Blizzard Entertainment - Press News

DIABLO II GOES GOLD

Blizzard prepares for its biggest worldwide launch ever

Irvine, CA, June 7, 2000 -- Gamers should start clearing their calendars and stocking up on caffeinated beverages now. Blizzard Entertainment announced today that Diablo II, its highly anticipated real-time action role-playing game, has gone gold. The game, which has initial orders in excess of 1.5 million copies worldwide, will start shipping to retailers worldwide as early as the end of June.

In Diablo II, players return to a dark world plagued by evil forces. After possessing the body of the hero who defeated him, Diablo resumes his nefarious scheme to shackle humanity into unholy slavery by joining forces with the other Prime Evils, Mephisto and Baal. Players face a new series of quests to rid the world of Diablo and his vile brethren forever.

"Diablo II is our most ambitious undertaking to date," said Mike Morhaime, Blizzard Entertainment president and co-founder, "From the depth of each character class and the size of each act to the expansion of Battle.net's new worldwide architecture and the number of languages for which we localized the game, the scope of Diablo II is much larger than any of our past projects. With development complete, we are now focused on shipping this game to retail worldwide by the end of the month."

Key features in the game include:

Five all new character classes -- the Amazon, Paladin, Barbarian, Sorceress and Necromancer -- each with unique skills and abilities. In all, Diablo II offers 150 special abilities as each character can develop 30 unique, class specific skills and spells throughout the game.
Four expansive towns to explore complete with wilderness areas, dungeons, monasteries, tombs, caverns and crypts.
A randomly generated world with filled with all-new weapons, armor, monsters, unique items, non-playing characters and more than 20 quests.
Nearly 25 minutes of motion picture quality cinematics and a 70-minute original score of ambient music.
Full multiplayer support for up to eight players and expanded Battle.net support with servers on land in North America, Europe and Asia.
Optional 3Dfx and Direct3D support that offers near-perfect perspective, including scaling and parallax effects, to the game play experience.

When Diablo released in 1997, it was an instant hit among gamers and debuted as the number-one selling game its first month in stores. The game has sold in excess of 2 million copies worldwide and was the number-one selling computer role-playing game in 1997.

Availability

Diablo II is being developed by the Blizzard North design team and is expected to release on three CD-ROMs by the end of June in Windows.95/98/2000/NT format. A Macintosh version of the game will be available during the third quarter 2000. Though Diablo II's rating is currently pending, Blizzard anticipates that the game will receive a Mature rating from the ESRB. The game will be available at most computer and software retail chains worldwide.

System Requirements

Diablo II's single-player minimum system requirements are Windows. 2000/95/98/NT, Pentium. 233 or equivalent, 32 MB RAM, 650 MB available hard drive space, 4X CD-ROM drive and DirectX compatible video card. Additional multiplayer system requirements include 64 MB RAM, 950 MB available hard drive space and 28.8 Kbps or faster modem. The game also offers optional 3D acceleration by supporting Glide and Direct 3D compatible video cards with at least 8MB of video RAM. Direct 3D requires 64 MB of system RAM.

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Best known for the number-one selling Warcraft I & Warcraft II series and the blockbuster hit Diablo, Blizzard Entertainment is a premier publisher of entertainment software renowned for creating many of the industry's most critically acclaimed games. Blizzard's track record includes three consecutive number-one selling games and multiple Game of the Year awards. The company's free Internet gaming service Battle.net reigns as the largest in the world with millions of unique users.

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