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''Diablo'' is a Hack And Slash Action-adventure Game released by Blizzard Entertainment and Developed by Blizzard North , released on November 30 , 1996 . OVERVIEW In this Hack And Slash game, the central goal is to slay the many demons summoned by Diablo, the Lord of Terror, in a sixteen-level "labyrinth" underneath the small town of Tristram , and ultimately confront Diablo himself. ''Diablo'' contains replayability because of its randomly generated levels, which are in turn randomly populated with monsters that drop random items imbued with random magical properties. ''Diablo'' in many ways resembles Roguelike games, the main differences being more realistic graphics (utilizing DirectX ) and the fact the game is in real time, rather than turn based. Its popular sequel and its subsequent expansion pack extend the gameplay through additions such as new character classes, monsters, items, quests, areas, and plot. The latest installment, the expansion pack for '''' has a huge online gaming community, complete with a primitive gameworld Economy due to the rarity of most of the popular items. CLASSES The three character classes of ''Diablo'' are the Warrior , Rogue , and Sorcerer . Each character, following typical role-playing conventions, has his or her own particular traits. The warrior possesses physical strength, the rogue is very agile, and the sorcerer is oriented towards magic. However, unlike modern class-based games, character's abilities are not unique; a warrior can use spells and a sorcerer can use a bow.
CHARACTER ATTRIBUTES The four numerical character attributes in Diablo affect the characters' combat statistics which in turn determine how powerful the character is. With each level up, five points may be distributed among the "Base" attributes to permanently increase them at the player's choice. They may also be modified by elixirs and magical shrines encountered in the game. Various magical items acquired in game increase the effective character attributes "Now" (while these items are being used).
CHARACTER STATISTICS
MONSTERS The monsters of ''Diablo'' are , the Catacomb s, the Cave s, and Hell , which starts to seep into the mortal plane due to Diablo's presence. Each of the sixteen levels contains monsters that are tougher and stronger than ones from the level before it. When the player kills a monster, the monster may randomly drop an item or gold. In the world of Diablo, monsters are divided according to their masters. The followers of Mephisto , the Lord of Hatred, are the Undead ( Skeleton s and Zombie s), demonically corrupted creatures whose unshapely forms and twisted limbs leave them in eternal agony and rage (overlords), and lava demons spawned by the spilling of Mephisto's blood in Hell. The followers of Baal , the Lord of Destruction, are creatures that seek the undoing of the physical Universe and the manifestation of Chaos . Some of them include the Fallen Ones, Goat Men and Poison Spitters. The minions of Diablo, the Lord of Terror, are the fears of man in a corporeal form, figuratively-speaking. They prefer to attack their victims from the shadows, especially after their prey demonstrates weakness. Some of those demons are The Hidden and Scavengers . In Diablo, enemies are also divided in 3 groups:
ITEMS Items are dropped from monsters or sold by the vendors. Items can be:
STORY The story of ''Diablo'' is based on the premise of a war between Heaven and Hell . The town of Tristram is under attack by demons, and the player must save the town. As the player delves into the underworld, he discovers more about the demon Diablo, through large tomes that are read aloud by a narrator. Eventually, the player reaches the lair of Diablo and must kill him. Here is a more detailed summary of Diablo's background story: Diablo, an incredibly powerful demon, is the Lord of Terror and one of the Three Prime Evils of Hell, who had been imprisoned in a Soulstone and buried in caverns deep beneath the town of Tristram. Though his imprisonment was meant to be eternal, the power of the Soulstone weakened over the centuries, eventually allowing Diablo to awaken from his forced slumber. He Telepathically turns a nearby human, the Archbishop Lazarus , into his loyal puppet. In order for Diablo to actually leave the Soulstone, Diablo needs a human body to possess. At first he tries to gain control of King Leoric , the local ruler, through his puppet, Lazarus. But, since Diablo is in too weak of a state to possess the king, he fails and merely drives the unfortunate monarch insane. He then gets Lazarus to kidnap King Leoric's son, Prince Albrecht, so that Diablo can possess and warp his body, thereby attaining physical form and freedom from the stone. At the moment of the boy's possession, his terror is so great that the boundaries between the realms are broken and parts of Hell itself seep into the mortal world and take root in the subterranean labyrinth beneath Tristram. Diablo may have a body now, but he is nowhere near his full power, so he bides his time and summons countless hordes of demons and infests the whole underground complex, claiming the new region of Hell as his own personal lair. Soon afterwards the maddened Leoric is slain by his own lieutenants. Demonic creatures appear in the countryside as the Lord of Terror regains his strength in the heart of the labyrinth and prepares for the time when he would once again emerge in the world and seek out his brothers - Baal and Mephisto - and free them as well. It seemed to be a matter of time until the Prime Evils gained dominion over the entire mortal realm. Then, one day, a lone traveller approaches the town of Tristram... ONLINE PLAY ''Diablo'' can be Played