Diablo II: Resurrected, the upcoming Diablo II remaster from Blizzard, won’t include TCP/IP multiplayer despite previous promises.
During a recent blog post, Blizzard revealed that Diablo II: Resurrected won’t include the classic TCP/IP multiplayer options – a firm favourite for LAN parties in the past.
“TCP/IP support will not be available in the upcoming Beta or the final game,” they confirmed. “After careful deliberation, we will no longer be supporting this option as we identified potential security risks and are committed to safeguarding the player experience.”
TCP/IP multiplayer was a mode in Diablo II that allowed people to play online using peer-to-peer connections – completely bypassing battle.net. The main purpose for this was to allow local multiplayer over LAN, but it was often used to play online, too.
One of the downsides was that TCP/IP multiplayer used local save files – a process that could lead players to encounter cheaters who had manipulated their own save files. It’s likely that this is why Blizzard has decided against TCP/IP support in Diablo II: Resurrected.
But it goes against previous announcements.
“We’re really focused on having an authentic experience,” said Blizzard executive producer Rod Fergusson in an interview with Eurogamer. “You can still connect locally through TCP IP if you want to! That was there in D2. It’ll be there in D2R.”
“We’ve really focused on making sure that if there’s something about the core experience you loved, we’re bringing that over,” he added. “But we do get a lot of benefits from being on a more secure platform.”
Although Battle.net is clearly a more secure platform for multiplayer, the choice to step away from TCP/IP support is already upsetting some players – especially speedrunners.
“Other than the intended purpose, TCP/IP multiplayer is also the only way to quickly reroll maps without external tools when speedrunning the game on normal difficulty,” said Reddit user Crypto2k.
He also explained that this could affect some less-popular mods:
“Also, it should be mentioned that only the most popular mods, such as Median XL, Path of Diablo and Project Diablo 2, have their own dedicated servers, so this change makes it impossible to play the less popular mods online with remastered graphics and features.”
Elsewhere, Valheim is getting an RPG-like class system thanks to an impressive new mod.
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