Diablo 2 Mod coming to Warcraft 3 !

[NightWolf/Pierziz]

Hello everyone,

I hereby present the alpha version of my latest project : Diablo II PVP Mod.
It allows you to play the famous Hack’n’slash Diablo II inside Warcraft III, without installing any other 3rd party program.

The game is not playable for now, but I wanted to share with you a couple of thoughts.

First of all, some ingame insight

I tried to bring together the iconic visual styles of both games, with icons and models in a very Warcraft-ish way, and interfaces and sounds based on Diablo 2’s ones.

Spoiler: Screenshots

Now, one may ask :why ?

Why making a poor bugged copy while you can play the original game which is just perfect ?

The idea came from PvP.

For those who don’t know, in Diablo II, Player versus Player is not really part of the gameplay and has been set up by very competitive people to add some end game content. It requires insane gear and a fully leveled up character. Therefore in order to perform well, you need :

• to be rich: the gear needed to perform is stupidly rare and thus expensive
• time: you need dozain of hours to level up your characters to 99 and hundreds of hours to farm those juicy items
  

Which leads to the following : almost nobody (including me) in Diablo II has everplayed PvP.

The idea of the project was to open PvP to anybody by playing quick games with a very large choice of gear that you wouldn’t need to farm and that let you enjoy any build of any characters. You don’t need to be rich, you can enjoy a 30 minute game without farming for dozens of hours, and you get to play on your favorite game which is Warcraft3 ! Problem solved !


With that being said, I can see actually a couple more reasons that would make this project worth making :

• You don’t need to buy Diablo 2, nor switch between games. You can open Warcraft 3 and play a quick PvP game between a 4v4 and Direct Strike.
  
• Diablo II really lacks endgame content. With this mod, everything becomes possible: a Hero Defense, a Battle Arena, etc., all using the Hack’n’slash perspective.
  
• It is always interesting to push the limits of the World Editor and see what we can do inside the Warcraft III game engine. I think any new mod is always welcomed. That’s why we are all here : to keep the game alive with our creativity.
  
• The code is meant to be flexible and adaptable (except for the interfaces for now which are really sticking to the ones in D2) and could be the foundation of many new projects. For example, how cool would it be to have a campaign centered around Thrall the slave who slashes his way out of the human army !

I would love to hear your thoughts about this project and what direction you would like it to take.
For now, the Sorceress is almost finished and I want at least another character before running the Beta version.

Thank you for reading !
Cheers !


PS : by theway, some of you might have recognized a couple of models taken from the Hive. I’m in the process of listing all the authors for proper credit !

 

[A]mun]

That must've taken months to get the background systems right?! (breakpoints, attackframes, hit recovery etc?)
+ The whole UI and custom skins.

How bad does it tax framerates, latency in multiplayer?

 

[NightWolf/Pierziz]

Hello !

Thanks for your feedback !

I started around May 2025 on my free time so around 8 months for now (although I didn't work on the project every day).
It took quite some time but it's almost done, although there are still quite some bugs !

In terms of latency in multiplayer, I don't know yet but from the few tests I've made, it seems to work fine in LAN. However, it might not be the case if 10 players send a frozen orb at the same time

Now I have 2 directions that I can take:

• Either I stick with the PvP original plan, but for it to be interesting I need at least 3-4 classes and all the major items, which means the beta version (playable in multiplayer) won't be here any time soon
• Or I have in mind to create a Hero Defense with waves of monsters coming around, and the characters starting at level 1 and leveling up along the waves. This would be testable and fun to play with only 2 classes of heroes and would need way less time (basically add some items, a new class and design the hero defense system). The games would last 30 minutes-ish.

What do you think ?

Cheers !

 

[khopesh]

looks smooth, pls add BGM

 

[NightWolf/Pierziz]

Hello,

Thanks !

What do you mean by BGM ? Background music ? Thereis already a diablo 2 background music actually which is "entering the wilderness". But in the future versions there will be the tristram music as well.

 

[Wareditor]

Looking really nice! I think the hero defense idea sounds the best for current Warcraft III scene.

 

[NightWolf/Pierziz]

Looking really nice! I think the hero defense idea sounds the best for current Warcraft III scene.

Thanks !

Regarding the hero defense, that's what I had in mind !
What next class would you like to be implemented next ?

Cheers

 

[MasterHaosis]

That looks awesome!

 

[Panda]

All the good ol days!

 

[NightWolf/Pierziz]

Ladies and gentlemen, the showcase of the version Alpha 1.24 has been released, featuring the Lightning Sorceress !

Showcase

Spoiler: Ingame screenshots

What has changed since Alpha 1.00

• New monsters (Spearwoman, Gargantuan Beast, Zombie)
• New items (Mangsong's lesson, Arachnid's mesh, Mara's, Harlequin's Crest, ...)
• New skills (Lightning sorceress, half of the Necromancer skill tree as well)
• New skins (Vipermagi)
• Potion system
• Rare items generation
• Poison damage mechanics
• Game crash/lag fixes

Once again, many thanks to all the content creators on the Hive from which I borrowed some models to make this project viable.
Credits are on the way !

What is next

There will be another alpha version featuring the Necromancer and other lacking (and mandatory) mechanics (such as pick and drop items), and the next one after that should be a beta version opened to anyone willing to play it and help me develop and fix it (Paladin or Amazon will be added by that time).

I will also open a thread in the new "Projects page" provided by the website which will allow me to give more details about the development and progress, and finally create a section dedicated to all the contributors.

This project is HUGE so it may take another couple of months before the next Alpha version.
Thank you everyone for your patience !

Cheers !