Diablo II Mysteries

As I was perusing the game files today I came upon some very interesting images. After extracting and piecing them together, I had five images not at all used by the game. They suggested large plans were in the making for D2, but never made it out from the closed doors of the developers. Blizzard has stated they had to cut features from Diablo II due to time constraints, and here we have some hints of what those features might have been that Blizzard had in store for our favorite game.

Guild Icon Background


Called guildiconbckg.dc6, this page seems to show an option for players to select a guild tabard or banner for their guild. The coloring boxes indicate that the banners could have been colored differently by the players.

Sadly, this is just a background, and it appears Blizzard quickly scrapped their plans shortly after making this picture, for only one guild icon was ever finished, or is at least present in the game



It's very dark and not very clear. However looking at the backgrounds I really like most of the pictures. I think had they been implemented they would have worked very well in the Diablo setting. Although a few, like the Pentagram, would probably have been more popular than others :D

And notice the Cow banner option in the top right corner ;)

Guild Bank


Called guildvault.dc6 in the game, the name leaves little guessing. Apparently plans were to implement a guild bank as well for guilds, something which is very common in many MMO's today.

What could the top area have been used for? Perhaps a log of what people had put in/removed? A message the guild leader could leave for his members?

And as some of you may notice, Blizzard's early philosophy of inventory space is maintained. The storage space is far from spacious, especially when considering that this would be for much more than a single person.

Bank


Simply called bank.dc6, this design seems to suggests that some sort of bank system was to be put into the game. However personally I think it more likely that this was an early design for the personal stash.

Once again, notice the storage space. Spacious to say the least :rolleyes:

Update: Apparently this is how the stash looked at release. I blame ten years for not remembering.

Trophies


trophycase.dc6 is an interesting picture. What exactly would trophies have been used for? Now some of you might be suggesting that this is where the Standard of Heroes is supposed to go, but keep in mind that these images all come from the Classic Diablo II files, and the Standard of Heroes was introduced in Patch 1.11, long after these plans and images had been scrapped.

What would trophies have been then? Perhaps an early version of what we generally call achievements these days? What do you think?

Update: spierce7 has pointed out that all of these Guild features were announced and subsequently dropped by Blizzard before Beta even began. The trophy hall was supposed to have been a guild feature, not a player feature. Read it here

Steegstone


This last picture is very ambiguous. It is simply called steegstonebckg.dc6 in the game, and that doesn't really say anything.

I'm theorizing that this is some form of profile page. The top left appears to be a place for a picture, most likely of the character class. The large box to the left could be for stats and the large to the right for skills and items. The right button also seems to be scrollable, suggesting a lot of info could go in there.

The field with the star indicates some sort of title. Is this where Slayer/Champion etc would have been displayed, or perhaps would a title earned in the aforementioned Trophy system be displayed here?

Update: T'hain Esh Kelch has suggested that this last picture might actually be how the guild chat would have looked. If you look closely, the black box in the left corner is the same size as the guild banner backgrounds shown earlier in this post. It would make sense for guilds to have a guild interface to interact with each other with.

Update 2: spierce7 pointed out that the steeg stone was a feature used to upgrade your guild. By adding gold, players could upgrade their guild to new levels, adding more functionality and features to it. Read it here

Lots of mysteries. Let the speculation begin :hammy:

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