There's now even less of an excuse for not owning Diablo 2, StarCraft or Warcraft III as Amazon is today offering 50% off the Battle Chest editions of Blizzard's classics.

$10 nets you the StarCraft Battle Chest, containing Blizzard's absolutely essential real-time strategy and its expansion pack Brood War, plus strategy guides for both.

The deceptively-named Diablo Battle Chest might not contain the original Diablo but does give Diablo II and its expansion pack for $20, and of course those guides. The Warcraft III Battle Chest similarly grants the game, expansion and guides for $20.

The offer runs until midnight PST so get your Gore Riders on if you don't get this joke.

Not happy with working on just one Diablo game, the ever-updating folks at Blizzard are looking to fashion a Diablo II 1.13 patch--and they need your help.

In a post on the official Battle.net forums, Blizzard's Bashiok has asked fans to list their most-wanted feature for the new patch in an effort to best meet the needs of the still-strong community.

"Our goal is to get an overall sense of the single most important request from every member of the community," writes Bashiok.

He added: "We want as many posts as we can get for the largest cross section, so if you have friends who used to play Diablo II or just don't frequent the forums as much as you do, let them know this is here so we can get their '#1 patch note' too."

Along with its list of the most-played consoles in 2008, research group The Nielsen Company has provided its list of the past year's most popular PC games in the US.

Of the ten titles, none were released in 2008, and only 2 debuted in 2007. The list is based off data from January through October 2008, meaning that the impact of the second World of Warcraft expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, was not taken into account.

Unsurprisingly, Blizzard's World of Warcraft topped the PC charts, with those surveyed playing the PC MMO an average of 671 minutes, just a bit over 11 hours, per week. Blizzard's Diablo II also appears on the list, as do three games from Valve.

Unfortunately, Nielsen did not specify the methodology behind this year's results. In 2007, the firm based its list off an extremely small pool of participants, a mere 1200 gamers, which could explain the unexpected results. It is not known if this was changed for 2008.

Top 10 PC Game Titles in the U.S.
1. World of Warcraft (2004) / Blizzard Entertainment
   671 Avg Minutes Played Per Week / 0.723% AU*
2. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (2007) / Infinity Ward
   403 Avg Minutes Played Per Week / 0.163% AU*
3. Halo: Combat Evolved (2003) / Gearbox, Bungie... Read more

Blizzard may be one of the luckiest game companies in the industry, considering its ten-year-old game StarCraft is still in the sales charts. But with that success comes responsibility, and Blizzard has exhibited just that by removing 350,000 hackers from its online service Battle.net--or, in Internet lingo, they've dropped the banhammer.

An official post on the Battle.net website, spotted by Kotaku, explains the details of the bans:

As part of our continued effort to ensure a fair and fun online experience for all Battle.net players, we have expanded our efforts to remove cheaters from StarCraft and Diablo II. We have identified and closed over 350,000 StarCraft and Diablo II accounts which were found to be using third-party hacks.

The Diablo II CD keys associated with the closed Diablo II accounts are now restricted from playing on Battle.net for approximately 30 days. Repeat offenders will have their accounts closed and their CD keys permanently banned from Battle.net.

As a reminder, we reserve the right to close the accounts and ban the CD keys of players who are caught cheating on Battle.net. Cheating ruins the game experience for legitimate players, and we will not tolerate it.

Battle.net will see upgrades including advanced cheat detection in time for the releases of sequels StarCraft II and Diablo III.

Sales-tracking firm NPD Group today issued its list of the ten best-selling pieces of PC software in the United States across the week of July 6 to July 12, 2008.

Blizzard's Diablo Battle Chest, originally released in 2003, has now appeared on the weekly charts for three weeks straight--a feat attributed to the unveiling of Diablo 3.

Completely absent from the latest list is Funcom's mature MMO Age of Conan, which was #7 last week and #5 the week before.

1. Nancy Drew: The Phantom Of Venice / Her Interactive / $18 (Average)
2. Spore Creature Creator / EA Maxis / $10 (Average)
3. The Sims 2 Double Deluxe / EA Maxis / $30 (Average)
4. Diablo Battle Chest / Blizzard / $39 (Average)
5. The Sims 2 IKEA Home Stuff Expansion Pack / EA Maxis / $20 (Average)
6. World Of Warcraft: Battle Chest / Blizzard / $39 (Average)
7. World Of Warcraft / Blizzard / $20 (Average)
8. The Sims 2 FreeTime Expansion Pack / EA Maxis / $30 (Average)
9. World Of Warcraft: Burning Crusade Expansion Pack / Blizzard $30 (Average)
10. Call Of Duty 4: Modern Warfare / Infinity Ward / $50 (Average)

In the week following Diablo 3's announcement on June 28, Blizzard's Diablo Battle Chest compilation was the second best-selling PC game at United States retailers. Compiled by sales-tracking firm NPD, the data covers the week of June 29 to July 5.

Containing the original Diablo, Diablo II, and the Diablo II expansion Lord of Destruction, the Diablo Battle Chest hit retailers in 2003. In the week before Diablo 3's official announcement, rumors of its revelation bumped Battle Chest sales up to #10.

1. The Sims 2 IKEA Home Stuff Expansion Pack
2. Diablo Battle Chest
3. Spore Creature Creator
4. The Sims 2 Double Deluxe
5. World Of Warcraft: Battle Chest
6. World Of Warcraft
7. Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures
8. World Of Warcraft: Burning Crusade Expansion Pack
9. The Sims 2 FreeTime Expansion Pack
10. Warcraft III Battle Chest

Blizzard's Diablo Battle Chest ranked as the tenth best-selling piece of PC software at US retailers for the week ending June 28, sales-tracking firm NPD Group has revealed.

