None of these disparities are dramatic, but if one where to make a call which versions of these tracks are superior, Lord of Destruction would win this mini-competition. Furthermore, “Siege” on Diablo Anniversary begins with a new minute-long intro that's not found on Lord of Destruction, while “The Ancients” on Lord of Destruction runs for almost 2,5 minutes longer than its counterpart on Diablo Anniversary. On both albums, Uelmen's compositions are arranged to play as a continuous suite, but as Diablo Anniversary and Lord of Destruction feature different album running orders, the pieces also have diverging fadeins and -outs. To make things more complicated, there are more discrepancies between the two albums.

This changed somewhat in 2011 with the release of compilation album The Music of Diablo 1996 – 2011: Diablo 15 Year Anniversary, which contained four of Lord of Destruction's five tracks (why Blizzard didn't include the whole Lord of Destruction EP remains a bit of a mystery). Needless to say that in following years, this CD became one of Western Game music's most sought after collectables.

After writing the music for Lord of Destruction in September 2000, Uelmen recorded the score in January 2001, which was then released as a bonus CD that came as part of the game's Limited Edition. For the first time in his career, Uelmen was given the chance to record with a symphony orchestra (still very much a rarity for a game score in 2001), in this case the Slovak National Symphony Orchestra – Uelmen would work again with them on World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade and Torchlight II. However, his soundtrack ended up being much more than a simple continuation of his work for Diablo II. Revamping Diablo II's gameplay and adding new character classes, weapons and a fifth act to Diablo II's storyline, Lord of Destruction was another sterling entry into Blizzard's distinguished body of work and received strong reviews.įor Lord of Destruction's score, series mainstay Matt Uelmen would return to write a bit over 20 minutes of new music for this expansion pack. Unlike the first Diablo's expansion pack though, Lord of Destruction wasn't a third-party product, but was instead developed by Blizzard.

And just like the original Diablo, the saga's second part would of course enhance its (sales) glory through an expansion pack, this time dubbed Lord of Destruction. Just like its predecessor, Diablo II had been an huge success among gamers and critics.

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