Author: Diablo 2 Hardcore mode almost made it into first game
Author David Craddock has been working on a book about Blizzard Entertainment since mid-2008. Entitled Stay Awhile and Listen, the unauthorized book talks to nearly 80 former employees, including those who used to work at Blizzard, Condor (later Blizzard North), and Silicon & Synapse (Blizzard's original name when it was founded). Shacknews is pleased to offer a steady stream of stories from the book leading up to its release early next year.
Think of all the potions that could have been made from these body parts.
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replyJohn Keefer posted a new article, Author: Diablo 2 Hardcore mode almost made it into first game.
Author David Craddock has been working on a book about Blizzard Entertainment since mid-2008. Entitled Stay Awhile and Listen, the unauthorized book talks to nearly 80 former employees, including those who used to work at Blizzard, Condor (later Blizzard North), and Silicon & Synapse (Blizzard's original name when it was founded). Shacknews is pleased to offer a steady stream of stories from the book leading up to its release early next year.-
Alternate screenshot caption: "OM NOM NOM NOM"
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Thanks for this exclusive, David. This project should be fun over the next several months.
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My pleasure! My Shack roots run deep.
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I would have tried it out as a mode, but as the ONLY way to play? Scary. Someone else would have to have been passionate enough about Diablo to write a book about it!
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Map run/walk toggle to mwheel.
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Really? That's like saying I couldn't enjoy super Mario bros because of the primitive 8-bits.
The game has style and atmosphere, great sound effects and music that brings it all together. I question your love of Diablo 2 in the first place.
I want a touch and move 3d version of Diablo2 on my 3ds...
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It'd go a long way for me if they replaced D3's item drop system with D2's.
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That's a good question and a tough one to answer. I lean toward probably not, though. The game was punishing enough during later levels, but a one-life game would have been too far out of the grasp of the mainstream audience Blizzard has always sought to entice.
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David, how'd you get the material for this book? Just persistence or some unique contacts?
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A little bitta both. I moved to the Bay Area in '07 and started doing some freelance writing. I pitched an article on how stereoscopic graphics might be used in games to Official Xbox Mag; they liked the idea so I started searching for contacts to interview. My uncle ran a PC-game start-up at the time and put me in contact with two artists who worked there: Kelly Johnson and Eric Sexton of Diablo 1-2 fame.
Eric and I hit it off; we started getting together to chat and play games. During one gaming session, I thought it might be fun to see if he could round up some old workmates and play Diablo 2 with me. Then a light bulb went off: maybe he could put me in touch with them so I could interview them for a book about Blizzard North and Diablo, a story that had never been told in full. There are editorials on Blizzard North and "South" out there, but many of them contain false information. I figured I could tell the tale and set the record straight.
Eric and Kelly jumped aboard, and my uncle gave me Dave Brevik's phone number. I cold-called him one night during dinner time. I blurted out something like, "Hey your name's Dave mine too ha ha I'm writing a book on Blizzard and Diablo could I interview you sometime?" He said, "Uh... sure."
Things snowballed from there. :)-
Here's more info on how I got in touch with Dave and the Schaefers: http://dm-press.com/news-2.php
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Some cool behind the scenes info there ...
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... and we are going to help ;)
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Thanks, man! I follow your game reviews, so perhaps we can discuss getting you an advance copy of the book when it's ready.
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Thanks! I think you'll enjoy the coverage Shack has planned, and the final product, of course.
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Tell me more about the book... is it going to be print, or digital?
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Glad you asked! We're releasing on Kindle, Nook, and iBooks platforms. We hope to release a print version of the book, but that will depend on the success of the e-version.
Check out more stuff here: http://dm-press.com/faqs.php-
Sorry to derail, but I can't help but read links like this as fags.php
Shack has broken me. :(-
Hahaha, it has broken me too. :(
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Blurbs? He wrote whole articles on the King's Quest series. They owned.
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Compliment taken as intended. :) Many thanks to you both for the kind words.
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But of course!
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We plan on doing a feature down the road a bit where we will interview David and he can tell you all about the book, how it started, etc.
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Haha, first I've heard of that in a long time. :)
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And the Chronicles of Craddock are ... ?
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Back when I wrote (briefly) for IGN, my editor suggested Chronicles of Craddock for my blog's name. A reader Photoshopped a Bioshock graphic for the blog's "Craddock" banner, which displayed my name in a font from the game.
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Alas :(
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super cool, looking forward to it!
Congrats on the upcoming book, David -
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The proposed units for HoTS (at least some of them) are proper, proper dumb. Like .... bottom of the barrel second party RTS from some dodgy game company. It's incredible just how bad the warhound actually seems to be designed overall. I hope I'm wrong but the stats are out for it, movies of it are out. Developers have told us how it works, it's just a very lame supreme commander looking unit.
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Eh! I couldn't spell in my last post.
They're actually trying to put back some of the Broodwar elements they took out of sc2 with HOTS. The problem however is the same as with sc2 - they're taking from pop culture (transformers the movie), and bad pop culture at that. I agree completely. Units like Dragoon and Reaver made the original's design such an outstanding game. Come SC2 suddenly it's all regurgitated facsimiles like the war of the world or transformers.
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I see another AMA in the future...
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I would like to do one at some point.
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you heard it here first! Thanks, David.
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We should do the AMA on Shack as a thread off one of the stories.
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"Few people know that the concept for Diablo was not formulated by Blizzard, but by Condor co-founder Dave Brevik."
Diablo would have been a turn based RPG instead of an Action RPG had it not been for Allen Adham and Blizzard "South".
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