I can pinpoint the exact moment my life went sideways, and it wasn’t booze or girls or any of the usual university pitfalls. It was a Tuesday evening in February 1997, Manchester buried under proper snow, and me stood in Electronics Boutique staring at a game box with some bloke wielding a sword against a red background. Twenty-five quid it cost – money I desperately needed for groceries or textbooks or literally anything more sensible than another PC game. But everyone in the computer lab wouldn’t shut up about this Diablo thing, so I handed over my cash like the mug I was.
Twenty-seven hours later, I was still sat there clicking away, surrounded by empty Irn-Bru cans and the remnants of a Pot Noodle, watching my warrior character bash skeletons in some godforsaken cathedral. My flatmate Dave had given up trying to get my attention around hour fifteen. The coursework due Thursday? Forgotten. Sleep? Apparently optional. All that mattered was getting to the next dungeon level, finding better loot, clicking on more demons.
That bloody Tristram music though. Christ, what Matt Uelmen did with those acoustic guitar melodies should be studied in universities – the man crafted pure atmosphere with a few simple notes. Melancholic, haunting, perfectly medieval without being cheesy about it. I’d leave my character just standing in the village square while I ate dinner or talked on the phone, letting those somber notes wash over everything. Even now, decades later, those first few guitar phrases trigger something primal in my brain, like hearing your childhood phone number or smelling your mum’s cooking.
See, what made Diablo absolutely revolutionary wasn’t just that it was good – plenty of games were good. It was that Blizzard North cracked the code on merging action and RPG elements without making a dog’s dinner of either. Traditional RPGs back then were all menus and turn-based combat and spreadsheets disguised as character sheets. Action games gave you immediate thrills but no depth whatsoever. Diablo said “bollocks to that” and gave us click-to-attack combat that anyone could grasp instantly, yet with enough tactical depth that positioning and timing actually mattered.
My first character was a warrior because I’m predictable and the manual said he was good for beginners. Swinging that chunky pixelated sword through cathedral corridors felt clunky initially, but there was something deeply satisfying about clearing rooms of undead nasties and watching gold coins scatter across the floor. Dave would peer over my shoulder occasionally, offering his usual helpful commentary. “Warriors are boring as sin,” he’d announce. “Should’ve gone with the sorcerer, shouldn’t you?” Easy for him to say – he wasn’t the one getting mobbed by six zombies with nothing but a buckler and questionable reflexes for protection.
But the loot system – that’s where Diablo showed its true genius. Before this, game items were fixed affairs. The legendary sword was always in the same chest with the same stats. Diablo chucked that predictability straight out the window and made every single equipment drop a proper gambling experience. Would this unidentified piece of armor be complete rubbish or something game-changing? The first time I found a rare morning star with fire damage, I actually called Dave from the other room to come look at it, like I’d discovered buried treasure instead of differently colored pixels with better numbers attached.
This randomization kept the repetitive monster-bashing loop endlessly engaging. Just one more dungeon level, just one more boss fight, just one more chance at finding something brilliant. It was digital crack, basically – the “just one more turn” syndrome applied to action RPGs with devastating effectiveness.
My first encounter with the Butcher is burned into my memory forever. “Ah, fresh meat!” this gravelly voice bellowed as I wandered into his blood-soaked room, underleveled and overconfident as only a university student can be. What followed wasn’t combat so much as a public execution – my execution. He carved through my health bar faster than I could click healing potions, sending me back to the title screen before I’d processed what happened. Proper humbling experience, that was.
This was my introduction to Diablo’s complete disregard for modern gaming’s obsession with making sure players are always having “fun.” The game was perfectly content to let you walk into certain death as a learning experience. After my fourth humiliating defeat, I stopped being stubborn and went exploring other areas first, returning only when I had decent gear and wasn’t a complete liability. Game design as life coach, teaching patience through brutal failure.
