User:Tycio/Diabloii.net

Diabloii.net was an unofficial fansite (part of the "Gamerush.com" network that also ran "Warcraftiii.net") opened in the late 1990s for the Diablo II game, which also included coverage of the original game and the Hellfire expansion.

Comics
It announced when certain web comics would make reference to the game, such as:
 * Real Life in July 2001

History
The earliest web snapshot was in December 1998 though a banner used in 2010 (when the site was briefly called "Inc Gamers" read "The Unofficial Site since 1997". Another banner introduced in 2019 similarly read "Raising Hell since 1997".

The "News Archives" only date back to January 1998 with January 14 announcing "The Unofficial Diablo 2 Site Opens!" so it remains unclear why 1997 would be specified, unless perhaps it's referring to the period in which it was under construction prior to opening.

That first archive refers to Reality X opening the site, linking back to previous sites run for Diablo and Hellfire at the reality-x site (at the ".co.uk" domain), however by the time Wayback first archived that site in 2001 it was already down. No archives are known to exist for that domain, however it appears that their contents were merged into the diabloii.net website's sections for those games.

Features

 * Beta Buzz FAQ in March 2000 (first archived August 2000 )
 * Dark Library aka TDL dates back to June'00 (per Feb'01 archive ) and hosted fanfics dating back to Dec'99
 * Decahedron by Flux had at least 21 pieces by March'06
 * Diablo II Fact of the Day later D2X Fact of the Day aka FOTD
 * DiabloNut
 * Fortuitous Epiphaneia by Paul J. Darling aka Drandimere had at least fifteen issues
 * Jarulf's Guide
 * Judge's Chamber
 * NewsForge aka "Unofficial Diablo II Newsletter" or D2NL by Gaile and Rexx which by April 1999 had 8 issues of (in Word 97 and .txt) distributed as .zip files via e-mail or download
 * Ninth Circle by Lorelorn is a series with at least 58 pieces by March 2006
 * Tomb of Knowledge
 * Unofficial Diablo II Suggestion Forum had 6 pages of threads by June 2000

Guilds
The site was affiliated with three networks:
 * 1) Clan Greysoul (aka just Greysoul)
 * 2) Holy Knights of Westmarch (aka HKW)
 * 3) Sons of the East (aka SOTE)

Screenshots
Blizzard began it's Screenshot of the Week feature in March 1999.

Transformations
At one point the news archives were moved to loadedinc.com and later incgamers.com.

At another point the old URL closed and redirected to diii.net instead, but the URL was later restored, and began affiliating with the diablowiki.net project.