D2 content patch 1.13 in the making?!?

[Doc]

I once, in a fit of variantish stupidity, tried whirling with two Sander's wands.

The whirl was only so so, but the real surprise was how fast Frenzy was killing stuff. Barb was wearing the full Sander's set. I had some crushing blow somewhere, but I don't remember where. My memory is telling me that it was Rattlecage armor. I can't remember very well.

[Nystul]

And I'd wish that they would made the game less dependant on gear. When I started my Barbarian, everyone laughed it off because apparently, without a BotD or something else that requires a lifetime of MF'ing, a Barbarian is useless. Same for many other classes...

They did make the game less dependent on gear! All you really needed for a whirlwind barbarian was a decent pike (didn't even need to be rare! just premium with a couple nice attributes), a couple unique or set items that could be gambled usually by the time you finished normal Duriel, and a decent bit of leech life and leech mana. Then you were virtually invincible even on hell difficulty, until some oblivion knight cursed you with iron maiden in the middle of a whirl and you killed yourself with the next couple hits! Ah for the good old days.

(Edit: Artifacts are called "unique items" in this game, right? I guess it really has been a while.)

[Dr.Disaster]

:neenernee Blizzard managed to fool us :neenernee

2 weeks ago there was that "early warning" info by that Bashiok guy. He stated that ladder reset and patch 1.13 release may occur as early as end of april.

Now over the weekend that same guy gave another info saying that they are still working on the 1.13 and that they'll expect a good amount of testing due to the changes made/coming. This may include the use of a test realm as back when 1.10 was made with several weeks of tests. No release date in sight now. Same goes for ladder reset.

I support a good amount of testing since we want less bugs, not more. But which eludes me is how they could not see 2 weeks ago how much work they still have to do before even thinking about releasing 1.13

Oh well at least people started cleaning up accounts

Dr. Disaster

[KingOfPain]

Skill tree re-specialization is currently a planned feature for the Diablo II 1.13 patch. Source

Although, DII in the current state, is not difficult (having varied areas with wide range of challenges) enough to make respec "necessary", it's still nice to have all the other luxuries

Actually, that would open up variant ops, say, a sorcy can only use Cold for normal diff, Fire for NM and Lite for Hell, etc.

[cb-13]

As posted by Blizz

Update - 9/30

The Diablo II 1.13 patch is on temporary hold while we investigate potential impact on the Battle.net service. As we moved closer to launching the patch concerns grew that an increase in the player stash size (a feature in the patch) could compromise the Diablo II Battle.net service. The hardware and configuration could potentially not handle the increased stash size gracefully under heavy load. Currently we’re investigating potential impact as it is one of the larger content features in the patch and we’re hoping it can remain a part of the release. If it does have to be removed it will require additional time to remove it, generate new patches, and test, which will add time before we can go live on the PTR.

We’re hoping to have our diagnostics and a final decision on how we’ll be moving forward decided by early next week and we’ll have an update for you at that time.

Linky ; http://forums.battle.net/thread.html?top...1&sid=3000

CB-13

[Dr.Disaster]

As posted by Blizz

Update - 9/30

The Diablo II 1.13 patch is on temporary hold while we investigate potential impact on the Battle.net service. As we moved closer to launching the patch concerns grew that an increase in the player stash size (a feature in the patch) could compromise the Diablo II Battle.net service. The hardware and configuration could potentially not handle the increased stash size gracefully under heavy load. Currently we’re investigating potential impact as it is one of the larger content features in the patch and we’re hoping it can remain a part of the release. If it does have to be removed it will require additional time to remove it, generate new patches, and test, which will add time before we can go live on the PTR.

We’re hoping to have our diagnostics and a final decision on how we’ll be moving forward decided by early next week and we’ll have an update for you at that time.

Linky ; http://forums.battle.net/thread.html?top...1&sid=3000

CB-13

I guess their concerns are about the b.net hardware in use. More stash space to store things will require slightly more RAM to handle it ingame multiplied by the number of D2/LoD Players online. No idea how their systems are configured but as far as i know one b.net server can run up to 1000 games. If things get tight and they don't want to update their hardware they could simply lower the max number of games per server.

[Dr.Disaster]

I've just found this in the b.net D2 forums from Bashiok:

Update - 11/18
We've recently completed a revised version of the Diablo II 1.13 patch that removes the increased stash size. A larger stash will unfortunately no longer be a feature included in patch 1.13 due to the previously mentioned concerns. As higher priority work continues on Warcraft III we're hoping to complete our quality assurance tests for the 1.13 patch in the next few weeks. But as always, the types of issues that may appear and take higher priority are rarely foreseeable. We continue to plan a release based on our best intentions.


The "previously concerns" is the b.net hardware performance limit due to old and not easy to upgrade/replace system hardware mentioned in some other post. So it's no increased stash size for D2/LoD. Let's hope the yet unknown remaining content blows out minds

[Dr.Disaster]

WOW!
I smell a x-mas present in the making

[KingOfPain]

Looks good on paper (have not tested it yet), and the one fix I was wishing for too:
- Greatly reduced the explosion damage dealt by Fire Enchanted monsters.
This bug really bugged me!

[WarBlade]

Overall I say "meh".

The two biggest holes IMO were the storage (I once estimated precisely 66.6% of the size I thought it should be) and the screen resolution. At least they woke up to the existence of widescreen monitors.

The skill balances... I haven't been on top of this game in years, so it's hard to say, but I used to have the impression that the Paladin was never quite complete. It still looks incomplete to me. Underpowered skills of the Druid are no doubt still underpowered and the overpowered skills of the Sorceress are probably still overpowered.

Not to worry though. I still have other games with other objectives to worry about.