D3Reflection - About us

This project has started once we have realized that Blizzard is not capable of delivering on many of their promises and correct the game to be what many of us wanted it to be. We believe that much of the magic that Diablo 3 had has faded throughout the years, and the game has become shallower, less rewarding and much less reliant on economy and trading. We know that many of the plans Blizzard had for the game has been scrapped over and over again. Looking at the code and assets there were never released to the public, it was made very clear to us how corporate bureaucracy has destroyed whatever potential the game had to be something truly unique.

Building this server is a meticulous process, being done by reverse engineering the game client and turning it into a server, little piece of code by another, without any tools provided. Every feature we provide has been completely hand-coded manually. Currently, D3Reflection is still heavily in development, while we keep adding and fixing stuff up.

D3Reflection has been in development for a few years now and has been active as a public service offered to players **for free**. We have started with client version 1.0.3 of the game, and soon jumped to 1.0.4 to help with a few quality of life improvements along with stability - all from scratch using no official tools, and very little existing code. We have recently decided to take the decision and move to a more recent client version in order to enable more tools while trying to keep the experience as close as possible to our vision of the game, and hopped onto 2.0.1, the last version of the game **before a serious power creep has began**, knowing very well how public perception of this version might make it even harder to justify the technical and gameplay reasoning of doing so. We internally called it "Vanilla of Souls".

Originally for Diablo 3, this client version was a very temporary stage that prepared the players for the Reaper of Souls expansion lasting a few weeks, before unlocking maximum level to 70 from 60 and opening up the Adventure Mode with another patch. With the use of our tools, we were able to **enable these options** at a patch 2.0.1 level - which means that **we have prevented a jump into a version that includes many of the set items and buffs that otherwise destroy balance** and introduce the power-creep that lead into modern Diablo 3. Moreover, D3Reflection was able to **keep the Gold Auction House open**, so trading is still fully enabled in the game.

The very unique custom version that D3Reflection runs, **abides to no previous versions of the game as players know it**. We are balancing skill mechanics, proc rates, enemy AI, damage, difficulty scaling and more. This version does mean we have enabled Act V's story and locations, and the Adventure Mode of the game. Our goal is to have a fair and challenging experience as much as possible using our tools. The game is tuned to be difficult and serious upgrades for your character will require time and effort at the end-game level. **We do not want to shower our players with phone-game mechanics of quick rewards** every possible game session. We will also avoid mechanics such as infinite resource, permanent stuns and 0 cooldowns as much as we can.

That said, we do run a Season mechanics, and were able to capture the Hardcore realm of the game to do so. That means we have replaced Hardcore mode for (SC) Season mode. Seasons are short (usually 60 days), with faster XP and Legendary item drop rates and have separate competitive leaderboards at d3reflection.org

As development progresses, we are able to squish more bugs, enable more mechanics that were originally in the game, and tune a more fair balance between classes, difficulties, items and mechanics. We want Items to make you feel powerful, but we **do not want them to dictate how you play the game** the way retail version of the game does. As said, we want people to be able to always theorycraft builds, and even outside the game think how they can use the tools given to them in order to improve their characters and enable a more intense gameplay experience.

We operate at no **intention of income**, and use our Premium plans to fuel our costly live server's uptime. For those who wonder, we have one server, regardless of in-game region choice, and is located in center-Europe.

Hoping to see you in Sanctuary, and our Discord server,

D3Reflection team