the Diablo History is not dead yet!

[Count Duckula]

Five days after claiming its rise from the dead, the Diablo Timeline suffered a setback. Being a dumbass, I overwrote a current save with an older one, and lost most of my LL forum work.

Ten days after claiming its rise from the dead, I recovered from that loss and managed to publish the Diablo Timeline.

You can view it here:
http://pirengle.diablosc.com/diablo_timeline.html
(See, Roland? I'm finally using your webspace for something other than image hosting! :D)

This project is by no means finished! Correct my mistakes, add your own history, enjoy what's been done so far, feel free to contribute some more. (I know for sure that there are errors. Come on, you error-mongers, find them! :P)

Questions, comments, contributions, all are appreciated.

(Hopefully by this weekend I'll separate the 3@30s from the rest of the timeline and put them in their own little directory.)

[--Pete]

Hi,

Nice read :)

Now go and add the 400+ pages I just sent to you (from Xi, of course) ;)

BTW, some of my memory of the time line is off. Xi's scrapbook will straighten some of that out.

--Pete

"If you want to change history, become an historian" -- someone whose name escapes me ;)

Edit: "Typos, what typos?"

[Count Duckula]

Now go and add the 400+ pages I just sent to you (from Xi, of course)

The 400+ pages, the 350+ pages from Bolty's old forum, the 100+ pages at Nude Beach/Asylum, the new LL and DSFC stuff...

Produce packing, book shelving, and loremastering: sounds like a odd summer to me! :D

[LavCat]

Questions, comments, contributions, all are appreciated.

Besides thanks and admiration, I do have one comment, Count -- I hope it is constructive: some of us are into bifocals, and that background makes the text awfully hard for old eyes to read. Could I request that it be modified a little?

Your history made me research when I started playing. A copy of Diablo mysteriously appeared on my doorstep 3/30/1999. Since then I've played nothing but the Diablo series. Before that time I played Wasteland, King's Quest IV, and occasionally guitar. In my youth I was into backgammon, but gave that up as being too gratuitously violent.

Are you working on a similar timeline of DII? I only hope that a few of us may live to see the patch...not to mention Jarulf's Guide.

[Bob]

1. I'm still not on it....
april 2002, I lurked for about a day first
I also responded to GF's post about closing the DGF

2. I agree that the background is a bit difficult to read from, a really light colour would look good.

3. The source for that is too bit to read in notepad! anyone on 56k must've spent an age loading it. may I suggest that you split it up by the year.

-Bob

[Feryar]

AUGUST 2000

--GRENDEL_RETURNS posts some semi-coherent stories about tricking and pking legits before being flamed back to the stone age.

Damn, the DSF had much fun with that guy :)
Did anyone save the flames he received? Wasn't that back when flames were written in rhyme by Occhi?

[Walkiry]

2 little things ;)

1. I did a 3@30 to prove the Zen setup works :)

2. Anyone knows who introduced the LAW? I though it was Meshuggah but I might very well be wrong (the famous "AC is for cowards!" quote ;) )

[Xiuhcoatl]

Hi Pirengle,
There is a minor correction to be made in your timeline. "Claudio founds a legit Diablo guild based in Germany called (in English) the Brotherhood of the White Oak." should read, "Yumek@ge[BWO] founds a legit Diablo guild...." Cat made a nice homepage for BWO, but he was not the founder as you can see in the members listing.

The posts that Pete "translated" for you will be easily digestible, but the teleported posts will give you quite a headache, I believe. Have fun getting the links to work -).
Xi

[Occhidiangela]

Virgil Tibbs really was the best at handling dear old Grendel_Returns. That was when I was in full rhyming mode.

*drinks some coffee*

Hmm, need to do more bad poetry . . .