With Others over the Internet via Battle.net . Unfortunately, the game lacked the stronger anti-cheating methods of Blizzard's later games and as a result, many characters online have been altered in various ways by common third-party programs known as "trainers". It is difficult to play a fair online game of ''Diablo'' in public games, as hacks and duplicated items are common. The use of trainers (which modify memory locations while the game is running in order to cheat) is fairly common and character editors are often used to give incredible statistics to even newly-created characters. Additionally, buggy game code allows any player to infinitely duplicate items and avoid stunning in combat using the Mana Shield spell. A typical duped/hacked item seen online is the "Godly Plate of the Whale", a combination of enchantments which actually can never appear on a legitimate item due to the way the game generates items. However, a number of legitimate players still exist and may be found primarily on forums related to Diablo if necessary. EXPANSION PACKS The only official '' and was produced by Sierra Entertainment rather than an in-house development team in 1997 . The game featured two additional dungeon segments located within a new side storyline, several new unique items and magical item properties, new spells, and a fourth class, the Monk. There were also two possibly-unfinished "test" classes (the Bard and Barbarian) and two quests which could be accessed though a configuration file. The offline only Expansion Pack never achieved the fame of the original, and is hard to obtain today. Some complaints included the fact that much of its content seemed less "polished" than that of the original game, nor did the new content mesh with the atmosphere of the original perfectly. Hellfire was also relatively buggy, and since a version of ''Diablo'' with Hellfire installed could not be patched using Blizzard's ''Diablo patches'', and Sierra themselves only released one patch for Hellfire, Hellfire retained some bugs that the original ''Diablo'' did not. Hellfire also had design problems wherein many of the new unique items could simply never be found. INFLUENCE ''Diablo'' has been credited with creating a '', '' Freedom Force '', '' Champions Of Norrath '', '' Drakengard '', '' Dungeon Lords '', '' Fate ', and '' Divine Divinity .'' SECRETS AND HIDDEN FILES Like a great majority of games, ''Diablo'' has many files hidden on its CD that were never used. Some of these "loose ends" are:
THE LEGENDARY COW LEVEL One of the more infamous aspects of ''Diablo'' was something that didn't actually exist. It was a rumor started on the internet about a secret level, which (according to many forum posts) supposedly contained ridiculously powerful items, incredibly dangerous enemies, and was headed up by a boss who was stronger than Diablo himself. The manner of accessing this level varied from report to report, but the most popular involved clicking on one of the Cow s in Tristram more than fifty times in a row. As such, it eventually became known as the "Cow Level". Of course, it did not really exist; no matter how many times you clicked on the cow, it would only ever cause the cow to moo at you (and cause some humorous comments from the hero). Internet forums were awash with increasingly grandiose stories by players who claimed to have been to the cow level, along with the various items they found and monsters they fought. Later in the rumour's life, players new to the idea became confused by the 'cow level' name, and described the level as being full of cow monsters: one popular version of the rumor stated that the cow level contained 'cow' variants on every type of monster in the game, for example, an acid spitter with a bell round its neck, a white and black skin pattern, and a milk spraying attack. The boss in this version of the cow level rumor was a monstrous creature called the Cow King, who was indeed supposedly stronger than Diablo. Although the cow level was nothing but a fantasy and a lie, badly edited screenshots and detailed stories kept it alive for years, to the point where Blizzard, who'd been receiving 'how do I get to the cow level' emails for a long time, put a cheat code in ''Starcraft'': 'there is no cow level.' Typing this caused instant victory. The Hellfire expansion also mocks this rumor - the first new dungeon segment is accessed by speaking to one of the townsfolk, who's dressed in a cow-suit(reason: clothes stolen). As a personal bit of Fan Service , Blizzard actually did put a cow level in '' Diablo II '', although it was merely a very large area full of monsters called 'Hell Bovines' who were cows walking upright and carrying halberds. All of their sound files were different ways of saying 'moo'. Netlore has it that the ridiculously bad voices of the cows were created by recording various Blizzard employees saying "moo." The Cow King did make an appearance, but only as a unique Hell Bovine, nowhere near as strong as Diablo is in either game. In recent years, since the real cow level was discovered, the cow level is rarely brought up other than as a joke, for example, '' World Of Warcraft '' players who tell each other about a cow level that can be accessed from Mulgore, the homeland of the Tauren , who are a race of Anthropomorphic bulls and cows. A recent update to the game also introduced tips on loading screens, one of which appears as "TIP: There is no cow level". TRIVIA
OTHER VERSIONS In 1998, a PlayStation version of Diablo was published by Electronic Arts. The game lacked online play, but featured a 2-player cooperative mode. Unfortunately, the game suffered slowdown and framerate issues. SEE ALSO EXTERNAL LINKS
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