Tips for Future HC players. Also, my 87 bowa rip'd via Server Lagg :(

[Thor]

I'm sorry you lost your character man, I lost a Inferno cows I finally was able to start yesterday but at the end of the day, you can't make a hc character with only one life and expect another shot because lag happened. You are playing online, lag will happen whether it's on your end or the servers end. It was the same on bnet and although it's not an intention for the game to lag, you go into hc knowing full well that lag can and will happen, and you only get one life so it was bound to happen. If you want reimbursement for technicalities then you should just play softcore. Every hc player knows the cost to play hc that's why they play it, you may not be the blame for the death of your zon but you knew going in that you could lose it all any minute. That's what hc is. Not to be an asshole I'm just saying. Sorry for your loss.

So you're saying I shouldn't support the servers player base, stick to single-player where lag does not exist, ever. It isn't just "lag happened, give me another shot" The core of the server is causing players to get killed. The players aren't the cause of the players to get killed. Lag can and will happen is absolutely no excuse dude. If you go back and read what I said about me expecting and adapting to the amount this server lags, you'd understand where I am coming from. I made sure by surviving 87 levels and through the lag spikes and nonsense this server threw at me on hardcore. I'll tell you what was bound to happen. My character was going to die at some point, (not by my fault). I was going to come to the official forums and shed light upon the core issue this server is suffering from in hopes the admins actually cared. This whole thing about comparing b.net to this is unbelievably invalid so please, whoever reads this current comment, please stop comparing the two. Also, I do play softcore. I am fully aware the cost of playing HC, in the sense of a legitimate death, not a death that was utterly forced upon me from the quality of the server which I do not own. I get it, dedicated servers cost money. But if you run a game server well enough, people donate and will continue to donate, therefore the cost of a dedicated server is well taken care of. This isn't the case. I am not getting defensive against anything you said, rather you are defending the ill-facts about this server.

It all boils down to this. If Alex intends to keep his server alive, he'll do what is right, especially when he understands the issues are actually on his side. If not, people move on. D2 is an ancient game. Alex has taken the responsibility of doing his best to keep it alive, giving Diablo fans a new experience and keeping people here to play. There's no LAN support, dyes in singleplayer don't work, and playing alone inevitably gets boring, the only way to play Annihilus, is quite literally playing on a low-quality server...that in itself defeats the purpose of playing at all. I rest my case.

[Game]

So you're saying I shouldn't support the servers player base, stick to single-player where lag does not exist, ever. It isn't just "lag happened, give me another shot" The core of the server is causing players to get killed. The players aren't the cause of the players to get killed. Lag can and will happen is absolutely no excuse dude. If you go back and read what I said about me expecting and adapting to the amount this server lags, you'd understand where I am coming from. I made sure by surviving 87 levels and through the lag spikes and nonsense this server threw at me on hardcore. I'll tell you what was bound to happen. My character was going to die at some point, (not by my fault). I was going to come to the official forums and shed light upon the core issue this server is suffering from in hopes the admins actually cared. This whole thing about comparing b.net to this is unbelievably invalid so please, whoever reads this current comment, please stop comparing the two. Also, I do play softcore. I am fully aware the cost of playing HC, in the sense of a legitimate death, not a death that was utterly forced upon me from the quality of the server which I do not own. I get it, dedicated servers cost money. But if you run a game server well enough, people donate and will continue to donate, therefore the cost of a dedicated server is well taken care of. This isn't the case. I am not getting defensive against anything you said, rather you are defending the ill-facts about this server.

It all boils down to this. If Alex intends to keep his server alive, he'll do what is right, especially when he understands the issues are actually on his side. If not, people move on. D2 is an ancient game. Alex has taken the responsibility of doing his best to keep it alive, giving Diablo fans a new experience and keeping people here to play. There's no LAN support, dyes in singleplayer don't work, and playing alone inevitably gets boring, the only way to play Annihilus, is quite literally playing on a low-quality server...that in itself defeats the purpose of playing at all. I rest my case.

I am really sorry you lost your character, it definitely sucks. I hate to say it though, but we cannot restore characters or gear. I am not sure why you think this is a low-quality server, because it definitely is not, infact I am sure there hasn't ever been a diablo 2 server out there that was ran on such a well equipped dedicated server. We pay a lot more than people think for our server, and even on months when there were no gold purchases at all I continued to pay for the server out of my pocket. The server isn't the case here, it is the simple fact that we've pushed this game to it's absolute limits editing so much of the engine that sometimes it seems there is a 1-2 minute hiccup. This has nothing to do with the hardware, but rather the really old code of Diablo 2. Playing hardcore is very dangerous here, not because of this lag but also because of the content in general, it clearly was not made with hardcore in mind.

I know a lot of people think softcore is too easy because of "unlimited deaths" and that is why they play hardcore, but that is not how annihilus is. Some of the content is very hard, to the point where only 1 clan has cleared it. I know you're going to be very upset about my response, but hardcore was designed to make people mad if you ask me. I am ALWAYS working to improve the stability of the server and I am in no way saying it's anywhere close to perfect, but we're doing the best we can and if we had a way to restore characters (we don't) then just about everyone would say a lagspike killed them, and I would have to restore characters for everyone or people would say im biased, then it isn't even hardcore anymore. I hope you can continue to play softcore, but if not that is completely up to you. Again, I am sorry for your loss.

[Thor]

I am really sorry you lost your character, it definitely sucks. I hate to say it though, but we cannot restore characters or gear. I am not sure why you think this is a low-quality server, because it definitely is not, infact I am sure there hasn't ever been a diablo 2 server out there that was ran on such a well equipped dedicated server. We pay a lot more than people think for our server, and even on months when there were no gold purchases at all I continued to pay for the server out of my pocket. The server isn't the case here, it is the simple fact that we've pushed this game to it's absolute limits editing so much of the engine that sometimes it seems there is a 1-2 minute hiccup. This has nothing to do with the hardware, but rather the really old code of Diablo 2. Playing hardcore is very dangerous here, not because of this lag but also because of the content in general, it clearly was not made with hardcore in mind.

I know a lot of people think softcore is too easy because of "unlimited deaths" and that is why they play hardcore, but that is not how annihilus is. Some of the content is very hard, to the point where only 1 clan has cleared it. I know you're going to be very upset about my response, but hardcore was designed to make people mad if you ask me. I am ALWAYS working to improve the stability of the server and I am in no way saying it's anywhere close to perfect, but we're doing the best we can and if we had a way to restore characters (we don't) then just about everyone would say a lagspike killed them, and I would have to restore characters for everyone or people would say im biased, then it isn't even hardcore anymore. I hope you can continue to play softcore, but if not that is completely up to you. Again, I am sorry for your loss.

I appreciate the reply. I never meant any insults to you or the team or bashing the actual server. It was all I could think of at the time causing problems but you've cleared up a lot of confusion and such. I never thought outside the box and going back and reading what I wrote seems pretty closed-minded on my behalf, sorry about that. I never thought the old code could potentially cause issues either, never even crossed my mind. Everything I posted was based on what I believed to be the server and I honestly didn't know it wasn't possible to bring back dead HC characters, than again, it wouldn't of been a good idea if you did as that would've caused other issues with future HC players. I was just genuinely pissed and blabbed on about what I thought the server screwing me over without taking a breather. At the end of the day, Annihilus still is the best mod and runs on the most stable server I've played on. Keep up the good work, sorry for being so blatant, seems to be an on-going bad habit of mine for some reason