How old are you and what do you do in real life?

Hey guys, I’ll start off by introducing myself. My name is Jorrit, nickname Spirals and I’m 26 years old. I’m currently finishing my masters in Sociology. Before Sociology I did my Bachelor in Social Work. I am currently working as a social worker with the homeless in Amsterdam.

How long are you in Diablo universum, what was your beginning?

I have been playing Diablo since classic. First at singleplayer and later on battle.net. With the release of Lord of Destruction me and my brother made one of the first Dutch 99 barbarians which was rather cool. My first character was a paladin. I liked the sound of might available soon so I went with him. I can’t really recall how long he lasted.

How your journey with Diablo clans looked like?

Pff, I should’ve made a diary back then! In the begin of classic I was clanless – with the start of LoD me and my brother played with some Dutch clans like FaS and DS. At some point I joined up with other guys in Sorceress Tower Europe-1 and shortly afterwards Postreality, which was hosted by Noz (a dutch guy btw!). Saesa was there, and a big bunch of other guys. This was something new. With LoD a lot of new items was introduced to the game just as new characters and rulebased pvp was born. In the beginning we (me and one of my best rl friends) build characters just to optimize them in the best ways for these rules without really playing pvp. At that time sojs were still used as the currency. I recall finding an eaglehorn was good for 15 sojs which could buy you a 40/ias jewel. At some point I started to actively engage myself in duels.

Postreality really made me aware of having a home inside a community. A place with all sorts of madness, intriges and fun going on. A place where everyone could and should find shelter (exceptions left out ofcourse). The duelling was new, a strange sensation. Instead of PK and NK manners and quality duels were the themes. Duelling for the duelling, duelling to improve yourself and to have fun with each and every game. After Postreality we got Euro-pvp.net. After Euro-pvp.net (which is about the time WoW was released) Pat (from this board), Rising-Sun and myself became the administrators. After EP.org I hosted two other communities. D2Gamers and D2Classic. I will return to these later in the interview.
For now I have to mention clans. So far I have mainly been putting forward a global impression of the communities I have been in. I haven’t been in a clan for a long time. At some point I started to play classic again and I was asked by a classic clan (which exists since 2000) to join them. ‘Xpk’ is this clan and I still am member. It’s a very small clan with about 10 members. Most of them I still speak with on a regular basic, and I will probably meet many of them in D3 again! As for Hardcore Classic I am a part-time member of the European Friends. I like Hardcore, and I like Hardcore Classic the best! The last ladders I have mainly played HCC with the guys from EF.

What period of your game you find the best, are there any special events, situations, which engraved in your memory for years?

Something most of you will recognize is the love/hate relationship with d2. Or maybe not but for me at the later years of Diablo 2 I could always be going for a project with a lot of energy and time. Building characters, investing time in the community to become bored and move to something else. As a result I have played at several places and thus my memories are really diverse. On the whole I suppose having been able to play Diablo 2 with the best players of Europe (whether it’s classic, lod or hcc) was really good and fun.
In specific: finding out the game mechanics, doing tons and tons of MF runs (which was actually worthwhile) at that time and building characters has been a very good period. I have made 14 lvl 99 characters. Doing Chaos Sanctuary runs on classic with EF or with TFO was also a nice memory. The introduction of rule based pvp (EP modelled) in Classic was spectacular. Another special event was the European Championship tournament we held. We (the Dutch team) beat Poland and Portugal on our way to the finals but got defeated by Germany in the finals in a very tight match 6-5. It didn't matter to me - it never did as long as the duels were good.

Through all this years you probably had dozens of characters – what was your favourite one, what was his char name and gear?

