Well, I don’t think it’s going to be cross compatable, but they’re creating “Victoria”, which is going to run from the 1835 to 1920.
http://www.paradoxplaza.com/victoria.asp
Ya ever heard o’ Fable?
I watched my son play D2 plus expansion for months, and watching, I could never see the appeal. Then I installed it on my computer and found it to be digital crack. If one had to pay for D2 on a daily basis in order to support their habit, I’d be out on the streets mugging old ladies as we speak.
I wouldn’t be surprised at all to see medical journals in a few years refer to a common repetitive motion injury known as “Diablo Claw”.
Anyway, for an excellent game that has some aspects of D2, but is much richer in story and the thinking involved, check out Divine Divinity. Stupid name. Great game.
A random thought or two:
Done and done. Point?
You left out an important step there, Sparky. I paid for the damn thing, which gives me the right to bitch about it. And yes, it’s the fault of the game…or more accurately, the designers…if it weren’t such a fruitless snoozefest, I wouldn’t be bitching. Simple, yes?
Fair enough. I suppose the character-builder type game doesn’t appeal to me in any meaningful way. Everquest was another example. Some people became hopeless addicted. I viewed it as essentially an avatar-driven chatroom on steroids. snooooore Hell, I thought ProgressQuest was a damn sight more entertaining than any of the “legitimate” character-building games I’d played, and its thinly-slathered veneer of wise-ass storyline wasn’t essentially more vapid than that of D2.
I agree about Diablo, incidentally. Way more atmospheric and the storyline was always kept rather more up front, and to this lil’ Ogre, that = better. Hell, there were parts of Diablo that I actually found scary. True, it could be familiarity with the format that made D2 so much less interesting, but with D2, it was like, “Oh, look. The Cavern of Eternal Desolation…Level 6. Fuck. Shoot me now.”
I enjoyed Medieval Total War, though. I wish they had included the cool assassination cutscenes from Shogun: Total War, though. Those kicked ass. I’ll have to look up Europa Universalis. That sounds like my bag.
Oh, and as full of holes as the plot was in Hitman 2, the game still rocked my world. That’s a hell of a FPS.
Yay. I think I’d rather take an icepick to the kidney, thank you very much.
Just FTR, the number of hacked PKers I’ve encountered is really very small. Then again, most of the play I do is with other dopers, in public cow games (especially starting in hellcow-90 channel, notably devoid of PKers), or rushing folks, so there really isn’t much opportunity for me to encounter a PKer. And if I do, I simply leave the game.
I still think that Diablo is for people that can’t take real roguelikes. 
I like OldManMurray’s insight: If you like this sort of game, you are really wasting your money if you pay for one. Instead, just watch the dashboard of your car as you drive around. Look at that odometer stat going up! Careful not to overtax your engine heat level, give it time to replenish before the next big push.
Uh oh, that gas level is getting a bit low: better find gas station before its game over!
ProgressQuest is the cure for stupid pure leveling games. It’s just like them… only without all the clicking. Diablo 2 popular not because it was a good game, but because it was an almost perfect implementation of Pavlovian theory.
From the man who brought us the incredibly stable and bug-free Black and White. [/sarcasm]
Actually, Diablo 2 without clicking is Dungeon Seige.
save money by driving around aimlessly for hours every day? novel concept.
Having bought and played “Dungeon Siege,” I can tell you right now that making a click-and-kill game with appeal ain’t as easy as you might think. “DS” blew chunks.
I would agree that the original “Diablo” was in some ways a better game; “Diablo II” didn’t have quite the same atmosphere, and it lagged horribly in multiplayer at first, but it was still fun.
I think Diablo II might have been much better had things been thought out. Rather than simply create endless identical dungeons, they needed to put more character and interest in them. And link them to many more quests. Why have 5 quests per town? Why not have 50?
Note that I did immediately post to correct myself, pointing out this game.
