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Diablo 2 Resurrected stole the spotlight from little bro Diablo 4 last week with the surprise release of its Reign of the Warlock DLC, which adds the iconic ARPG's first new class in 25 years as well as some handy quality of life updates. The DLC costs $25, which is either a greed-driven atrocity or "the ultimate sign of respect," depending on how you look at it.
As someone who's been playing Diablo 2 for 25 years, I fully understand the protective urge to tell modern-day Blizzard to keep its grubby paws off such a beloved game, and to the studio's credit, the original Lord of Destruction version is still available on its website for $10. But let's be real, Diablo 2 Resurrected is very pretty, and extremely faithful to the original game. It's also reasonable to hope Blizzard leaves it untouched as well, and it seems it is doing that... in a way.
From the perspective of Path of Exile co-creator Chris Wilson, who was obviously directly inspired by Diablo 2, Blizzard locking D2R's quality of life, base game updates behind a paid DLC is a sure sign that it's taking the utmost care in preserving what's become an "important piece of gaming history."
"When working on changes to Diablo 2, you need to be so careful. This is a special game. It launched the entire action-RPG genre," said Wilson in the above YouTube video where he shares his thoughts on the new DLC as a fellow ARPG veteran. "It feels like wherever I go in life, I can ask someone if they've played Diablo 2 before, and they not only say yes, but have incredibly fond memories of playing it as a kid, a teenager, or while at university.
"Diablo 2 is a common shared memory among all of us, and that's why it must be treated with the utmost care, and it's very clear that the D2R team does deeply care about this. This is most clear when you see how they have partitioned off the changes into a new era that you can choose on a per-character basis."
Wilson pointed out that, should Blizzard add any changes to the Reign of the Warlock branch of Diablo 2 Resurrected, players can always just go back to the original version of the game, which has very minimal changes to the original 2000 APRG, and play it "forever."
"I suspect that the intent [behind Blizzard "paygating" quality of life improvements behind paid DLC] wasn't about selling more copies, but about preserving a museum piece baseline," said Wilson. "To me, those features being only available in the new era is the ultimate sign of respect to the original game. The team seems fully aware of the care that needs to be taken around this important piece of gaming history, and is treating it with the respect that it deserves."
Wilson, who has frequently cited Diablo 2 as his main inspiration for co-founding Grinding Gear Games and co-creating Path of Exile, which he called an "homage" to Blizzard's ARPG, wasn't without his criticisms for the Reign of the Warlock DLC. In the same video, he also said Blizzard made "a strategic mistake" releasing the DLC without "substantial new exploration content" like a new act.
