it would be like asking a higher level player to invest something in improving, say, a Level 1 ice bolt when that character is level 70.
Why I think Blizzard changed this in WoW: Since the talents in WoW are more stand-alone and useful in their own right, it wasn't necessary to make this passive system to encourage people to use lower level talent points. Plus, with the system where you only advance to the next talent tier by investing a certain number of talent points, this wasn't a problem in WoW.
It's clear that the talent system got its start and got its bugs worked out in Diablo II. It's kind of interesting going back to the game after all these years and seeing how this very familiar system got its start.
2 comments:
Mmm so much came into WoW from Diablo II that I still think people want Necromancers because of that game. Also because I am that old school Wirt was in the original Diablo and was found dead in the ruined village in Diablo II. The body had a ton of gold and for some reason I could never throw that damn leg away. It's a good job it hasn't dropped in WoW for me otherwise it'd still be sat in my bank.
It was also interesting to hear the music on the recent "Blizzcast". Do Blizzard still see the franchise as valid and if so could there be a third instalment?
Amazing post! I played Diablo 2 for 7 years and WoW for 2 but I've never thought about the comparison between the two. Now I think I'll go make a Paladin :-)
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