Changes

[blue]<font color="#FFFFFF">::'''''GamePlanet: ''' Have you guys ever played any of the mods that you get for Diablo II, the likes of the Median XL mod? Have you heard of that?</font>::'''Kevin Martens: ''' Oh yeah, I played that like crazy! I love it!

<font color="#FFFFFF">::'''''GamePlanet: ''' So have you taken any sort of inspiration from some of the changes he has made at all?</font>::'''Kevin Martens: ''' You bet! It kinda hit us a few months back, people started playing a lot of it and brought it in and we took a look at it. There's some things that people have done with that game that I think are exemplary. He's done an awesome job actually of monster placement and creating combat scenarios where monsters tend to 'bleed in' from the outside, and take a combat situation that at first seemed like it was something you could handle, and then suddenly grows into something that is way out of hand! And it creates these really awesome moments. He came up with some really novel monster abilities and skills and stuff. It's a terrific example of a mod.

::A lot of people will look at Diablo changes that we make sometimes and say "if you do that you'll ruin the game!", and then here's an example of somebody who's changed almost everything about Diablo II, but somehow preserved the game, you know, it still feels a lot like Diablo II! Even though lots of things have changed, including the health system -- things that are like, totally taboo, don't change that or it's over! And yet they did it. So that's a terrific example of exactly the kinds of forward thinking that we like. I don't know how he got half that stuff in there! In fact I went back and I asked one of the original artists on the game, how did he do that?! And they were like, I don't know! (laughs)[/blue]