Spring of 2000 –
Early 2000 was a wild year for tech. Bill Gates had stepped down as CEO of Microsoft. Three months later, a federal judge ruled that the company had violated antitrust laws. The heavy metal band Metallica sued the P2P program Napster for copyright infringement.
And Blizzard North rolled out the stress test for its next big hit – Diablo II.
Yes, yours truly did participate. It was my first beta test, and I was excited, both for the experience and because it was the sequel to my favorite game at the time. What would it be like? How would they tell the tale, with Tristram destroyed and Diablo defeated? As it turned out, it would be one of the best stories they told, and no, Diablo wasn’t done with us yet. In fact, he was only getting started.
Dropped into the new game, we found ourselves faced with the choice of five characters – the hotheaded Barbarian, the agile Amazon, the studious Sorceress, the noble Paladin, or the secretive Necromancer. More choices?! Which one to pick? After a hard moment of selection, I went with the Sorceress for my first taste of the new game. And with that, I entered the world of Sanctuary to follow in the footsteps of a shadowy figure only known as ‘The Dark Wanderer’, who seemed to be sowing evil in his wake.
In the test, we only got to go as far as defeating the character Blood Raven, a rogue who’d been corrupted and was busy raising her dead sisters. I remember seeing other people running around, doing the quests I was doing. I remember the thrill of getting to Blood Raven, dying to her, then going back and trying again. And I remember thinking that wow, this was a lot of stuff we got to do in the beta.
I had no idea it was but a small part of the first of four acts, culminating in an ending that was equally as shocking as that of the first game. But, I’m getting ahead of myself.
When the game released later that year, I was more than ready to dive back into the world and pick up where I’d left off. I rolled a new character, a Paladin. Or was it a Barbarian? After 24 years and several playthroughs, I can’t quite remember. What I do remember is going through Act I, with the goal to stop the evil pouring out of the rogue’s monastery. Andariel was quite the challenge too, with her strong poison-based attacks. I must have died to her four or five times before I managed to stay alive long enough to beat her. But the deed was done, and I could now move on to the next area in pursuit of the mysterious figure causing so much death and despair.
It was also in Act I that I had the opportunity to revisit the town of Tristram, now a destroyed husk. There I fought hordes of monsters to get to a caged Deckard Cain and free him. This proved to be no easy task as he was being guarded by the once-beloved blacksmith, Griswold, who had now become a ghoul. After defeating what remained of my old friend, I freed Cain and sent him to the rogue camp before wandering around the town and mourning all of the characters from the first game. Not even the child, Wirt, had been spared, although examining him did provide a decent bit of gold and his peg leg as a potential weapon.
But I grow as long-winded as Deckard Cain himself. Let’s move on to Act II.
Act II found me in the desert city of Lut Gholein, having traveled there by caravan. The residents of the fair city are beset by their own troubles, as the Dark Wanderer had recently passed that way and it’s up to me to help them out.
Along the way, I discovered a mysterious scroll, the Horadric Scroll. With Deckard’s help, I learned that it was the recipe for creating a powerful staff that was the key to opening the tomb of someone named Tal Rasha. I’d later find out that Tal Rasha had once been the leader of the Horadrim, who had sacrificed himself to contain another one of the prime evils – Baal, Lord of Destruction – within his body for eternity.
However, by the time I found all of the parts of the staff, and the Horadric Cube to combine them, and Tal Rasha’s tomb, it was too late. The Dark Wanderer had beaten me there and shown his true form – that of Diablo himself! For the Dark Wanderer was my own hero, that heroic warrior from the first game, who had fought and failed to contain the prime evil.
With his brother freed from captivity too, I had to race to Act III to stop them from their next goal – releasing the third and final prime evil, Mephisto, from his soulstone buried deep beneath the grounds in the mysterious ruins of a city called Kurast.
Next week, we’ll pick up in the mysterious kingdom of Kehjistan, home to the three mage clans and the prison of Mephisto, Lord of Hatred.
Until then, bye for now!
Ms. Bella's World 