Diablo II may not be the newest game in the series, but it’s easily the most beloved, and that may be why it has been updated so many times over the years. With every patch after 1.09 coming long after the game’s cultural expiration date (1.10 came out in 2003, 1.11 in 2005, 1.12 in 2008, and 1.13 in 2011), Blizzard certainly hasn’t had any problems with keeping the now 16 year old game alive. Adding runewords, special events, and new boss fights, Diablo II has had a fairly exciting old age for a game that is nearly old enough to go to college.

Today, Blizzard added one more new feature with the latest 1.14a patch, and that’s true support for modern operating systems. So now Windows 8.1, 10, and OSX owners can play the game stably rather then running in compatibility modes. Plus, for folks who like scrolling through their skills, the mouse wheel now works without any tweaks.

After having stopped playing Diablo II on my Windows 8.1 and then Windows 10-powered laptop due to the severe frame drops, I ran today’s patch and noticed a drastic improvement in framerate. Before, many users such as myself had to run the game in a borderless fullscreen window with 3rd party tools in order to get it to run decently on the newer operating systems, but this patch seems to negate the need to do so.

What’s most interesting about this patch is that Blizzard has stated that it is only the first step in modernizing the game:

There is still a large Diablo II community around the world, and we thank you for continuing to play and slay with us. This journey starts by making Diablo II run on modern platforms, but it does not end there. See you in Sanctuary, adventurers.

Could we possibly see a native 16:9 Widescreen resolution mode next? Considering the progress they’ve made already, it’s not out of the realm of possibility.