The sales spike for the action-RPG compilation--which hit in late 2003 and packs Diablo, Diablo II, and Diablo II: Lord of Destruction--came in advance of Diablo 3's official revelation, which occurred on June 28.

Following the announcement of Diablo 3, the Diablo Battle Chest was the best-selling PC title on Amazon.com as of July 3, according to Gamasutra. However, NPD has yet to issue its data, which is culled from multiple retailers, for the week following June 28.

The Battle Chest marked one of two new titles on the list over last week's data. The Sims 2 IKEA Home Stuff Expansion Pack represents the other new entry.

The 10 best-selling PC games for the week ending June 28 were... Read more

Update 3: More comparisons surfaced overnight, revealing that Limbo of the Lost apparently contains background elements of Gray Matter's Return to Castle Wolfenstein, World of Warcraft artwork, and a shocking number of Unreal Tournament 2004 maps. Left, Limbo of the Lost. Right, Return to Castle Wolfenstein.

"This is not an old game that has been dressed up," director Steve Bovis once told QuandaryLand. It is also worth noting that developer Majestic was planning a sequel to Limbo of the Lost and was seeking a new background artist for the project.

Left, Limbo of the Lost. Right, Unreal Tournament 2004.

Given the sheer number of similarities from so many different games, it is extremely unlikely that all of the duplicate assets are a result of a common texture pack, as was the case with S.T.A.L.K.E.R.'s apparent use of Doom 3 and Half-Life 2 elements.

Update 2: Along with Oblivion and Thief: Deadly Shadows, it seems the three-man Majestic team stole assets from People Can Fly's Painkiller (PC)... Read more

Blizzard has issued new patches for Diablo 2 and its Lord of Destruction expansion, updating both to v1.11b. The patch fixes two crash bugs. Thanks Blues News.

Blizzard has announced that the Diablo 2 1.11 patch is now available, only a few days after the initial announcement. At FileShack you can download the patch for the original game and the Lord of Destruction expansion pack. Read about changes at Battle.net.

A new Mystery has been revealed!
• Players of Hell Difficulty Realm games are hereby warned once again, that a series of new and challenging tests await you! The answer lies within Diablo's Bosses, which span across the world from the Den of Evil to the Throne of Destruction...

New Items
• Added 10 New Runewords.
• Added new Unique Items that will drop from Special Bosses.

Hireling Enhancements
• Players can purchase hirelings that are within 1-5 levels below their own level.
• The rate at which hirelings gain experience has been increased. They should now stay closer to the player's level.

In other Blizzard news the company has announced it is closing Blizzard North, moving most of its employees there to the Irvine headquarters. The (former) North team is working on an unannounced project.

"Great evil has returned to the world of Diablo 2. Will you answer the call to save Sanctuary?", mentions the Blizzard website, adding that Patch 1.11 is on its way. Four screenshots: one, two, three, four.

Blizzard has finally released the official Diablo 2 1.10 patch as noted on Battle.net. You can upgrade by connecting to battle.net, a standalone download will be available soon. Diablo 2 1.10 offers things like seasonal ladder characters, more challenging gameplay, enhanced skills, new items, new anti-cheat measures, and a new game-world event among other things. Thanks DiabloII.net.

Update: You can now find the patch on FileShack.

We received an email from Blizzard announcing that the Diablo 2 v1.10 patch testing period has come to an end. The beta version is no longer available for download and no new bug reports can be submitted. There is no ETA for the final version of the patch yet, but it shouldn't be too far off.

Blizzard sends along a new Windows and Mac build of the Diablo 2: Lord of Destruction 1.10 beta patch. The new patch takes care of some item-deletion problems.

For those of you who just want a run down of all the major changes in the v1.10 beta patch for Diablo2, here's the page for you.

Guess what Blizzard finally released? That's right, the Diablo 2 1.10 patch, a beta version at least. US owners of Diablo 2: Lord of Destruction are invited to test it now. The final patch will also support Diablo 2 without Lord of Destruction. Also, this from Blizzard

Please be sure to inform your readers that if they install this patch they cannot connect to Battle.net unless they revert to 1.09. Also Blizzard Tech Support cannot help with any problems with this patch. Read the readme for more details: http://www.battle.net/diablo2exp/beta/readme.shtml" rel="nofollow" target="_blank" class="external

The 1.10 patch features a new skill system and skill rebalancing, new Horadric Cube recipes, new rune worlds and whole bunch of other new additions and changes. We have the file mirrored on FileShack.

DiabloII.net has a chat transcript offering a recap of a Blizzard chat event to talk about the upcoming Diablo 2 1.10 patch. Q&As are about ladder changes, gambling changes, the synergy abilities, changes to PvP combat, changes made to experience and Battle.net enhancements among plenty of other related topics.

Blizzard's Arreat Summit page has been updated, offering some info and screenshots from the new Horadric Cube recipes which will find their way into the Diablo 2 1.10 patch that's currently being tested.

DiabloII's E3 interview with Blizzard's Bill Roper has been posted. Roper is mostly asked about the upcoming Diablo 2 1.10 patch.

Blizzard's Battle.net website is now offering info on the upcoming Diablo 2 1.10 patch, which is currently being tested. The new patch will have seasonal ladder characters, more challenging gameplay, an updated game world, enhanced skills, and plenty of other cool new things.