Ah, characters. Tough question really. I will briefly name a few. My amazon: Archer. She was the character I used in pvp/tvt most. Her equip was pretty nice with an inventory of 3/20’s, a legit 08 hl and a Cruel Grand Matron Bow of Evi.
My 1.09 sorceress: Spirals. She had a nice inventory with 44+ coldskillers and pretty much perfect items. (Which at that time wasn’t common, mind you!)
My classic barbarian: SpiralsXpk. He was strong! An alternative build using a rare armor combined with a 303 martel, legit prelod wargauntlets, and having the luxury to swap between two very nice prelod boots (imp’s and bone slippers). His life/damage output hasn’t been bettered by anyone as far as I’m aware.

Why you have spent most of your Diablo gaming on pvp, why not pvm?

Hah, I cannot proof this but I think I played more pvm in the end. The last years I became inactive on the pvp front. I have literally seen everything, won a lot of tours and became saturated with duelling. One of my criticisms toward the LoD duelling was the amount of time it took before duels could start because of the big amount of charms and resists items needed to be swapped. In the rule development we tried to overcome this ‘problem’ but the nature of the game makes it very hard. I didn’t like to swap half of my inventory and after 5 duels having to swap it back. Anyhow: to answer the question – I played and enjoyed both equally.

We know that you have been involved as admin or mod in many Diablo 2 projects and leagues, but probably not all readers are aware of it, can you describe for us those organizations a bit?

I already described Postreality – it realty was the beginning. Afterwards Euro-pvp.net came up. I was an active player there up until the Administrators (Rostedt and Kaamos) went to play WoW. Pat (from this place) and Rising-Sun asked me to help them out with the ‘new’ EP. I agreed and we put much time in it. Euro-PvP was a community build for duelling. Not duelling with PK and NK idea’s – no with a clear competitive aspect. Due to the different classes and the nature of Diablo 2 which wasn’t designed for pvp it needed to balance the different classes to each other. These rules were the heart of the community and elevated the duelling to higher standards. In the communities I administered afterwards (namely D2Gamers.net and D2Classic.net) I always held those standards high.
I understand that we will have a section on D3CL with some extra information on the communities itself so I will not go further into these here.

Basing on all known news about Diablo 3, what do you think about the game itself, will you play and if yes, what character will you choose?

Yes I will play. I have been excited about the game since it was announced. Thanks to IMP-Gun I received a beta key and have been trying out the game for a while now. To me it looks more polished than Diablo 1 and 2 – and that’s a good thing. Overall I am really happy and intrigued by the storyline, the gameplay and the items later on. There is one minor drawback in my eyes (among others but this is the most important for me). I really miss the manual skilling and statting of your character. I like to think and figure out my builds by myself.

What do you think about Auction Houses? Will they have major impact on Diablo?

Very smart move from Blizzard on several fronts. I suppose the succes D2JSP had with its forumgold made the developers think hard to implement something like this. Ofcourse they had experience from WoW. Personally I’m okay with it, items have ever been traded and if you can do it ingame without having to browse through forums it’s an improvement. I don’t think it will have a major impact. Trading was a part of the game and will not matter. You can do without by the looks from the beta!

How have you become a member of D3CL crew?

I have been asked by Pat to help out in making D3CL known to other people.

What do you think about D3CL’s future, do you think that’s it’s possible to create Diablo 3 community gathered around pvp?

I hope so. The history of D2 and the communities like described was based on the lack of a working pvp system. We filled that gap. To me (and to Blizzard aswell I suppose) it’s still uncertain how it will turn out to work exactly later on. However, I suspect it will use the principle of WoW which would be a bad thing for D3CL.
If the PvP is not like mention in the above question I really hope that Europe will be united in one community. We have the experience to let it work and it would be a waste of time and energy if several small communities would spring up.

At the end, few lines for You – You can for instance say hi to your family, share some deep thoughts with our readers or just wish world peace to all of us.

First of all, thanks for the opportunity to have this interview.
Secondly I just want to give all the people (and friends!) with whom I played D2 a thumbs up. Come play and I’m sure we will meet in game.

Best,
Jorrit

2012-05-11 13:43