• Median Xl Sigma Rune Words

Median XL: SigmaSomething that has for long been a myth for many people (including myself) is finally coming together. In this topic I'll try to explain what sigma is and what makes it so special, as well as some of the new changes / paradigms involved in it and how it has evolved throughout the years. Median XL: Sigma is basically a co-op project between the entire Median XL team. What exactly makes this patch any different to other ones?It uses an enhanced engine. To briefly explain this, imagine Diablo II as an old building with people living in it.

What median does is, change the people living in it, their clothes, etc. It adds new people with new patches and it removes people who behave badly. But there are limitations, some rooms have too many people in them, and things can get messy. The enhanced engine (or core, from now on) is the main feature of sigma, and what this does is replace the stairs with elevators, makes the rooms bigger, and a lot of other things that would normally not be possible.Core FeaturesSo, there are a lot of new features that are possible thanks to this new core.

Median XL: Ultimative is the most popular mod for Diablo II Lord of Destruction. There are over 500 brand new runewords, most require only a single rune. I also made Median XL for Diablo 2 as Brother Laz, which I handed over to the community for further development in 2013. Blizzard acknowledged taking some ideas from it for Diablo 3. My apologies. Here is the interview that he is referring to. Mar 30, 2018 - Diablo II: Lord of Destruction - Median XL Ultimative. There are over 500 brand new runewords, most require only a single rune.

For example:. Increased game resolution. Addition of extra areas (.). Addition of new affixes / stats.

Median Xl Sigma Rune Words

Improved Interface. Bounty System (similar to D3). Automatic gold pick-up. In-game drop filter. Time events(.) Ever wondered why Median replaces existing areas rather than adding new ones?

Or why does act 4 have no uberquests? This is because of a limitation that doesn't allow you to add new areas to the game. This, however, will be possible in sigma.And so much more. You can check topic to see some of the core patch features. Note that a lot of it is a bit techy, but you will see some of these features reflected as comprehensive changes in the changelog when the time comes.

Plus, if you don't like reading, you might as well check topic to see some cool screenshots.Median XL Evolution over TimeBelieve it or not, sigma was firstly announced in 2012. It has evolved throughout the years, so people aren't fully sure what exactly to expect regarding the existing content. So, I'll make a timeline with events so you can know how the idea of this mod had changed throughout the years. Starting from version 2012. I will also describe other things that happened in this time for documentary purposes (fun).January 2012 - Last Median XL. Brother Laz was slowly disappearing from the Median XL scene, and the source files had finally been released to the public. Back then I was a 17 year old teen that made a bunch of guides to try impress everyone on the old modsbylaz forums.

I loved the mod so much and I simply wanted to leave my mark in the community/mod. I was loved by the newbies and hated by the veterans because my guides didn't meet their high standards. Truth is, I do write a lot sometimes and I have the constant necessity of sharing my ideas and thoughts.Some mod-mods (mod of a mod, it was kind of a meme back in the day) started to emerge and I thought why not make my own. I remember sitting on multiplayer channel rambling with some guy about the mod.

And suddenly I was like, it would be sick to have an uberquest in act 4, on Diablo's Sanctuary. There should be like a giant statue and after you kill it, you get swarmed by monsters from all elements, coming from each of the edges of the central star. I wanted to make it a reality so bad but I did not know some modding, but there was this guy xarugas who made the hard work while I would describe him exactly how the uberquest should work and then I'd test/balance it out.So, ultimative was born.

I was thinking, man I really need to get people to play this mod somehow. What do people like? Unique items. So I thought I'd make a third layer of sacred uniques (SSSU) and that would make the mod of a mod popular. Ever wondered where the name ultimative came from? Back in that day I also played a GTA San Andreas mod called MTA. It's basically about races in maps made with GTA:SA assets.

And my favorite map was called, plus the song was kinda catchy.April 2012 - June 2012 - First Patches. I was modding 24/7 and I kinda enjoyed making youtube videos with crappy effects back then so I made the. Pretty terrible, I know. Somewhere mid april, ultimative v1 was out. This was followed by more versions (2, 3, 4, 5) at a really high speed. I was trying to overhaul everything but I lacked the modding skills/knowledge for it. So there were many superficial changes such as modifying skill gfx (a lot of which was reverted), adding when-hit procs to easy uberquests, like deathstrike / death spiral (to be reverted) to simulate new content, but this was done in a sloppy and lazy way.

