When "Warcraft 3: Reforged" was released last year, it was more controversial than expected for a remaster of a beloved game. Fans were upset that Blizzard had made more conservative enhancements than originally indicated, but the real crux of the controversy was that Blizzard had integrated the multiplayer of "Reforged" into the original game, and in doing so had removed the nearly 20-year presence in "Warcraft 3" of The removal of features such as clans, LANs, and ranked matches angered even players who had not purchased Reforged.

Blizzard will not repeat that mistake with the remastered version of Diablo 2: Resurrected, announced today.

"It's a different team, and that was before I was at [Blizzard]," said Rod Fergusson, who joined Blizzard last year to oversee the Diablo series. I spoke with Fergusson about Diablo 2: Resurrected before its announcement at BlizzCon and asked him if the response to Warcraft 3: Reforged had influenced Blizzard's production of Diablo 2 over the past year. diablo 2 : Resurrected builds on the code of the original game, but exists as a completely separate entity.

"One of the things we wanted to make sure was that the D2 original stayed D2 original," Ferguson said. 'We wanted to make sure that the game stayed there. For example, if you have a terrible code hacking mod that disables the security of the game, you can still do that, because if that's the way you like to play, D2R is not going to support that kind of mod. Keeping the two games separate was a big part of that Was.

Diablo 2: Resurrected is intended to be a deep and faithful remaster and includes the option to switch to classic graphics, while Blizzard plans to eliminate exploits that encourage things like bots and item duping but will leave the majority of the game intact so that speedrunners and longtime players can still enjoy it.

But if you want to play with the kind of hacking that is banned on modern Battle.net, the original game isn't going anywhere.

"We've focused on knowing our goal, which is to make D2 as authentic as possible for Diablo players. 'Both old and new players. That's what we're really focused on.