Our initial inspiration for this feature’s implementation was for controller players to not need to click as much, but we were pleasantly surprised to see mouse and keyboard players with limited mobility in their hands really enjoy this feature during the Technical Alpha. Let’s take auto-gold pick-up as an example. But we knew that there were even more opportunities to improve accessibility to further enhance the gameplay of Diablo II for many of our current and potential future players. We had early wins with accessibility improvements like auto-gold pick-up, larger font sizes, UI scaling on Windows® PC, and options like gamma and contrast settings to enhance readability. Accessibility is one major area of opportunity for this remaster to shine, and our intention to bring games to more players has evolved and is more refined now than ever before. One thing we agree on is that it doesn't matter how pretty the grass is if you can't see the legendary staff on the ground it ultimately sabotages the core gameplay experience.

Our team includes many D2 purists who have thousands upon thousands of hours in the game before working on it professionally, and our goal is not to break what isn't broken. The game is over 20 years old, and the longtime Diablo II community is ravenous and heavily entrenched in decades of eccentricities and quirks. So, when we first sat down with the intent of modernizing one of the most beloved ARPGs of all time, we knew there was work to do from all angles. To illustrate the D2R team’s philosophy around making the Burning Hells a more welcoming destination for everyone, we invited design and UX accessibility lead Drew McCrory to share his insights. Visually, the remastered aesthetic brings the classic game into stunning high-resolution to take advantage of the latest hardware, but we also wanted to identify ways to provide a smoother and more accessible gameplay experience to as many people as possible. That can’t be better demonstrated than by our efforts on Diablo II: Resurrected.

One of Blizzard’s priorities is to always look for ways to iterate and improve the entertainment experiences we create for our players. The journey to resurrecting Diablo® II as the modern incarnation releasing this September has been a challenging and rewarding endeavor.

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