Hell, I even made the horadric cube a friggin sphere, that was pretty dumb. Still, there was a lot of new content and some of it was cool (mass disenchanting).Elemental runewords were introduced, and you would obtain the stones on kabraxis uberquest (rather than Unformed Land, as is today). There were also some new ubers, such as Uldyssian, which was a summon uber in Harem.

You would summon stage 1, and after killing it, it would spawn stage 2, and so on. It was clunky and buggy (more than today!) as hell and people would just spam wychwind in one spot and get to wave 30 in no time. Also, MarcoNecroX was a mad Veil King boss that had 2% chance to spawn from an ureh turret ( - gg cheatzor).At this point, ultimative began to be playable on d2maniacs, which was the median sever for most of medians lifetime. They were hosted by a german couple (the infamous Sunny & JEBs). The servers were pretty terrible but I guess it was nice to have a way to play online.June 2012 - The end of Ultimative, The rise of Sigma.

Slowly I was starting to become a bit better at modding. At version 4, all characters got wiped and ultimative now was a separate mod from MXL.

Version 5 was out, and it was intended to be the last version of ultimative. Truth is, ultimative was simply a forum topic inside modsbylaz forum that was only accessible for registered users, guests couldn't even know it existed.

I had no room to grow. And veterans would ignore the mod because I was making it. Laz was disappearing more and more, so I thought, I had to make something big.

I knew there were some diehard supporters (the great GregMXL) and I had some people helped me out (like Segolia and Stealthmaster, hence there's a set tribute for them), so I thought, why not?Median XL was already so full of content that it was really hard to inject new content. A lot of areas were taken by Laz's ubers, and I was so full of ideas. So I was highly determined to make this very big patch, something that would bring everyone together.

I gave it a name, Median XL: Sigma.July 2012 - September 2012 - Ultimative still alive. So, sigma project had started.

But there was one big problem. There was no way this could been accomplished in a couple of months, because the project was just too big. Additionally, I had to release something, because that's the most enjoyable part in developing - releasing content.

So I was forced to continue with the ultimative project and have sigma as something parallel. So, the development of ultimative continued.I wanted a challenge, so I thought. Let's make an absurdly big maze that represents all of the acts, a stage-based level. I thought it would made no sense if there were the same mobs all around the map. The only way to achieve this was to place every monster in the level. The whole thing was finished in 2 days.

So, version 6 was out, and it featured Yshari Sanctum uberlevel as the big feature. At this point, I remember Brother Laz saying he was done with MXL as he couldn't keep up with the speed of the development from ultimative. The news were sad, although I kind of took it as a compliment.

The situation in the forums were awkward, MXL was dying and ultimative had no room to grow. What else could go wrong?October 2012 - modsbylaz Forums die. In this awkward moment of Median, the official forums simply died due to problems on the site. All topics, users, guides, posts, gone. But guess what is more fun than that.

As I mentioned before, spin-off forum was only visible to registered members. So no web crawlers (like ) even knew that ultimative existed. Yeah, way to get wrecked.

After two weeks of waiting, I started emailing Laz and he defeinetly didn't want to know anything about this. I had some experience in forums because 4 years back I had made a latin MXL community (which Laz never linked on the main site, even though he promised.) - so bought the domain and launched new forums.Forumer (the modsbylaz host) said they didn't have any kind of back-ups, so the whole forum was lost.

Laz made some, including a mention to the new forums I had made (apparently I'm 'a couple of fans' ). Either way, we were getting the info we could, as some people had some guide back-ups. We had to start from zero either way. But the good news were that I finally had room to fully develop ultimative.November 2012 - January 2013 - New forums, ultimative growth, The Sin War.

Version 6c was out. At this point I was a bit more calm with the releases, because had to do a lot of work on the forums.

I hadn't really intended it to be that way but well, can't let median die? Anyways, version 6c started to be a bit more polished, I reduced river of flame to today's size (you think it's big?

It was 3 times bigger). Then, v6d comes out with some bugfixes too.Version 6d ladder was coming to d2maniacs. But we had no clue about when because, their server, their rules. Yeah so they offered a free realm but treated players like shit.