[TaMeOlta]

Who do I hafta bribe to be a small part of history ? :P Perhaps a "bad" poem to make me more memorable ? ;)

[Nystul]

2. Anyone knows who introduced the LAW? I though it was Meshuggah but I might very well be wrong (the famous "AC is for cowards!" quote

It was way before Meshuggah. This is like asking "Who introduced the tank mage?" The idea has been around virtually from day one. Sunset Warrior played LAW style early on, and I think perhaps .Gore. did too. Pete or Ashock would probably know more on the early LAWs.

The LAW playing style became popular amongst DSFers largely because of something Bolty added to his guide, saying that a very high level warrior can play effectively using the Helm of Sprits. This is ironic on some levels, because Bolty was not playing what we would call a LAW style (has Bolty ever played a full-fledged LAW? I wonder!) and many early LAW players would not have chosen the Helm of Sprits. But what it did is it got people talking about the idea of perfect blocking, which prior to that wasn't a common topic of discussion.

[Occhidiangela]

1. Wow. We're not worthy! :D

2. The Background, in my opinion, has to go. It interferes with the words presented: packaging still counts. Bolty went through I don't recall how many color schemes on each successive forum until he got what he liked.

3. A few edits:

a.

Van Damned creates, with Sourceror’s aid, a Spectrum of Righteousness, a system to scientifically methods of possible cheating. Van Damned’s original four spectrums are

Suggest "scientifically classify" . . . I think a word got missed.

b.

MAY 2001

--Blizzard releases the v 1.09 patch for Diablo.
--Business with HI the troll gets so bad that Virgil Tibbs puts up a HI FAQ on his website to warn others.
--Curtner does a 3@30 with Curnter(NM).
--Fritz Mahoney does a 3@30 with Mahondolf(NM).
--Mean Jean929 does a 1@17 with a naked mage.
--Many DSF posts at this point involve massive polling, which prompts Spear to write one helluva flame about them. Naturally he is flamed back. He says about the experience, “I'm sure most of you are well aware of the thread that threatened to give me a great new name, SpearJerk,….”
--Harm posts a guide on how to kill the Butcher that comes close to copying Freshman Diablo and Pete’s work on the subject.
--Blizzard releases the v 1.09 patch for Diablo. 
--Virgil Tibbs posts an early draft of what will be his HI FAQ on mrbean1121’s forum.
--Mean Jean929 attempts another 1@17.
--Shivaking does a warrior 1@23.

They released 1.09 twice? :D

c. FWIW, I think I started lurking, and then posting, at DSF about May or June of 1999 . . . or maybe July or August. Brain not accessing that memory module, the Guinness is to blame. I was not one who saved my posts, was sort of new to forums in general at that point, and had no idea I might want to save anything. I think I predated Virgil Tibbs, but not by much if at all. I still remember that Pope Master's argument with AC(INFERNO) about who was cheating, or was a cheater, was going on at page 18 or 19 shortly after I arrived. Without having met folks at the DSF, I would never have become a Lurker here at Bolty's Lounge, nor would I ever have 'met' all of the nice folks here, or had Rhydd throw so many darts into my backside while nitting my posts. :D

d. I think that the Landru references are late insofar as the origin of the bot. Landru had been around before I ever showed up in mid 1999. Others may disagree with that memory.

e. In another FWIW, I suggest your history might better be named "A Diablo History" rather than 'The.' And IIRC, no Diablo History is complete without a nod to when Boba Fett posted his trainer. His trainer was infamous, as was his ridiculous site listing all of the people he had killed while in God Mode: it was a synonym for 'stinking cheater scumbag resource' and he himself was a 'l33t haxor' poster child.

*duck* as Duckula throws a phone book at me. *Hear her mutter something like 'Hey, pal, I wrote it, I will entitle it however I bloody like, thank you very much! Now back to your coffee!*

For your warm welcome and friendship, I still thank all of you who opened your arms to me in those early days. You know who you are.

E~T, phone home!

