In Diablo II, the Guild Hall was a private territory stored permanently on Battle.net. Members could chat, trade and gather there, and by dropping gold into the "Steeg Stone" they could grow the initial cottage into a hall, and eventually a castle.

The system was cancelled before release; after Lord of Destruction it had a second chance at life with the concept for a second expansion, Diablo II: Salvation. More than twenty years later the game files still contain ten guild maps, interactive objects, interface assets and localisation strings. This article puts the public record together with those remnants and documents how the guild map palette was restored.

The source material comes from these two articles, which contain a large amount of raw documentation.

Battle.net Village, Guilds, Arenas — Documentation 1

Battle.net Village, Guilds, Arenas — Documentation 2

The guild concept

The Guild Hall was a private territory kept long-term on the Battle.net servers. Once a character finished the game, they could found their own guild. The guild master set the guild name, tag, insignia and colours. The guild tag appeared after every member's name, and only members could enter the guild map. It was both a safe area and a shared home where members could chat, trade, gather and show who they were.

The hall started small: a humble building and Act I-style grass. Members dropped gold into the "Steeg Stone" to expand the hall level by level.

What Blizzard North wanted was for a group of players to genuinely own a shared place — somewhere to meet, to show off, to grow, and to watch their guild go from a cottage to a hall, and even to a castle.

Why it was cancelled

In November 1999 Blizzard had already published screenshots of the guild room;

In December of the same year, press visiting Blizzard North saw the guild content in development with their own eyes, and the game files still hold a large amount of data and assets. It genuinely reached production.

But on 24 March 2000 Blizzard announced it formally: guilds would not be in the beta, and would not be in the retail release.

"Guilds will not be in the beta, and will not be in the final shipping version of Diablo II. During development we came to understand clearly that making guilds bulletproof, balanced and completely secure would delay Diablo II. It would require fundamental, major changes to Diablo II and to Battle.net's client-server architecture. Testing and the crucial balance passes would make our players wait even longer. To get the game into players' hands as early as possible, we had to decide to drop guilds. Rest assured, we are exploring ways to add guilds after Diablo II ships."

The Guild Hall died of server architecture, security and a ship date. Blizzard North said at the time that they would keep exploring a post-release way to add guilds, and players believed it: perhaps once Lord of Destruction was finished, these things would come back some day.

In the second expansion

After Lord of Destruction, Blizzard North considered a second expansion, working title Diablo II: Salvation.

The second expansion never really entered production. Dave Brevik later described it as "only designed, never produced"; he holds a design document covering new classes, new areas, new mechanics and story concepts. Environment artist Dave Glenn also clearly remembers building a Guild Hall prototype.

The plan for the second expansion went far beyond adding one more act and one more class so players could run through the game again. It tried to answer a question Diablo II had left open since early development: beyond farming monsters and gear, how do players form genuinely long-term relationships on Battle.net? How does a group of people acquire a shared goal? Why would they come back to the same place after the game is over?

"What I wanted to do on Diablo III, and what we should have done on Diablo II — we did do it and then it got cancelled — was another expansion, bringing in more MMO-like features." — Dave Glenn

Since multiplayer content was the core of that expansion, the guild system naturally had a chance at revival.

The "Steeg Stone" carried over too. Named after designer Stieg Hedlund, it is a gold pool you can only deposit into, never withdraw from. Members throw spare gold in and the system shows a leaderboard of who contributed most.

Deposit only, no withdrawal — the money seems to buy nothing back. But what Dave Glenn wanted to test was a different kind of drive: if a group can build something together, will they keep pouring into it purely for the guild's growth, its ranking and their peers' recognition?

"One of the classes for the second expansion was a healing class — a priest/cleric," Dave Brevik said. "We wanted a priest class specifically anti-undead. I remember the moment I wrote that idea down; after I finished I thought: 'God, this gameplay would be really fun.' It was primarily a multiplayer-oriented class, able to heal based on the damage allies had taken, something like that. It did not use direct healing, the 'I stand in the back and heal everyone' approach. It was a very different kind of gameplay. We actually worked out ideas, concepts and new skill-tree entries for every class, all of them multiplayer-oriented."

