Blizzard are such teases.

Upon the announcement of Diablo III at the World Wide Invitational in 2008, it was logical to suspect Blizzard would release the long-awaited sequel around the tenth anniversary of the release of Diablo II. Well, that's today, and Diablo III is still missing in action, along with flying cars, teleporters, and everything else science fiction and an overzealous imagination has taught us to expect by now.

But we're not bitter. We may have destroyed half a dozen mice, spent a couple of thousand hours hunched over our keyboard killing literally millions of creatures, but that won't stop us from celebrating this auspicious occasion with a look back at the game that refined a genre.

Diablo II was released worldwide on June 29th 2000 to critical acclaim. This action hack'n'slash took the dark, brooding qualities of the original Diablo and refined them further, pushing the world of Sanctuary out of a dingy dungeon and towards vast, free-roaming outdoor locations. As was to be expected, the monster, character and weapon count rose drastically, imbuing the title with near limitless gameplay and a robust online multiplayer component.

Virtually everything was changed from the ground up for this sequel. The item generation and weapon statistics were heavily modified and procedurally generated rather than being predetermined at the point of level creation. The stash was introduced, along with stamina attributes, the skill tree, numerous new NPC characters and an online ladder system, to name but a few.

Blizzard, in their genius, managed to extend the random item drops found in the original Diablo from a basic game of throwing dice to something resembling Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas. Endless websites talked in detail about statistical probability, monster level, item levels, and whether or not the weather had anything to do with item drops (it didn't). Throw into this the magic find multiplier and you had a game that could infuriate and intrigue the most patient and sceptical gamer respectively, prompting such otherworldly statements as "Just one more Mephisto run with my whirlwind barb, I need that unique Tulwar so I can dual socket it with these Ist runes for another 60% MF". Repeat that outside of the confines of a secure Battle.Net game, and you're likely to spend a few months lying on a sofa talking to a short man with a beard and a notebook.

Quests, too, were markedly improved on the original game. There were far more of them, their arc encompassed entire acts, and introduced such unique concepts as the Horadric Cube, bonus experience, and skill points. A new mode - Hardcore - was responsible for perhaps the most depressing event possible in gaming; the complete loss of your character following a single death. If ever there was an argument for an electronic funeral to honour the memory of your videogame characters, Diablo II would be held up as evidence.

Lord of Destruction, released 2001, was the expansion everyone expected. Raising not only the screen resolution limit (always the Achilles heel of the series, and the newly-added 800x600 support did little to address this) but the stash size, and introducing new concepts such as jewels, weapon switching, runewords and even an entirely new act, Diablo II was finally equipped with the legs to last well into the future. Supported by a number of patches - perhaps the most controversial of which being 1.10 which ramped up the difficulty and introduced skill synergies - Blizzard rode the success of this title through to earlier this year before quietly dropping additional content creation.

Diablo II will always be remembered as an example of near gaming perfection, where even the tiniest character modification could change your entire experience. Where research, patience, skill and luck played an almost equal hand in assuring your victory. Where, given the opportunity, you could lose an entire weekend and be grateful about it.

So here's to Diablo II - today we celebrate your birthday, confident in the knowledge that there's still plenty of slow weekends left where we'll retrieve you from that shelf, roll a hammerdin, and kick Baal's ass one more time.

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Head over to Blizzard's Diablo II birthday page if you haven't already!