The late '90s were a time before ubiquitous high-speed Internet connectivity, a time when online multiplayer gaming was still something of a novelty. Punch a big hole in your firewall?Īs for the security of playing this version of Diablo online via, let me hand the proverbial mic to my Ars Technica colleague and Windows expert Peter Bright, who wrote the following portion: The Internet-in-1996 jokes write themselves. Gosh, it still includes "age," "sex," and "location" in its profile pages. Also, as the above gallery shows, the interface of old is veeeery rudimentary. In particular, my tester and I each used items in our inventory, only to find (on a very rare occasion) that their effect hadn't kicked in, yet we'd lost the item. I matchmade with another tester to confirm that, once those ports are opened, you can expect perfectly solid Diablo-over-IP performance, along with some glitches that seem era-appropriate. Just be warned: alt-tabbing out of Diablo 1's vanilla version is a pain, so get your VoIP of choice running before you launch a session. Joining friends' games is a bit clunky, but so long as my tester and I were in the same chat channel, our games appeared in each other's interfaces. We received this news roughly a week ago, and we're still doing that cartoon-like thing of shaking our heads rapidly, then rubbing our eyes, looking up, and saying, "huuuuuh?" But seriously, this out-of-nowhere release, mixed with an out-of-nowhere partnership, is real-and we've tested the results. GOG has already announced that it will follow this Diablo launch with future re-releases of the first two WarCraft RTS games' original files. All of that is a first for a Blizzard game sold as a digital download.Īnd it won't be the last. Once you download the files, designed for Windows PCs, that's it-no online check-ins or CD keys required. You'll have to go to GOG, not the Blizzard Launcher app, to purchase and download Diablo 1 (for $10, right here). What's more, Blizzard has handed the game's keys to a completely different storefront: GOG.com. This famously DRM-free marketplace is run by CD Projekt Group, the Polish company that also owns game developer CD Projekt Red ( The Witcher). It's not a remaster, per se, but it does come with some quality-of-life updates and is Blizzard's first DRM-free game launch in years. Which brings us to today's seriously surprising news: Blizzard has just put Diablo 1 on sale digitally, a first for that 1996 game, with no prior announcement. Which is to say: the word "Diablo" is a touchy one as of late. These are the fans who, to some measure, let Blizzard have it after seeing the unveil of smartphone-only "freemium" game Diablo Immortal in place of any " Diablo IV" news at BlizzCon 2018. Further Reading Amid layoffs, Blizzard won’t release a “major” new game in 2019That leaves one classic-minded Blizzard fanbase in the cold: the Diablo fans.
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