Word spread through our flat like some kind of digital plague. Dave finally bought his own copy after watching too many of my marathon sessions, and soon our place became unofficial Diablo headquarters. Mates would bring their characters over on floppy disks to show off equipment or get help with difficult bits. We’d order takeaways, brew massive pots of coffee, and embark on dungeon crawls that lasted until sunrise. My grades took a proper beating. My sleep schedule ceased to exist entirely. But bloody hell, my warrior had some impressive kit by then.
The character optimization became its own obsession once we discovered online forums dedicated to theorycrafting. Put too many points into strength instead of vitality? Your build was buggered – time to start over completely. Found a perfect axe that needs ten more dexterity points? Better hunt down gloves with a dexterity bonus to compensate. I filled entire notebooks with calculations and equipment comparisons, treating character progression more seriously than my actual computer science degree. Looking back, I was essentially doing complex mathematics for entertainment while simultaneously moaning about my required maths modules.
Everything changed when we got online and discovered Battle.net. Previous multiplayer meant either local network games or clunky modem connections that worked about half the time. Battle.net made finding games as simple as clicking a button, and suddenly my solitary dungeon crawling became properly social. Four-player groups tackling cathedral depths together, Tristram filled with other warriors and rogues and sorcerers all jumping around frantically – apparently the universal online greeting being “hop about like a lunatic.”
The first time a complete stranger gifted me a set of magical armor because they’d found something better, I felt a genuine connection that transcended the digital barrier. This wasn’t just a game anymore; it was a community with its own rules and social dynamics.
Item trading became serious business with unwritten etiquette rules. “Ninja looting” – grabbing items before others could see what dropped – was considered a capital offense worthy of immediate character blocking. Helping newer players versus rushing through content created proper faction divisions. Then there were the item duping controversies that threatened to destroy the entire game economy. I witnessed heated arguments over duplicated Godly Plates of the Whale that devolved into name-calling and character assassination. The stakes felt absurdly high for virtual items that were ultimately just pixels with number modifiers, yet I found myself just as invested in these digital ethics debates as anyone else.
Late-night Battle.net sessions connected me with players worldwide. I regularly grouped with a sorcerer from Germany called Klaus, despite the time difference making it midnight for me and 1 AM for him. We never discussed much beyond game mechanics – which dungeon to clear next, who needed which items – but there was genuine camaraderie built through shared virtual danger. When Klaus didn’t log in for a week, I actually worried about the bloke. Turned out he’d been on holiday. I was embarrassingly relieved when he returned.
The progression from cathedral to catacombs to caves to hell created perfect pacing that kept me hooked without becoming frustrating. Each environment introduced new monster types with different attack patterns, forcing tactical adaptation. The environmental storytelling – rooms full of impaled bodies, mysterious tomes with cryptic lore, NPCs with ominous warnings – built a world that felt ancient and lived-in. This wasn’t just a dungeon crawler; it was descent into a fully realized dark fantasy setting that inspired genuine dread and curiosity.
Course, there were rough edges. The inventory management became increasingly irritating as better items typically occupied more grid spaces – proper Tetris nightmare, that was. The inability to run meant crossing previously cleared areas was an exercise in patience that would make Buddhist monks proud. Limited character customization meant encountering dozens of identical-looking characters online. But these limitations barely registered amid the compelling core gameplay loop. One more level, one more boss, one more potential legendary drop. Sleep could wait indefinitely.
Hardcore mode represented the ultimate test of commitment. Regular character death was inconvenient – you’d lose equipped items and have to retrieve them from your corpse – but hardcore meant permanent deletion. One mistake, one disconnect, one moment of carelessness, and dozens of hours vanished forever. I attempted it once, reaching level 16 before a particularly nasty mob of Fallen Ones ended everything. The genuine grief watching that character disappear permanently was surprising. I threw a pen across the room, startling Dave’s cat and earning a lecture about both animal welfare and anger management. Never tried hardcore again. Some gaming masochism exceeded even my increasingly warped definition of entertainment.
