Just curious here...I downloaded the Diablo 2 demo and have played a bit, and it seems a bit...I dunno, cartoonish. Did the appearance of the characters strike anyone else funny?
I do like the obvious changes they made over Diablo, though. I was never a huge Diablo fan, but it's fun for a while. (I'm more of a hard-core RPG-er. If I'm gonna play and RPG, it's gonna be a REAL RPG, not an RPG-lite.) But this has some serious improvements.

What are your thoughts?

Appearance? I didn't think it was cartoonish. Rather, I thought the graphics were virtually identical to the first game.

It's a great game for what it is, a hack and slash, power-leveling experience. I don't think it has the RPG depth of a lot of other games, though. It doesn't transport the player to a new world in the way that the Fallout games do, for example.

Okay, perhaps it was just me. Maybe the view was just a little closer up, letting you see the characters a little better. Or, maybe it was just me.

yes, the view in diablo 2 is closer to the characters. . . i think to take away the tile look from the first Diablo.

I actually like the character animations in Diablo 2 though there isn't much in variations of character look after you play it awhile. . .

etc

Diablo II can be fun sometimes. It may not appeal to all hardcore RPGers, as the areas are a bit bland and unimersive, and character advancement, skills and spells are lacking. The graphics, although far from perfect, do their job. It's a nice step up from the original, but not deserving of the attention it has received in my opinion.

I wasn't that crazy about the first one. It was okay, and strangely addictive, for no more than I enjoyed it. But the second is a good step in the right direction, I think. (At this rate, by Diablo 5 I might actually be interested enough to buy it...) But, for people who are into that style -- Blizzard definitely knows how to make a top-notch, best selling game!

I personally thought the biggest appeal was being able to play on a LAN with three of my buddies. Despite the ability of the internet to let you play anyone in the world, I still think there's something to be said for playing with a small group of friends, where cheating and network lag are effectively non-issues.

With the first Diablo I played with a group of about 30-50 people. We had a naming system for password protected games, so we'd just check battle.net for them and find one that was open, or create one. We had some memorable times, and no cheating. Well, I'm sure some people had duped items, but it wasn't rampant. I never was that upset at the duping. It was the townkill hacks and such that were aggravating.

Playing with friends was (and is) the best, and battle.net was such a leap forward. I played most of the game with my brother, he in Phoenix & me in LA. Just like old times, but for 400 miles of distance.

I also conducted a rescue mission in Diablo I. A guy at my wife's office was playing on a public server. His companion had to bail and then he got killed deeper in the dungeon than he could reach solo. So, he used another line to call me, since he knew I had a high level fighter. He gave me the password for his game, and I booted it up, fought down to him, resurrected him, and portaled him out. Can't do that on a LAN.

"I also conducted a rescue mission in Diablo I."

Great anecdote. Stuff like that really indicates how far computer gaming has come and what multiplayer gaming can really mean beyond deathmatch and chat rooms masquerading as MMORPGs.

-Tom

I definitely agree with you all. It's way more fun with a group of people you can trust not to cheat than the mass lunacy that typically goes on over Battle.net. Technology is so wonderful.

"I also conducted a rescue mission in Diablo I."

Heh -- we had something like that in our group. A bunch of pretty high level players managed to get killed in a Hell/Hell level. They got killed right by the entrance to the level, so when you entered the level you got killed right away by the swarm. The monsters were those nearly topless witches, the ones who threw the red magic bolts. The problem with them is that on the hell setting they were pretty much immune to magic attacks, so there was no quick and easy way to get off a good attack before dying.

As I recall, there were emails flying back and forth as different players jumped into the game to attempt to rescue the lost equipment. It took hours and hours. Finally, someone spotted a stranger in a bnet chat and asked him to help. He had some hacked high level character and was able to put enough of a dent into the monsters for players to eventually kill them.

Needless to say, that battle became its own myth of sorts and was talked about in reverent tones in messages posted for months afterwards, like the Battle of Gettysburg.