The game may be 16 years old and counting, but as one of the staple classic games from Blizzard's library, Diablo II can still hold a candle to today's high-intensity games. Blizzard has decided to give some back to its fans who still play the second installment of Diablo by issuing a brand-new patch for Lord of Destruction to help the game play smoothly on newer machines running Windows 10.
The last time Blizzard updated Diablo II: Lord of Destruction was five years ago. Since then, many players have already moved on to Diablo III. However, the company said there were still a significant amount of players logging on to the old servers to play the more classic Diablo game so it wanted to ensure those players still got the best experience they could get.
“There is still a large Diablo II community around the world, and we thank you for continuing to play and slay with us. This journey starts by making Diablo II run on modern platforms, but it does not end there. See you in Sanctuary, adventurers,” the company said in the patch announcement.
Blizzard has reportedly been trying to restore its older games back to their former glory and part of the initiative involved seeking a new software engineer back in November 2015. According to the job description, which has since been taken down, the company was looking for someone to help the user experience of its loyal followers still playing their older titles on newer hardware.
"We're restoring them to glory, and we need your engineering talents, your passion, and your ability to get tough jobs done," Blizzard wrote.
Some specific changes and improvements to Lord of Destruction included in this patch include:
- Complete compatibility with Windows 7, 8.1, and 10 – no need to run in XP mode anymore!
- Mac installer for 10.10 and 10.11
- Saved characters will be migrated in the first client to avoid issues from Windows system admin changes
In addition to this patch 1.14a for Diablo II, we can expect more patches and updates for beloved classic Diablo games. After all, even with this new patch, Mac 10.9 and earlier are still not supported so we're hoping the folks at Blizzard will get on that fix soon.