The expansion also added a healing-leaning priest class specialised against the undead — 牧师 or 圣职 in Chinese. It would not stand in the back topping allies up; healing scaled with the damage allies took. They also sketched multiplayer-leaning skill-tree entries for every existing class.

It was only designed, never produced. I had a multi-page design doc going over new classes, new areas, new mechanics and story concepts. Not sure what I can say because Blizzard owns it. 它设计好了，从未制作。我准备了一份多页的设计文档，介绍了新职业、新区域、新机制和故事概念。但我不能透漏更多，因为版权在暴雪手里。 ——戴夫·布雷维克（Dave Brevik），暴雪北方联合创始人

He could not tell us more, because Blizzard owns the rights.

Salvation was cancelled because of the surging enthusiasm for what Diablo III might be. "We felt doing the same thing again would be a bit of a grind, and it was time to move on and do something else. For some people that meant doing something outside Diablo; others said: 'Just make the next Diablo.'" — Max Schaefer

The team's enthusiasm for Diablo III was higher, and they felt another round of content inside the same framework would be repetitive and tiring.

So Salvation was dropped.

In 2002 Blizzard also filed a trademark for "Diablo II: Salvation". After repeated extensions it never filed a statement of actual use and the mark was abandoned in 2006.

They had, however, applied for that trademark back in 1997, when Diablo II had only just started development — so "Salvation" clearly had nothing to do with a second expansion then. Blizzard's cinematic department did want to grow the game's CG technology into full film-making capability, so that filing was most likely laying groundwork for a film project.

The Diablo II cinematics team wanted a more formal production pipeline. Harley Huggins of Blizzard Entertainment's film department explained the drive: "One of the driving forces behind that was we were going to make a movie eventually…"

Blizzard intended to make a film, using its own technology to extend fragmentary cutscenes into something that could tell a complete story.

They never explicitly mentioned the Arena, but since the expansion was meant to strengthen multiplayer, the Arena would very probably have returned too.

The guild hall maps

What we can learn from the public record:

The Guild Hall was only accessible on Battle.net;

finishing the game let you create a guild hall;

the guild master chose a name, a three-letter tag shown after every member's name, a two-colour scheme, and an insignia to represent the guild;

the Guild Hall was a permanent gathering place, safe and private, and only guild members could enter;

it started small: one room with outdoor grass you could romp around on;

dropping gold into the Steeg Stone expanded the hall, added features and let you change the map style;

you could keep donating to the Steeg Stone and see a contribution leaderboard; the gold could only go in, never out. The first upgrade cost 35,000 gold;

duelling was not allowed inside the Guild Hall.

The Guild Hall was essentially a Battle.net village for guild members, and they were clearly still chasing a more immersive, continuous game world. Fortunately a fair amount of data survives in the files.

Ten guild maps survive, but the palette file is lost. Opened with the Act III palette, everything comes out green.

Even the floor is green, and the dithering is very visible, making it look dirty

Fortunately one officially released screenshot gives us a reference, which makes restoring the palette possible.

It is easy to see that the map style matches Act I, and that the guild map is a town map: the Barbarian's idle animation shows him holding both swords up in the wilderness, and the Steeg Stone looks different from its current model.

With a reference, palette restoration becomes possible: the official screenshot and the current state have to be matched pixel for pixel. Characters such as Larzuk and Anya on the map let us rebuild the reds, and the guild maps reuse a lot of Act I ground and grass textures, which rebuilds the greens.

These are a few iterations:

The current result, combined with The Reliquary's custom colour grading, looks very good.

1. Cottages — 农舍

A humble guild cottage, matching the documentation: the entry-level Guild Hall.

It uses Act I housing style with a fireplace, bookshelves and the guild's most basic fittings; it also has outdoor space, and an NPC stands there.

