Diablo II patched to 1.12a, runs in OpenGL on Intel Macs

By Stephen Munn | July 6, 2008

Just as I was losing hope and lamented as much, Blizzard reassured me I would get my patch. That was some time ago, but now here it is, the 1.12a patch for Diablo II. It fixes OpenGL mode on Intel Macs (specifically, it says “Fixed an incompatibility between Rosetta and OpenGL mode on Intel Mac”) letting you run the game in OpenGL mode, enabling all those nice features that make the eight-year-old game look a little less dated. According to the documentation, it lets you run the game without the CD in the drive as well.

The patch seems to have arrived on July 1st. I was unable to get at it from Blizzard’s site for some reason. Instead, I had to turn to BitTorrent to find me a copy. It took a while to download last night, when I installed it this morning I was pleased to see the video working properly, but I was surprised that it wouldn’t run without the CD. I checked the names of my files (because it mentions in the documentation that some shuffling of files from the CD might be required) and it turned out that was the issue.

Even aside from using the CD or not, the game looks a lot better now, and that’s what I wanted this patch for. I’m running it stretched in 800×600 on my iMac, and playing an old sorceress character who advanced to the second Act and never quite finished it. Diablo II really is a timeless classic, and a delightfully clicky RPG.