[Roland]

How many people have to misquote me? :P

For the last time, it was 98. NOT 97. Diablo had been out for a year by the time I migrated into the online world.

All this time, and you STILL haven't corrected that typo? That's actually WORSE than the people saying I showed up in 2000 or 2001. :P

Edit:
And another thing! You have absolutely NO mention of my "Newbie Guide"! How dare you! Though it was practically nothing, IMO (compared to what it was SUPPOSED to become :P; Fortune City ate my webpage, and so the Guide died), but a great deal of people commented on it being a great resource, and it eventually fell into Landru's favored links. It started up almost 2 years after I began my tour at the DSF: sometime in the fall of 1999. I tried to do a lookup with the Wayback machine, but the earliest it had was 2001, and that was LONG after it died out. I had to go looking through some of the posts of mine I saved (like my Arty vs. Tank Mage Guide, posted in January of 2000). If I had to pinpoint exactly when, I'd say either August of 1999, or November of 1999. Maybe even October, but I'm not sure. Sometime in that general timeframe, between August and November of '99. Ask around, I'm sure SOMEONE else remembers it. Wish I could give you a better date than that, but unfortunately I hadn't yet made any backups of my site, so when it got eaten, that was it. :(

The world would be a sad place without historians.

Edit 2:
http://www.network54.com/Hide/Forum/41981

October or November it is. Most likely November. That pits it being eaten around... hell, I don't even know. ...Ok, I checked. Sometimes around May of 2000 it got eaten. Possibly June, but I'd bet May, since that's when my posting activity on my forum stopped. Which would pit it at about 6 months. Yep, that sounds about right, from memory. 6 - 7 months was how long it was up, so from about November (potentially end of October) 1999 to May (potentially, but not likely, June) of 2000. Just one more tidbit to throw into the History.

Edit 3:

--Roland is invited to be a Diablo II beta tester by Peter Hughes.

Peter Hu. Not Peter Hughes. :P

And, under April of 2000:

--The idea is kicked around the Lurker Lounge and the DSF about making a “DSF channel.”

Though I may be foggy on this, I came up with that idea (twice, actually, since the first time I was shot down; I think someone else came up with that idea even before me, though I don't recall who, when, or if it even happened; actually, now that I read over it, there was, at one point, a channel called "Strategy Forum", but I don't recall if it was ever officially adopted, so yeah, the idea wasn't new when I proposed it, it just wasn't an official channel, and not actually used, either), and I don't recall it being as late as 2000. Though, maybe I'm wrong. Actually, now that I think about it, maybe it WAS that late. Hmmm... Hang on, let me check my old forum.

Ok, checked. May of 2000 was the whole ac(INFERNO) scandal in the Strategy Forum channel, so yeah, I guess it was thought up in 2000. Damn, it's so hard for me to remember timeframes when this stuff all happened. Jeeze... Alright. Nevermind about that, then. :) Guess you got the right date.

[Mirajj]

...of DSF history. In Dec of 1998, I posted asking about the age, location and occupation of the DSF'er's. The responce overwhelmed me, creating one of the (But not THE) largest threads in the history of the DSF. I saved and coallated the responces into the Diablo Strategy Forum Breakdown.

It underwent several updates, and eventually ended up archived on Da-Kota's site. By the time it ended, it recorded the A/L/O of over 200 people who visited the DSF. Including a certain (in)famous Bot.

Oh, yeah. I wrote stories on occasion, too. ;)

Mirajj

[Roland]

...to be remembered for something good, something worthwhile, something monumental, than to be remembered for something bad.

Occhi has always been known for his incredible wit and wonderfully humorous rhymes, limericks, and just general chatter. It's as much a part of his personality (both percieved and actual) as his "Rogue" imitation, and his caffeine obsession. Hence why he gets recognized for his poetry (which is not to discount all the other grand contributions he's made over the years).

If you want to be remembered in history, do something that no one else has done to date. And do it well. Mayhap, with time, patience, and perseverence, you will be rewarded for your hard work. Nothing comes for free.