2. Guild/house1/guild1.ds1

Now suddenly we have a guild hall that looks like a castle, with far more space, but no extra objects, and it is an isolated map.

3. Guild/house1/guild2.ds1

This one is a duplicate.

4. Guild/house1/guild3.ds1

A guild vault is added; otherwise little changes.

5. Guild/house1/guild4.ds1

A banner is added.

6. Guild/house1/guild4b.ds1

This one is very different: besides a differently styled hall, it comes with a wide outdoor area.

The author placed many NPCs, which in a concept shot like this were presumably there to stand in for players and make the place feel populated.

Outside there are campfires, a wagon and a cowshed — though no cows inside.

7. Guild/house1/guild5.ds1

Another banner is added.

8. Guild/house1/guild5b.ds1

This is the largest one: the hall gains chairs, tables and candles, and the outdoor layout differs from the earlier maps, though not by much.

9. Guild/house2/guild2.ds1

This one is a completely different style. Like the first map, the interior fittings are distinctive: bookshelves, a personal stash, and a room with paintings hung in it — very much a place for a group to gather.



10. Guild/house2/guild3.ds1

One more room, with another guild vault inside, several more paintings and a stag's head. This room is clearly meant to display the guild's achievements and honours. The new room is a kitchen — very much built for a group to play house in.

Two more buildings appear outside.

Having seen all this, it is obvious that the guild maps expand with each upgrade, adding new things, and that there are different styles: here we have the castle style and the farmhouse style.

Every guild map uses the Act I grassland music by default; the game has no music of its own for them.

Interactive objects and UI

The guild has several interactive objects.

1. Steeg Stone: the guild's most basic object. Interacting with it opens this screen.

It is clearly for setting guild information and for the donation leaderboard. Combining the documentation with the surviving localisation files, I have made a rough guess at what these controls do.

The game provides 32 guild insignia, with adjustable foreground and background colours.

32 full-colour insignia images also survive in the files; applied in game they look like this.

2. Guild Vault

The leftover guild data is already present in the June 2000 pre-expansion build, so the vault's size stayed at the 10 × 4 era.

The space above is probably where a player-written item description is shown.

3. Trophy Case

It never appears in the guild maps. It looks very much like the guild vault, and who has permission to take from the box — and what makes the Trophy Case special — are questions no surviving material answers.

The skull and old man ornaments underneath are exactly the character-screen decoration from the expansion.

4. Message Board

It does not appear in the guild maps either. There is almost no material on the message board and no surviving interface, but the name tells us roughly what it did.

5. Guild Portal

The description says the portal takes you to the next tier of guild map, so presumably once players donated enough to upgrade the hall, a portal appeared to carry everyone present to the new map.

Finally there are UI elements whose function is unclear:

Guild ladder rankings:

Localisation files

They show that at least five guild tiers were planned, each unlocking the next feature: guild insignia, personal stash, guild vault, message board and trophy case.

//Guilds

CapsJoinMenu4, strArena, "Arena"

CapsJoinMenu5, strGuild, "Guild"

Guild 1, strGuild1, "Guild 1"

Guild 2, strGuild2, "Guild 2"

Guild 3, strGuild3, "Guild 3"

Guild 4, strGuild4, "Guild 4"

Guild 5, strGuild5, "Guild 5"

To Guild 5, strToGuild5, "To Guild 5"

To Guild 4, strToGuild4, "To Guild 4"

To Guild 3, strToGuild3, "To Guild 3"

To Guild 2, strToGuild2, "To Guild 2"

To Guild 1, strToGuild1, "To Guild 1"

CapsBnet9, strGuilds, "Guilds"

CapsBnet10, strEnterGuildHall, "Enter Guild Hall"

CapsBnet11, strInviteMember, "Invite Member"

CapsBnet12, strQuitGuild, "Leave Guild"

CapsBnet13, strCreateGuild, "Create Guild"

CapsBnet14, strAcceptInvitation, "Accept Invitation"

CapsBnet15, strLeaveGuildConfirm, "Are you sure you want to leave your current guild permanently?"