Player revolution with help from Sir Prince Albrecht fucked up their realms, so their server died and TSW 1 was born, on dreaming realm. But it lagged like hell. So another community revolution, and this guy nomercy4you brought the idea of community-sustained server, with help from our godly aahz.February 2013 - Median XL: Sigma, Sigma Brainfart, Ultimative v6e fuck-up. So there wasn't much info about sigma, except a post I had written in october 2012, which promised sigma to be released on january 2013 (HAHAHA). At this point I was starting to learn programming so I could edit the game's engine. Because I thought, if I make a new mod, I'll eventually run to the same problems I'm having in ultimative. So there has to be something more to it.The post from october 2012:.

The problems described in that topic are still highly accurate today. In fact, that topic describes very well my intentions for Median XL: 2016 patch (and thus, sigma) as well, in case you're interested.Then, in february I made which I guess is responsible for the high amount of misconceptions about sigma. Reading it now, I must say it's pretty retarded. But I had just finished highshool, and clearly didn't know what it meant having a real job or other things in life that consume your time. There's no way to start all skills from scratch, that would take me easily two years.

It was just absurd. Either way, the main goal of that topic was to erase any kind of ETA or release expectations from people.

That's when sigma release date was transformed to soon(tm), which lasted for a couple of years.Same week, I had released v6e, and I fucked up for the first time. I reduced the density (which at the time was lower than today) by 33% on all levels, and even more on some levels. Imagine duncraig having only 15% density it has today.

This was a no-no for players. A density reduction cannot be implemented just like that, there are many factors involved that need to be adapted to succesfully reduce the density while keeping the game equally fun (MXL 2016 approach). A couple of days later, came. I reverted the density decrease, and I was mad, so instead of just reverting the density, I increased it even more. Which of course was childish and stupid, but whatever. Also I made duncraig really, really hard.March 2013 - Ultimative v7 - The big hit. So, some time had passed.

I was calmed and reduced duncraig's insane difficulty, and finally there was harmony. At this point, classic MXL was being outshadowed by ultimative, which was becoming the new standard. I was starting to take more time to do stuff instead of rushing changes. And thus, the results were a lot more polished and were starting to match the quality of the content that was implemented by Brother Laz.Part of the big success was thanks a great guy called Quirinus who started to manage the documentation, which ultimative lacked. Previous to that, we used to have offline documentation that was updated by kambala, but at that time the documentation on ultimative content was really cluttered (they were simply copied forum topics - and my posts were all like 'go find that shit yourself') - it was not the same. Additionally, aahz started providing hosting for the documentation and other purposes, which was inmensely helpful.May 2013 - The joke post. So, in the older forums private section, whist made a.

He was working on his own project (Whist mod, very clever name btw). It was clear that there is no way for a mod to compete with median due to the amount of feature median already has. On my side, I wasn't really doing much for sigma, as I did not know programming back then and reading stuff from memory (ASM) wasn't really simple, in fact whist was giving me code snippets so I could implement them in sigma. It was rather frozen.But whist's idea was kind of good, as it was a win-win for both of us. I get to do the soft-coded work which is the part I like. And he gets to do the core which is something he likes and had been playing around for a while. Plus, we don't really interfere, as he works on the.dll files while I get to work on the.txt files, monsters, maps, etc.August 2013 - Ultimative X.

Same problem I had before. Sigma would require a lot of time, but I had to keep making content updates. So I started with this new sequence of patches with roman numbers, starting from 10. I had a completely different mindset, I would work on quality features rather than quantity. A new uberquest, The Triune, was introduced. This map took a month to make, 15 times more than Yshari's map even thought it's so much smaller.

But we can see the results, it's many people's favorite uberquest.It was at this point that I started to implement the content I had done for sigma. Such as:, 7th Skilltree (XV), Shrine Vessels, million bugfixes, etc.Although there are many cool features from original sigma that were not introduced in ultimative, you can expect to see them soon.

Such as:, Seram, etc.December 2013 - March 2014 - The Prequel. It was uncertain when would the sigma core be ready. Whist wasn't all that active at that time, and I had to keep releasing content patches to keep the community active.