Unfortunately, Tamerlane, it looks like Crusader Kings is heavily delayed. The Russian development house (Snowball) had originally promised release by the end of 2002, then a playable demo by summer 2003, and now they’re just saying “it’ll be done when it’s done”, which is never good news to hear. I guess we’ll just have to content ourselves with EU2 and HOI for the time being.
(I still intend to play a game of EU2 as the Papal States and try to unify Italy…)
And if I had paid better attention, I would have seen that! 
Actually, it might be good that Crusader Kings is delayed. Both EU/EU2 and HoI seem to have been rushed out the door by Paradox. Hopefully there won’t need to be as many patches for CK as for the other three games.
… And Populous.
I see you haven’t hit bottom as a bnet junkie yet. Once you’ve reached the point where you long for PKers to show up just to break the monotony, giving up on D2 isn’t very far away.
Dungeon Siege is the only game where I’ve literally stepped outside for a smoke in mid-fight without bothering to save it first. I came back to find that my guys had cleared the corridor they were fighting in.
Neverwinter Nights. You don’t like the world? Make a New one. the DM tools are Right There. Or play on line in any one of a Thousand different worlds (think of 1000 Bnets…each one different).
Great idea in theory, but in practice most user-made worlds suck balls. Neverwinter Nights was designed to take the place of “tabletop” RPG’s… but the people that RP that way will probably find the limitations of NWN to be painfully annoying.
Though it’s a great step in the right direction. I can’t wait to see NWN2 five years from now (assuming one is made).
Polish up your Grandfather Colossus Blades, Arkaine’s Valor Balrog Skins, and Arreat’s Face Slayer Guards… version 1.10 is coming. BTW, Barbs are gonna suck HARD on v1.10.
My Diablo Story-
Meph Run, Meph Run, Meph Run, Pindle Run, Meph Run, Meph Run, Meph Run, Baal Run, Meph Run, Meph Run, Meph Run………
This is what the game has reduced me to… Meph Runs. I am in a never-ending glorious hunt for Vamp Gaze, Stormshields, Baranar Stars, Sheafers Hammers, and Shakos. I search for these items for the satisfaction of getting ripped off by 12 year olds while trying to trade for whatever my compulsive self demands of me that day. My Javazon, absoulute, had 636 magic find. If I could keep my merc alive long enough to get the final killing blow on Mephisto, I get another 167 added to that. I hadn’t succumbed to the lure of hacked items… until I saw the stats on the Hacked Constricting rings. 125% to magic find, each. So now I’m a cheater with 886 mf. Truthfully, I was already a cheater for using maphack. Oh well.
V 1.10 Beta version is available NOW for download. I am looking forward to playing 1.10 on the realms though… all new ladder, NO hacked items (in the first 30 mins after its release), limited rushing, Hell is actually going to be Hell difficulty, new items, new runewords, and upgrading to all runes is possible. The difficulty of the game has definitely gone up. Partys of characters with specialized attacks, in order to max damage, are almost required in Hell difficulty.
Get your cracked sashes ready!
So, first off we need to start a list of Dopers D2 account names…
Mine is:
Absoulute
Just type in “/f add absoulute” to add me on friends list or type “/whisper *absoulute <your message>” to send message.
Slightly off topic…
absoul, although I understand and agree with a lot of what you are saying, I fear that in order to make Hell difficult again in 1.10 in multiplayer, they are making it impossible to do in single player.
And as that’s the only way I play, that will suck.
On 1.10 beta (not 1.10s), I’ve ramped a FrenzyBarb up to level 75 from scratch, good if not great gear (Cloudcrack and Stormguard), no problem on NM anywhere even on players 5, but I can’t get anywhere on hell. Can’t get through the Mausoleum, let alone to Tristam.
Maybe I’m doing something wrong, or my build is now flawed in 1.10, but it’s frustrating. I’m still enjoying it, but it is frustrating being stuck doing NM Meph and Baal runs. Well, maybe the final version of 1.10 will be better, after all, this is just a beta.
Ah, the hard life of a single-player computer gamer these days!