Hellgate: London Cover Story, Day Three
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The list of upgrades that Diablo II: Lord of Destruction added should serve as a lesson to any game developer planning to add an expansion to an existing game, Blizzard included. Adding a fifth act to the original Diablo II approximately one year after its release, Lord of Destruction also added two new job classes (Druid and Assassin), ethereal items, runes (which players could combine in socketed items to add tremendous properties), hirelings (NPC allies that could be resurrected if killed in combat), elite and unique items, new sets, and a higher 800x600 resolution. While the resolution still looks pixelated by modern standards, especially if blown up to full screen, it was a technical concession that gamers appreciated, especially since it rerendered the original game in the new screen dimensions.
This time around, gamers got a new boss to kill: Baal. While Diablo (the boss) still gave players a stiff fight through the beginning of the game, the true menace of the eventual fifth scenario on the Arreat Summit, was Baal. Laying waste to everything in sight, and giving players plenty of enemy-filled snow-covered landscapes, war-torn battlefields, and gloomy dungeons to navigate en route to their ultimate goal, Baal is the game's final bad-ass.
