What a Long, Strange Trip it's Been!
Hello everyone! I want to wish all of you a Happy New Year, and also a Happy Birthday to Annihilus. We launched this server on January 1st, 2015, and it has been a crazy ride. We've had ups and downs ever since the very first year, but we're still here and working as hard as ever on getting the server to the level we dreamed it would be. I want to sincerely thank all of you who have been here since 2015 and also thank those of you who have recently joined and are giving us a chance, especially during the recent content drought. I wanted to also take the time to address some questions that have not been officially answered publicly, and to give everyone an update on what is going on with Annihilus behind the scenes, and to properly address past events over the last year.
Annihilus 7.0 misses its original deadline.
We started off 2018 by hyping up a massive patch that could potentially forever change modded Diablo II, and while we still stand by that, the ideals of our team was an overwhelming amount of work for just 2 guys who already has a lot going on in their life. In spite of that, Firehawk and I slaved away everyday, hoping to meet our goal of May 2018. It didn't take very long to realize this was just a dream. I had some pretty big health scares come up around then, and the community was getting upset about the content drought after we missed the deadline, so we put out the "Challenge Ladder", which was meant to be a short ladder with increased difficulty. The plan was to buy us a couple extra months while I got through my issues. It was a pretty big hit for something that was announced last minute.
Burnout is real, and it hits hard.
By the time I got through my health issues and was able to sit back down and focus on the patch, it hit us both like a bag of bricks; burnout. Again we realized that this isn't typically something just 2 people can squeeze out in such a short amount of time, and we were demoralized, and some time went by that we were just taking a break. I realized the "Short Challenge Ladder" had already just about reached the lifespan of a normal ladder, and we had no intentions of resetting the ladder again before the new passive patch, so I decided to do a couple of short bursts of mini patches to add some life into the game and prevent another content drought. I decided to surprise people out of nowhere with the puzzle / time based 6.??? / 6.7777777 patches. These added some new items that introduced some brand new builds and brought viability to builds that have been around a while but were just not any good. It also had some cool puzzles that admittedly didn't take people long to figure out. It wasn't what we wanted to do, but it worked out pretty well.
Annihilus 7.0 has been split into multiple patches.
After putting out the mini patches, burnout was still very much a thing for both of us, but we started preparing ourselves to get back to work regardless. Around this time, it was Firehawk's turn to have some personal things pop up he had to deal with that prevented him from being able to focus on the patch much at all. There was no way he could invest nearly as much time as he did over the last year. We had no intentions of not finishing the content we've already worked on so hard, but at the same time our mental health was a priority as well because of the burnout, and Firehawk still had a lot on his plate. We were also aware the community was growing more and more impatient and another content drought was upon us. Like we mentioned before, we had no real intention of another reset on the same older version of Annihilus after seeing what we've accomplished so far with the new content, so we made what seemed like a good decision for both the development team and the community. We decided to split 7.0 into multiple patches to get the "core" of the changes out sooner to our players.
Annihilus 6.8 has been announced.
While this has been talked about plenty on our Discord, I never made an official post for it. Our first massive patch will be Annihilus 6.8. This will include a lot of the main changes from the 7.0 patch, I decided now is a good time to go into a bit more detail on what to expect in 6.8, and what to not expect.
6.8 WILL include the overhauled progression system, meaning the difficulty of the whole game from Normal to Hell will be changed. You will notice monsters are different level, do different damage, have different resistances and even use different skills in some cases. The base story mode of Hell will actually finish around level 70 or so, and that includes even Baal himself. The endgame will start from there, with the difficulty of the side areas such as the Inferno portals in Act 5, and of course the Map system. There will no longer be easy bosses (looking at Ifrit) to farm and get endless uniques.
6.8 will also include the overhauled Classes. Every single class has been reworked from top to bottom, there are no more "damage synergies". You max out the skill(s) you want to use for damage, and then other skills to compliment it. Monsters will no longer be immune to any type of element, but will still have decently high resistances against some elements. Since pierce resistances is no longer a stat on items you may be inclined to build around multiple elements with your skills as a hybrid build, which should be much easier with no synergies. Certain skills such as passives will benefit further from actually spending points in them as well, preventing any "1 point wonders". Every skill has the opportunity to be viable depending on how you build, and everything serves a purpose. Some skills will also have "requirements" that need to be met before you can put points in them, here are some examples: Example 1 Example 2 Example 3.
6.8 will of course include a completely overhauled item system. This will probably be the biggest change, every single item has been completely modified. Uniques will be more "unique" instead of just statsticks. They will often modify skills or how a class plays in some shape or form, and will also be much more rare. Magic find will become a nice stat because of this. Rare crafting will play a big role in progression, with what you currently know as "Orbs" being in the spotlight throughout the whole game, and new Orbs will also be appearing. Orbs will also now stack, so for example if you have 100 Orbs of Alteration, they will only take up 1 slot in your inventory. I cannot really express just how different items are going to look, but here is a spreadsheet of the new weapon base stats. Their speeds and damage is very much taken into consideration so all bases are viable, depending on if you want speed or heavy hitting. All weapons now also have "implicit" mods, meaning this stat will always be on these types of items, even on uniques. The biggest choice when deciding on a weapon now will be which implicit you want to use. Weapons now also GREATLY benefit from their primary stat, and can increase your damage weapon by a great amount. Pumping vitality is not always the way to go now.
That isn't every single new thing you will see in 6.8, but as you can see the actual "gameplay" mechanics we planned on changing will make it in. Now for some things that won't make it in. 7.0 was planned to have the Rift system, which is an evolved form of the Map system, along with the Soul system where you gather souls from specific monsters throughout the game and power up your Annihilus endlessly. We also planned on reworking the Crucible to be endless and not have a set amount of levels, unfortunately these will not be until the next patch. We wanted to get the actual "core" done first, things you will see as soon as you hop into the game. We will get the remaining features to you as soon as possible after we get 6.8 out.
The road ahead.
I know this is all just a big wall of words without much meaning if I do not give the information people are waiting to hear the most. The community is well aware by now how I feel about release dates when so many things can happen out of nowhere like last year, so this is all subject to change of course, but as of right now the 6.8 patch is expected to be finished in Quarter 1 of 2019. I do not feel comfortable being much more specific than that, but I felt you all deserved a much needed update on what is going on, so I hope this gives you comfort in knowing we are dedicated to getting this new content to you and as quick as possible, and we have not forgotten about you. Subscribers will still get access to the beta test to 6.8 ahead of the release as much as possible. This is NOT the same Annihilus you all know, so beta testing will be crucial. I appreciate everyone who plans to take part in the beta, we look forward to your feedback.
Wrapping up!
Thanks again to everyone who's still with us, and to everyone looking forward to Annihilus 6.8. We wish you all a Happy 2019, and hopefully a great year here at Annihilus. And kudos to everyone who read this whole post!
• Minor footnote, D2PK has been shut down. It was not nearly active enough to warrant the server costs, with just 1 game made every week or 2, just for nobody else to join it. D2PK will always have a special place in my heart as that is what started my modding of Diablo 2, and everything is backed up in case D2PK's time to shine comes again in the future.
