Diablo 2, sequel to the popular Diablo, is to ship minus the ability to support guilds, or online communities of similar individuals in it's initial release. This announcement may surprise and
dismay some gamers, but Bill Roper, producer of the game, has stated his case as to why the feature won't make it
into the initial release. For the uninitiated, a guild is exactly the same as it would be in real life; a collection
of people or an organization set up with a common interest, such as a Thieves Guild or a Merchant Guild.
"Our goal in supporting Guilds has always been to assist the core Diablo II community in organizing and
recognizing advanced players into on-line communities," he began.
"Our plans for Diablo II players, however, have always been grander in scope. It is with this desired
implementation in mind that we have made the very difficult decision to put Guild specific features on
hold, for now.
While we had some of these features implemented for some time, they simply did not live up to what we
wanted to accomplish or what we knew the core community would expect."
Roper went on to say "Guilds are an important part of the on-line RPG community and we did not want to disservice them with
a poor solution that would only leave us all wishing it had been done right. This does not mean that we
intend to abandon the concept of supporting guilds.
To the contrary, it means that we are dedicated enough to this idea that we want to do it right and,
in light of the work that still needs to be done to ship the game, we need to wait until we can put
enough focus on making Guild support right. This was not an easy decision to make, but we firmly believe
that Guilds need to be properly and thoughtfully designed and implemented instead of merely being dropped
in."
This statement makes it clear that Diablo 2 will include Guild support at some point, but not how long after
the games release the feature will be added. It is promising, however, that the feature has been set back
until it is exactly as the team envisioned and provides the consumers with a better final product. It is still
a shame to see the feature chopped from the initial release but hopefully the actual game may overshadow this.
Diablo 2 has yet to receive a confirmed release date, but is a highly anticipated title and as such, RPGamer
will keep track of its progress.
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