[Roland]

...Finnan Haddie was the first to introduce an actual guide on the LAW playstyle. You can still find it over at concre+e's Diablo Page. A very good read, albeit somewhat basic (compared to the "guides" we're so used to; back then, that was a mouthful, and then some, and well more than was truly needed to be a "guide").

[Nystul]

First, as others have said, the newspaper background isn't great. To me it's not just a color issue, I think my eyes are actually trying to focus on the fuzzy newspaper words instead of the foreground.

Now for some potential errata:

MAY 1998

--Da O’Toth does research into “of thieves” jewelry and posts his finds on the DSF. Among his discoveries, he is the first to point out that the “thieves” suffix not only halves trap damage, but also halves ranged damage. As this was an unintended side effect of the suffix, Blizzard corrected it in a patch.

The date is right but the credit is not. Crystalion is the one who discovered this. It was considered a landmark discovery, and the suffix was frequently referred to on DSF as "of Crystalion" from that point until Blizzard fixed it. Not surprisingly, there was also plenty of debate about whether this was a 'bug' or a 'feature'.


JULY 1999

(...)

--A DSFer (later found to be BOSTIC) creates Landru, a bot that responds to posts on the forum, usually ones containing only links or buzzwords like “cheats” and “hacks.” Every so often, Landru would post a list of current posters and how many posts they made.

This date is clearly off. Maybe July 97? Landru was extremely active when I started posting in early 98.


OCTOBER 1999

(...)

--Barngrille writes a now-classic post about deaths of Diablo characters and how to die well in Diablo


I'm guessing either the date is wrong here or this was a repost. Barngrille's time on the DSF preceeded mine, although he seemed to be one of those famous Lurkers who would pop in and say something if a sentimental thread got going. Any posts he made in 99 were few and far between.


--Bolty posts the first five notes in what is to become the Diablo Buglist.

Something seems not right about this too. The Buglist was initially compiled to present to Blizzard as a to-do list for the 1.05 patch (the 1.07 patch actually ended up adressing the list). The notes listed in this entry might have been added in Oct. 99, but the list itself goes back quite a bit earlier.


NOVEMBER 1999

(...)

--An unnamed Ironman team manages to kill Diablo, the first team to do so on record.

I'd have to do some research to verify this for sure, but I believe that would be the team of Friar, Kshira, and Gumby.

FEBRUARY 2000

--Nystul, along with three others, becomes a Barbarian King with Animal(BAR).


Strange wording here. Animal became the fourth Barbarian King, which is a solo achievement. I assume that's what this entry means. At some point after that, Animal and three others were able to earn a third dot in an all-BAR coop, which was certainly the most incredible thing I've ever done in this game.

Well, that's enough nitpicking for now. Sorry that I don't have the exact info on most of the things I point out as being wrong. All in all, great job! It's really something to look back and get a glimpse of how things unfolded.

[Count Duckula]

After reading all the posts, PMs, and emails on this, I’ve put in three major changes.

1: Background has been changed to something lighter, and Diablo-related. Got the most messages about that.

2: Fixed all the typos, forgotten words, punctuation, spelling, etc. that was pointed out to me, and sent a copy to an anal editor friend of mine to give the once-over.

3: The timeline has been broken up into parts. I have removed all of the “player X started/stopped playing D1” and “player X did a 3@30” and made a special list for both of those. The former became a roster listing players by join date, the latter became a hall of heroes listing player, character, class, achievement, and date.

I’ve color-coded the rest of the information depending on content: blue for Blizzard-related Diablo information, red for bugs and bugfixes, green for significant Diablo-related events (such as the closing of the DSF), and violet for significant community-related events (such as AnonymousCoward’s guide and its effects).

