Preface: eSport is an ambiguous term. If you're looking for gaming competitions, this isn't technically relevant. However, I've always considered eSports to be gaming in general. I hope you enjoy!
To this day, I can't help but feel warm inside when I think about the times I spent playing Diablo 2. There's an overwhelming sense of nostalgia that engulfs me when I talk to others about it. It was the year 2000 and I was a young 13-year-old boy who was about to experience something that would change the way I viewed video games even to this day.
I'd always been interested in video games. I recall the feeling of excitement as I opened a Christmas present from my parents to discover a Sega Mega Drive. Even now, I'd love to jump into a session of Shinobi, Streets of Rage, or Golden Axe. These games are timeless to me. Games like Pokemon Blue and Red kept me entertained for hours on the Nintendo Game Boy, and the Final Fantasy series on the PlayStation made me realise how important storytelling is to a top-class game. But none of them held power over me like Diablo 2.
What is Diablo 2?
Diablo 2, developed by Blizzard, is an action role-playing game with fantasy and horror elements. Players can choose to assume the role of one of several different classes at the start of their quest, including an Amazon, Necromancer, Sorceress, Paladin, and Barbarian. Each character type has different qualities, so players can decide exactly how they wish to play the game. If you want to run in and smash things with brute force, you'd pick the Barbarian. If you'd prefer to cast spells over your enemies, you'd be better off selecting the sorceress.
Players work their way through the storyline by completing quests in different Acts of the game. Each Act becomes increasingly more difficult as enemies are stronger and in greater numbers. Quests involve things like rescuing characters, collecting items, and ridding the land of evil. Along the way, players can find random loot of varying rarity and worth from fallen enemies and chests and can increase their character's statistics and abilities by equipping these items. Players also gain experience points by completing quests and defeating enemies and can level their characters up along the way, granting new statistics and special abilities.
Why Was Diablo 2 So Special?
Although the game itself was incredibly fun, the social aspect of Diablo 2 was the key quality that changed things for me. There was a huge push towards teamwork with this game, and you could play with friends or with random people around the world. There was also a chat section in the main lobby within which I would spend hours talking to strangers about the game. Funnily enough, I made some online friends through this feature and spoke to many of them regularly on MSN Messenger back then. I don't recall my own username on the game, but vividly remember a guy I used to talk to called P-U-N-X. I thought he was so cool. He played the game so well and his character was equipped with some of the best gear you could find.
Diablo 2 was the first game that I encountered that had a trading aspect. Players would go on difficult quests together to try to find rare loot that they could trade in the unofficial online market. This comprised of an honour system where players would enter a game together and trade loot by dropping it on the ground for each other to pick up. Of course, I also learned here that you cannot trust everyone. It still annoys me that I was ripped off by a couple of people back then. Still, I had a blast looking for special loot and trading for items that I really wanted to equip to my character.
It's easy to change your mind over the years when people ask what your favourite game of all time is. However, Diablo 2 will always be my answer because I played it not in one, not in two, but in three different eras of my life. The first era was when the game was initially released. If I wasn't at school or out skateboarding with my friends, I was in my dad's office playing Diablo 2 on a terrible old PC. When I say terrible, I'm talking about a machine that took 20 minutes to boot up. It was good enough to run the game when it got going though. I'd look forward to playing the game whenever I wasn't physically playing it. It was the type of all-encompassing hobby that many others discovered once World of Warcraft was released, also by Blizzard. Two of my friends also loved playing the game and these were the people I also spent time skateboarding with. We'd be talking about the game non-stop until we all decided to go home and play it. One of these friends, Adam, sadly died in a car crash in 2008 but I have many incredible memories of him from over the years.
The second era within which I played this game was at college. Here in the UK, that's at the age of 16-18. I was in a heavy metal band at the time with some of my friends and we all picked up the game again and would play it together most evenings when we weren't causing mischief by getting drunk in forests or playing our guitars way too loud for a suburban housing estate. It wasn't difficult to fall immediately back in love with the game. After all, it offered everything I enjoyed in a game; strong character development, a fun storyline, endless customisation, loot runs, trading, and interactive multiplayer aspects.
The third and final era for me and Diablo 2 came a couple of years later when I was working in a rock bar. Once again, I'd managed to bring it up in conversation and one of my friends had already played it and loved it. This piqued the interest of others around us and I again found myself driving back from the bar to log on and play Diablo 2. It was now a dated-looking game in terms of graphics and performance but it still held its own against modern games simply because it was so immersive. We'd spend hours playing it and then hours talking about it when we were together.
That was the end of my time with Diablo 2. I still have the game so there's a chance that I'll play it at some point if I'm feeling a bit nostalgic. It's the kind of game that sticks with you for life, but sadly it has also meant that I've harshly judged other games when they haven't offered me the same immersion. These days, I tend to stick to games like Call of Duty because it's fast-paced and I can play it on my own. Most of us have responsibilities at this point in our lives that mean we can't just jump on and play as a group like we used to. Times change, but Diablo 2 will always remind me of some of the happiest times of my youth.