I decided I would drop sigma as a parallel project and make ultimative the prequel. So, similar to X patch, I was giving my best and taking the time to do all the new content. Brother Laz had finally appeared in the forums and interestingly enough, he made a topic about an idea for a new build - the Dragon Paladin. It was indeed nice to have some input from him.These patches featured tons of overhauls on uberquests that had been done in the earlier patches.May 2014 - November 2014 - Median is alive! I was starting to have less time for modding as I had gotten a job as an IT, and later as a Java programmer. But hey, that didn't stop me from making my classic 'Super mega epic patch Announced!!' Topics, so once again I was commited to releasing another major content version.

I was bored of fitting uberquests in places the mod didn't have, and since parallel sigma had been dropped, I thought I would introduce all new skill trees for characters. It was announced for may, and intended to be released on august.

Suddenly, it was august and I didn't even start with the project. Eventually the deadline was moved to 15 november (15 because XV).

It was a really tricky project and to be honest at some point I didn't know if I should just disappear from the scene. Because trust me, making a promise topic saying new skill tree for all classes is easy. But making it, oh god.Eventually it was released that day after I was like 30 hours modding non-stop so I could meet the deadline. But it paid off. We hit #1 mod spot on ModDB for a while, we broke all users record (on forums, on realms). It almost breaks the historic median record of downloads on the first week.

Median was on a good spot. We reached the 2014 Mod of the Year top 100 after not entering since 2010.

And we reached the top 100 again in 2015, even though there were no content patches in 2015. At this point, I thought, we need a bigger home, which ment, leaving the free forums and go to the good paid stuff.February 2015 - August 2015 - Median XL: Zeta - New forums - Sigma RC1. On february I started building these forums. They used to be on an ok-ish polish host, until january this year where we moved to a super-fast VPS. This, as well as The Sin War, was possible thanks to the support of people who donate. Once upon a time there were people who would laugh at this being possible, but now I can guarantee we'll have the median community for as long as I'm alive, and possibly more. This took quite some time, most of which I coded while I was at work (so you could say I got payed for making the forums.

The forums finally went live on july. And we finally have our bigger home!At some point, I announced Median XL: Zeta. More announcements as usual from my side. It was meant to be a transition patch between ultimative and sigma. Well, not long after I thought. There's a chance that some day I won't have time to mod sigma anymore.

And sigma is just too good not to exist. Plus a lot of the things I wanted to do for Zeta were kind of complicated and would require remaking on sigma. At this time, whist wasn't all that active either, so I thoguht. I'll wait a couple of months and see if the core is finished or I'm out of this.It was then when I decided to scrap Zeta and announce Sigma RC1.

But it wasn't really going anywhere, I was just trying to put some pressure and see if it can get done. It was not so meaningful because sigma core was still far from finished so there wasn't really any solid base to believe sigma would be released in any time soon. Then we moved to the new forums. With so much stuff going on with the new forums, I even forgot I had made that topic as there were other priorities in line. Meanwhile, I released a couple of realm patches to keep the ladders somewhat refreshing.Also, in this time, suchbalance joined the crew, with some outstanding guides and high quality input. Big props to him as well.August 2015 - January 2016 - Median XL 2016. So this was kind of a loop.

The sigma core was still not finished and this forum is not this forum without an announce thread. Then Median XL 2016 was announced, and to be fair, this wasn't much different from Zeta. It was meant to be a transition patch.

But I was determined to work on it. However, the forum was requiring a lot of work, so I didn't really have much time to work on this in 2015. At the end of 2015, the forums were practically finished, so I was quite bored at work, so I quit it.So finally I got time to do what I want again, I saved money to chill at home for a while and be able to plan a 2 month trip to europe (on april), as well as start modding again and sleep 12 hours a day.March 2016 - Median XL Sigma announced! As we have seen the last months, whist has been working quite a lot on sigma, which are great news for us all. So while he was testing some GUI at the sin war, I casually entered and started talking to him.

And he actually gave me the friggin files! Of course the core is not finished, but finally I can do some work and we can work on this co-op project. I had done some stuff for 2016 patch already, which was cancelled because we'll have sigma instead. This time it's for real, and we're both highly motivated to get the shit done.And I remember that back in 2012 people would make jokes about sigma being released in christmas 2012 as 'too late'. Indeed, time passes.Now, we need Steven Spielberg to make a movie about this.