Evolution in Itemization

by Tachyon on Wed. 16. July 2008, 01:25

Filed under: gameplay, items, diablo3

The announcement of Diablo3 at Blizzard's World Wide Invitational made me think about how the itemization and loot system have evolved since the times of Diablo2 - Lord of Destruction.

Clearly Diablo2 was the loot-centric game par excellence, one that fed the ancient human instinct of hunting and collecting, which always makes an explosive mixure in terms of gameplay addiction.


The number of unique items with resonant names such as Herald of Zakarum or Windfury was sheer endless, and so were the stats and abilites that came along with them. The item system was one of, if not THE, building blocks of Diablo's success, and World of Warcraft became a successor in the hunt for items.

When WoW was released, the diversity on item stats was not that large (there was for example no spell damage at launch), but Blizzard kept adding more and more of them, and this trend continues well into the next expansion. Sockets on items were also adapted from Diablo2, allowing the bearer to fit the item better toward his needs.

The most interesting aspect is not what WoW omitted, but in which way it improved the whole itemization and loot distribution system to take what worked and improve what didn't.

Loot Tables
Diablo2 had no concept of loot tables, only a definition (drop level) per mob, which maximum item level it could drop items from. Certain named mobs such as the famous Pindleskin had a drop level sufficiently high to drop any of the best items ingame, which lead to players farming him (one run took about 2 minutes) over and over again, be it manually or using a pindle bot, to collect the best items ingame in an easy was. Clearly this was too easy and too monotonous, so what WoW did was to create Loot Tables that contained a list of possible drops along with the drop chance for each mob in the game. This required the player to beat certain encounters to see a specific item drop, but also gave the player a chance to farm for items he whishes to posses.

Soulbound Items
Items in Diablo2 (and also in other MOGs such as Dark Age of Camelot) could be freely traded from player to player. This lead to item recycling, when a player found a better item and gave his old item to another player who could use it, which finally resulted in devaluation of the item paired with a massive inflation on the items. Good items almost stayed forever in the game, the only way they were destroyed if they were invalidated by better drops of deleted if a player quit the game.
Diablo had massive problems with item duping, which lead to further invalidation, making gold as a currency obsolete and introducing duped unique rings (SoJ - Stone of Jordan, which was the best ring to wear for a long time) as the new currency.
The solution to this dilemma, when Blizzard created WoW, was to make the precious items soulbound when they are looted (BoP - Bind on Pickup) or worn (Bind on Equip) for the first time. This effecticely countered item recycling as well as item duping (as the best items are BoP and thus can't be traded), and added to the replayability and prestige factor (items now reflected achievements of the player wearing it). The number of items that still can be traded is limited to BoE items and crafted items, the former usually being not the most powerful ingame, the latter requiring huge expenses on craftig mats.

Loot Distribution System
In times of Diablo2, any item was really dropped, in fact to the ground, where every player could pick it up. The Diablo world consisted of short-living instances for a maximum of 8 players, thus ninjaing items was normal and didn't have consequences at all, compared to WoW where there's at least a chance that bad reputation gained for ninjaing had a backdraft and consequences for the ninja.
WoW introduced loot distribution systems such as round robin, master looter, free-for all, and need-before-greed. Groups of players could settle on a system before or during their adventure, and have a fair system to decide who gets the item drops, avoiding a great amount of drama.

What WoW can learn from Diablo2
WoW improved a lot over the many patches and the expansion, and subsequently added more variety in stats to the items, and also secondary effects as procs or 'on use' effects, to make more of the Diablo heritage.
Still there's some things that can and certainly will make it into the game sooner or later, such as the rune system, where runes with special effects can be added to an item in the same way as gems can be added, and also special rune words can be build to build powerful new magic items (such as Heart of the Oak in Diablo2).
I suppose Blizzard is holding back this cool system on purpose, just to add it in as a great surprise one sunny day (or patch, or future expansion).
What we certainly will never see in WoW are stats such as Magic Find (increased chance to find better magical items), or non-functional stats such as Increased Light Radius. On the other hand, we can never be certain...

What Diablo3 will learn from WoW
Loot Tables, Soulbound Items and Loot Distribution Systems are precious lessons Blizzard learned, and it would be foolish not to use them in Diablo3. Thus my prediction: Diablo3 will feature each and every one of them.