My absolute rock bottom came during Easter break 1998. While sensible friends traveled home or went on holiday, I embarked on what I grandly called my “Diablo Marathon Challenge” – seven days of playing as much as humanly possible to reach level 50 with a fresh character. I stocked up on microwave meals, cheap energy drinks, and told concerned flatmates I was “working on an important project.” By day four I was experiencing proper sleep-deprivation hallucinations – seeing scrolling inventory items when I closed my eyes, hearing phantom Fallen One shrieks in the shower. I reached level 47 before finally crashing, sleeping for nearly eighteen hours and waking disoriented and vaguely ashamed. Even then, my first coherent thought was about optimal strategies for those final three levels.
The Hellfire expansion created division in our group. Some embraced the new monk class and additional areas, while purists like Dave insisted it undermined the original’s carefully crafted atmosphere. I fell somewhere between – appreciating new content but agreeing some additions felt tonally inconsistent with Diablo’s gothic horror. Still, it extended the game’s lifespan considerably, giving us fresh challenges long after we’d memorized every corner of the original dungeons.
Diablo became a shared language among certain circles. References to Butcher quotes or discussions of legendary items were membership cards to a digital club. In computer science lectures, I could identify fellow players by their knowing grins when someone mentioned having a “godly” solution or needing a “scroll of identify” for debugging mysterious code. These inside jokes created belonging that was particularly meaningful for someone like me who’d always existed on social peripheries.
The game’s legacy extends far beyond its own excellence. The action-RPG genre it spawned – sometimes called “Diablo clones” with varying accuracy – includes gaming’s most beloved franchises. Path of Exile, Torchlight, Titan Quest, dozens more owe their fundamental design to what Blizzard North created. Even massive titles like Borderlands and Destiny carry Diablo’s DNA in their loot systems. That first journey into Tristram didn’t just ruin my sleep schedule; it changed an entire industry’s direction.
Eventually life intervened. Graduation loomed. Job applications couldn’t be ignored indefinitely. My Diablo sessions tapered from “concerning” to “regular” to “occasional” over subsequent months. StarCraft’s release created brief relapse into Blizzard-induced sleep deprivation, but it wasn’t the same obsessive commitment. Perhaps I’d matured slightly. More likely, I’d simply hit saturation point after hundreds of hours clicking on demons.
Twenty-five years later, I still occasionally reinstall Diablo for nostalgic dungeon runs. The pixelated graphics that once seemed cutting-edge now look charmingly primitive. The systems feel simultaneously simpler than modern equivalents yet surprisingly engaging. But what strikes me most is how effectively it still creates atmosphere. Those acoustic guitar notes from Tristram still raise goosebumps. The Butcher’s greeting still triggers tension. And clearing rooms of monsters, watching loot scatter across dungeon floors, remains fundamentally satisfying in ways that transcend graphical fidelity.
I’ve played countless games since 1997, from indie darlings to AAA blockbusters. Many excellent, some genuinely outstanding. But very few consumed me like Diablo did during those sleep-deprived months of obsessive clicking and looting. Very few balanced accessibility with depth so perfectly, immediate gratification with long-term progression. And absolutely none made me ring a mate at half-past-three specifically to brag about finding a virtual helmet with slightly better statistical modifiers.
That’s Diablo’s lasting achievement – making pursuit of digital trinkets feel monumentally important, worth sacrificing sleep, social life, sometimes sanity. Creating the action-RPG blueprint also created a template for digital obsession, for better and worse. My sleep schedule eventually recovered. My degree, thankfully, survived despite my best efforts to sabotage it. But somewhere in my brain, those reward pathways Diablo carved so effectively remain active, waiting for the next legendary drop, the next satisfying monster explosion, the next excuse to click on demons until dawn breaks over snow-covered Manchester streets.
John grew up swapping floppy disks and reading Amiga Power cover to cover. Now an IT manager in Manchester, he writes about the glory days of British computer gaming—Sensible Soccer, Speedball 2, and why the Amiga deserved more love than it ever got.
