Diablo 2 - 1.13 Patch back in Development

Bashiok posts an update on Diablo 2's 1.13 patch.

The legacy team met late last week to decide how to proceed on the 1.13 patch and the decision was made to go back into development to incorporate a few additional changes. While this patch has already seen its fair share of delays we still want to ensure we’re releasing a patch that hits some key community issues. I do want to stress though that while we did look at feedback and responses we’re obviously not going to be able to include everything requested. Our hope is to hit at least a decent portion of what we saw people discussing and correct some of the more severe issues while keeping additional development time as brief as possible.
We don’t have a current estimate for release, and because work is only just beginning on these new changes we won’t be announcing their details. We’ll be keeping everyone updated as to the progress of the patch though, and we hope to see this update on the PTR as soon as possible and then off quickly to a release and ladder reset.

More information.

I played D2 way back when it was released (June 29, 2000 according to my google). Since then I haven't really followed it. I have to say, it's very impressive that blizzard still supports this game and patches is, nearly 10 years later. Can't really think of a single developer that has done this besides blizzard.

Well, normally people wouldn't really be playing the game all that much in 10 years, so even the need for this kind of support isn't there.

Diablo II will probably die with release of Diablo 3. Same with StarCraft. That's what has happened to Warcraft.

Originally Posted by Sergius64
Well, normally people wouldn't really be playing the game all that much in 10 years, so even the need for this kind of support isn't there.

That's the thing. They don't really need to support this game. Yet they do because apparently there is still a sizeable player base. There's a lot of things blizzard gets wrong but polished games and supporting their games aren't among the list.

kind of waste of money.

Absolutely not. They're protecting the Blizzard brand and creating goodwill for Diablo 3. Diablo 2 is still being sold. I bet it's still making money after support costs. Diablo 2 gets patched, everybody talks about it. Very efficient marketing.

It would be great if some companies were doing the same,at least patching the game to work with new hardware and OSes.

Do they plan on doing anything about the resolution? I tried the res hack and it was pretty interesting but buggy. Clearly they could support higher res if they wanted.

Originally Posted by turian
kind of waste of money.

Do you ever say anything positive?

Originally Posted by turian
kind of waste of money.

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Diablo+B…7084&st=diablo

Originally Posted by Bargeral
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Diablo+B…7084&st=diablo

Please don't post links to the evil empire.

I know it won't happen, but I would love if the patch enabled support for higher resolutions. I know there's a mod allowing for single player games, but I want something like that for battlenet. I still love D2 though I haven't played it in years.

Originally Posted by EvilManagedCare
I know it won't happen, but I would love if the patch enabled support for higher resolutions.

Larian did for DD. I'm sure Bliz could for D2, if they wanted to.