CapsGuildName, strGuildName, "Guild Name"

CapsGuildTag, strGuildTag, "Guild Tag"

GuildText1, strNoInvitations, "You have no guild invitations."

GuildText2, strInvitationString, " has invited you to join their guild."

Ladder3, strGuildLadder, "Guild Ladder"

Ladder7, strSteegGold, "Steeg Gold"

gmGuildTitle, strGuildMemberTitle, "Steeg Stone Statue"

gmGuildName, strGuildNameLabel, "Name"

gmGuildTag, strGuildTagLabel, "Tag"

gmWWW, strGuildWWWLabel, "Guild Website:"

gmGuildCharter, strGuildCharterLabel, "Guild Charter:"

gmGuildCurrentGolds, strGuildCurrentGoldLabel, "Current Gold:"

gmGuildNextLevel, strGuildNextLevelLabel, "Next Level:"

gmGuildMaster, strGuildMasterLabel, "Guild Master:"

gmOfficer, strGuildOfficer, "Officer"

gmName, strGuildPlayerName, "Name"

gmClass, strGuildPlayerClass, "Class"

gmLevel, strGuildPlayerLevel, "Level"

gmDonate, strGuildDonate, "Donate"

gmRemove, strGuildRemoveMember, "Remove Member"

gmPal, strGuildPal, "Paladin"

gmSor, strGuildSor, "Sorceress"

gmAma, strGuildAma, "Amazon"

gmNec, strGuildNec, "Necromancer"

gmBar, strGuildBar, "Barbarian"

gmChangeSym, strGuildChangeInsignia, "Click here to change the guild insignia."

gmChangeCharter, strGuildChangeCharter, "Click here to edit the guild charter."

gmChangeWebLink, strGuildChangeWebAddress, "Click here to edit the guild web address."

Guild Portal, strGuildPortal, "Guild Portal"

createdguildsuccess, strcreatedguildsuccess, "Guild created successfully."

createdguildfailure, strcreatedguildfailure, "Unable to create guild."

inviteguildsuccess, strinviteguildsuccess, "Guild invitation sent."

inviteguildfailure, strinviteguildfailure, "Failed to send guild invitation."

inviteguildins, strinviteguildins, "You have been invited to join %s {%s}! Type /d2guildjoin to join."

joinedguildsuccess, strjoinedguildsuccess, "Successfully joined the guild."

joinedguildfailure, strjoinedguildfailure, "Unable to join the guild."

quitguildsuccess, strquitguildsuccess, "Successfully left the guild."

quitguildfailure, strquitguildfailure, "Unable to leave the guild."

guildentererror, strguildentererror, "Unable to enter the guild."

strGuildMasterKicked, strGuildMasterKicked, "%s has been expelled by the guild master"

strGuildPerk1, strGuildPerk1, "Guild Insignia"

strGuildPerk2, strGuildPerk2, "Personal Stash"

strGuildPerk3, strGuildPerk3, "Guild Vault"

strGuildPerk4, strGuildPerk4, "Message Board"

strGuildPerk5, strGuildPerk5, "Trophy Case"

strGuildPerk6, strGuildPerk6, "No further upgrades."

strGuildGoldDonated, strGuildGoldDonated, "Donated %d gold"

strGuildDonateGold, strGuildDonateGold, "How much gold do you want to donate? (Current: %d)"

gmGuildCurrentGoldPopup, strGuildCurrentGoldPopup, "Gold donated to the guild"

gmGuildNextLevelPopup, strGuildNextLevelPopup, "Gold required for the next guild level"

gmGuildDonateGoldPopup, strGuildDonateGoldPopup, "Donate gold to the guild"

Message Board, strMessageBoard, "Message Board"

Trophy Case, strTrophyCase, "Trophy Case"

Guild Vault, strGuildVault, "Guild Vault"

Steeg Stone, strSteegStone, "Steeg Stone"

guildaccepticon, strguildaccepticon, "Accept this insignia?"

guildmsgtext, strguildmsgtext, "Text"