Diablo 2 Is [Still] Great

23 May, 2026

Diablo 2 is a hugely popular game, if you played PC games in the early 2000s you almost certainly put some time into it. I first played it shortly after release, September-ish 2000 and the day we bought it I remember reading through the manual in the back of my parents car, we were on the way to see some quite religious relatives and I vividly remember being strongly encouraged to leave the manual in the car by mum. Probably a wise call.

A photo of my D2 manual.

When I first got the game I played it like I played most games, figuring stuff out by myself and looking at the manual if I got stuck. Playing like this I barely managed to defeat Diablo and "beat" the game. A year passed and we got the Lord of Destruction expansion so I took my old character played through the new Act, barely managed to defeat Baal, game finished once more. I had seen a new difficulty open up, "Nightmare" and greyed out below it the ominous "Hell" difficulty. But when I realised it was the same game but harder I lost interest quickly.

Missing from my experience was multiplayer play, with the only exception being at LANs where we'd boot up the game and power through normal difficulty before quickly getting bored. I knew about Battle.net and even played some Diablo 1 on there but Diablo 2 was demanding enough that our Australian dial-up connection struggled with the US servers so it was laggy enough to make it practically unplayable.

It wasn't until years later that I learned that Diablo 2 on Battle.net is how the game was really designed to be played. There were items only available on Battle.net, every enemy in Hell difficulty is completely immune to at least one element type so you need to team up with others to take them down (or resort to a weaker dual element build) and critically, late game items are incredibly rare and this rarity is balanced out with the ability to trade with other players leading to a vibrant trading community. This aspect of the game was completely missed by me and I probably would have become obsessed back then if we had faster internet, but instead Diablo 2 just became a game I liked as teen that I looked fondly back on.

The classic battle.net logo.

Jump forward 15 years to 2016 and Diablo 2 re-emerged in my life as it intersected with one of my other specific game interests, speedruns. AGDQ the biggest annual speedrun event was on and the player MrLLamaSC was doing a speedrun of Diablo 2, beating the game on normal difficulty with the Sorceress in 1h45m. As he played he talked through a bunch of the mechanics of the game and I found it fascinating, especially with how the random maps are generated and how you can predict where the exits to each area are. It inspired me to give it a go and after getting used to having to play in a tiny window (Diablo 2 only supports 800x600 as its max resolution) and watching basically every MrLlamaSC youtube video I managed to succesfully beat normal difficulty with a Druid in about 2 hours and I was hooked.

Diablo 2 running in a tiny window.

After I completed my druid speedrun I started watching the full game speedruns where you beat the game on all three difficulties, Normal, Nightmare and Hell. These runs where 3-5hours long and were only possible with intimate knowledge of the game systems. I really wanted to give it a shot but at this point I hadn't even beaten Nightmare difficulty so I set forth on a casual play through to beat Hell.

For this I used a mod for Diablo 2 called PlugY which brings all the online only items back into single player, gives you access to the online only quests and most importantly gives you an unlimited shared stash so any items I found could be "traded" to my other single player characters.

This is where Diablo 2 really clicked with me and it became a bit of an obsession. I played through the game clearing Hell difficulty with every character and my knowledge of the game continued to grow which made each subsequent play through easier and easier. Like with speedrunning various games before my mastery over the game kept increasing, my mechanical gameplay was improving and the gaps in my knowledge were getting filled. And this sort of mastery over a game tickles my brain in a very specific way. Learning all you can about something and then putting that knowledge directly into effect in a measurable way is just catnip to me.

I played for hundreds of hours to what was an inevitible conclusion, I finished the game, with every character, on every difficulty, and while I never did any Hell speedruns I was satisfied.

But there was another aspect of single player Diablo I hadn't really explored because it seemed like opening the doorway to madness. "The Holy Grail", basically you play the game until you have found every possible item. I was watching MrLlamaSC work on his grail on Twtich and seeing him kill the same boss groups hundreds of times in a row looking for the last couple of items he needed looked maddening but when those items did drop he would absolutely pop off. And when he did finally finish the grail three years had passed since he started. It was fun to hang out in his chat and watch but I really couldn't see myself playing enough to ever complete the grail myself.

It had now been five years since I saw the AGDQ speedrun, I'd just recently finished my goal of beating the game with each character and Blizzard had just announced Diablo 2 Resurrected a modern remaster of the game I'd just poured hundreds of hours into. It looked amazing but initially I was resistant to picking it up since I was a bit Diablo'd out and I wasn't exactly thrilled with the idea of giving Activision Blizzard any money.

Polygon's coverage of the harassment case is pretty comprehensive.

But what got me over the line to eventually getting it was watching Australian streamer Enpherno play on Twitch shortly after release. He was doing a Holy Grail speedrun, with the goal to get every item in the game in under 500 hours. It was a chill time hanging out in his chat while at work and I learned even more about the game watching him. He'd get into the minutae of how items are generated, the maths behind the +Magic Find stat and so much more. His approach was data driven, planned out meticulously and very effective. He achieved his goal in 438 hours and it was amazing to witness all that knowledge and planning come together like that.

I wanted to give the Holy Grail a go, I really liked the idea of having this larger than life goal to strive towards and even though I'm not built like some players who can stomach 10+ hour play sessions I knew if I kept playing I'd eventually get there. I've played reasonably consistently over the last 5 years and I'm only at 95% completion and realistically I'll never find the last 5% with how rare they are. It's still been so much fun though.

If you were like me and have a fondness for Diablo 2 but never got passed the surface level enjoyment of the game I'd strongly recommend picking it up and trying to get through Hell difficulty, it's going to be tough but bit by bit you'll be able to piece together all the knowledge needed to suceed and when you finally do it's a truly amazing feeling.

And now is a great time to jump in, five years after Diablo 2 Resurrected released, 25 years since the last expansion, Blizzard have release Reign of the Warlock a new expansion adding a new character, a boatload of QoL changes and a bunch of new content. Hit me up if you ever want to chat Diablo and I hope to see you in Hell.