All these parts will be accessible from the main page, with links leading of into subpages. If anyone cracked open the source, they’ll know that I composed the site in FrontPage. I hand-coded the site originally, but wrote the original text in Word. For some reason, copy/pasting the document into Notepad to add HTML left a lot of garbage characters, and the page wasn’t loading right. Time to reinstall Arachnophilia and hope it helps. :(

I appreciate everyone’s feedback, especially the people who praised the work before picking it to pieces. In my writing classes back at Hollins, everyone’s a critic.

I also had a few PMs and two emails talking about my grammar. Yes, I is an English major. ;) To some people, relaxing on a forum means TyPiNg LiKe ThIs or somesuch. To me, relaxing on a forum means typing as I talk. I don’t speak perfect English unless I have a reason. I don’t type perfect English unless it’s the absolute final draft. Let me get all of the guide out on the web, typed in reasonable English, before I worry about reflexive pronouns and prepositional phrases and passive voice. (I fancy myself a student of Latin. In Latin translations, as far as I was taught, it’s okay to have dangling prepositions and passive voice. Excuses, excuses. :P)

Others also questioned the seriousness of the endeavor, and thought my work was “pedestrian at best,” and “a chronicle of the community should be assembled by a long-time member, and not a latecomer to the scene.” Well, ladies and gentlemen, if y’all think you can do better, by all means, do so. :P I’m not doing this “for a spot in history.” I’m doing this because this history is disappearing day by day. And it hurts when I get emails from people I’ve respected and admired ever since I was a newbie telling me that I’m not doing a good enough job or I can’t do this job because I’m not an ancient member of the Diablo cadre or my project is not worth their personal information or my project is too rough and simple for their input.

Give me a chance to edit and improve. Maybe with the input of the entire community, instead of just the vocal wordsmiths and the slap-happy youngins, this project can turn into something that people will enjoy. Or, at least, people will be willing to contribute instead of picking out each and every fault with it.

(Sorry for the spiel, but wanted to make sure I had everybody’s attention.)

Now then.

Lavcat: I’m not doing a D2 guide. I don’t know enough about D2 to encapsulate it’s history, and by the messages I’m getting, apparently I don’t know about D1 to do the same. :(

Bob: I lost a lot of information when I overwrote my save. Sorry if yours was lost with it. I’m copying everything back in, so don’t you worry. :)

Walkiry: Can you give me the character name and class for that Zen 3@30?

Xi: Thanks for the warning. :P

TaMeOlta: Just existing makes you a part of history. :D

Occhi: They also released StarCraft twice. Heh. Caught that one, didn’t catch this one. And yes, I did write it, but “A Diablo History” sounds a bit better than “The Diablo History.” It was originally “Diablo History.” Maybe the grammarians should write up a treatise on article usage? :P

Roland: I don’t know, to be honest. A couple people were trying to use you as a landmark, IIRC. And Peter Hughes is Word’s spellcheck at work.

“It is far better to be remembered for something good, something worthwhile, something monumental, than to be remembered for something bad.” I disagree. It is far better to be remembered for something rather than not be remembered at all. And “bad” and “monumental” goes together like Ducky and orange juice. ;)

Thanks to everybody for clarifying things, especially Occhi, Roland, and Nystul. Also thanks to the folks who emailed and PMed me off the forum--I’ll protect your anonymity, don’t worry. :)

Next draft should be out on Monday.

[Virgil Tibbs]

Feryar wrote:
Did anyone save the flames he received?

Unfortunately, GRENDEL happened sometime before I started archiving posts, so the only flames I have of him were my own. They're at my site, along with plenty of Occhi poetry. ;)

http://jc316.stormpages.com/diablo/vtstory.html
(scroll to the bottom for Grendel)
http://jc316.stormpages.com/diablo/vtpost.html
(plenty of Occhi posts here)

Tibbs

[Kasreyn]

But I bet you already knew that, Ducky. ^_^

Do you want me to re-send the email that had my info?

-Kasreyn