Diablo's Contest History

Who is Diablo?
The devil has gone by many names over the years, but Blizzard chose to call him Diablo when creating yet another of their smash hit series. The premesis of the two Diablo titles is simple, especially the first one: find Diablo and kick his ass.

But before making the mistake of thinking that Diablo isn't a deep game, think again. People literally spend years on battle.net getting their Diablo characters up to level 99, so there must be a certain appeal about finding Diablo and beating the hell out of him.

In the first Diablo title, the story is a very simple one. A labyrinth lies underneath the town of Tristram and pure evil is flowing out of it. The reason for this is Diablo, who lies on the 16th and final floor. It's your job to go kill him and save the world. Eventually you do so, but plugging Diablo's soulstone into your head thinking you could channel his evil might not have been the best of ideas.

Enter the events of Diablo 2, where the hero from Diablo goes mad from the soulstone's powers and he himself becomes Diablo -- and before another hero can come along to try slaying Diablo again, the big evil learns from his past mistake enlists far more help than the last time. Specifically, he unleashes his two brothers Mephisto and Baal upon the world to go along with his own evil, and all hell literally breaks loose.

Whatever is a lonely hero to do aside from fight?

"Not even death can save you from me!" - Diablo

Diablo's Contest History
Win-Loss Record: 4-3

Spring 2005 Contest - Ruin Division - 7 Seed
 * Ruin Round 1 --- Defeated (2) Ridley, 42796 [57.65%] - 31438 [42.35%]
 * Ruin Semifinal --- Defeated (6) M. Bison, 44627 [52.88%] - 39761 [47.12%]
 * Ruin Final --- Defeated (1) Kefka, 45547 [54.09%] - 38660 [45.91%]
 * Final Four - Lost to (1) Ganondorf, 30345 [34.80%] - 56848 [65.20%]
 * Extrapolated Strength --- 4th Place [29.12%]

Summer 2005 Contest - Chaos Division - 5 Seed
 * Chaos Round 1 --- Defeated (4) Kratos Aurion, 48783 [56.76%] - 37162 [43.24%]
 * Chaos Semifinal --- Lost to (1) Sonic the Hedgehog, 28954 [31.45%] - 63014 [68.55%]
 * Extrapolated Strength --- 35th Place [22.20%]

The Ruin Division was aptly named in Spring 2005, because Diablo certainly came along and ruined everyone's brackets. Most people figured that Diablo's match with Ridley would be a tossup, but very few people believed that Diablo would be able to use his match with Ridley as a stepping stone to winning the entire division before falling to Ganondorf in the Final Four of the contest. And oddly enough, all three characters that Diablo defeated in that contest had a lead on him when the poll began. At the end of the contest, only the three heavy-hitters of the field ranked ahead of Diablo in the Spring 2005 X-Stats.

Diablo's road was cut much shorter in Summer 2005, but this was because he was stuck facing Sonic in the second round. His first round match with Kratos would have been interesting on paper had the two never been in a contest before, but we had just seen Diablo tear through the Spring 2005 bracket and knew that Diablo would easily win the match.

It took a villain-only contest to get Diablo into one of these things, but he has since failed to disappoint and has proven himself to be a worthy mid-carder in the field. He's also the only PC-exclusive character to have ever done anything worth a damn in these contests, which goes to show how little GameFAQs cares about PC gaming these days.

Summer 2007 Contest - Division 1 - Second Group
 * Division 1 Round 1 --- 4th place, 21603 [15.42%] - Mega Man, 70743 [50.49%] - KOS-MOS, 25822 [18.43%] - Arthas Menethil, 21950 [15.67%]

Diablo continues to be the shining example of just how crappy the field was in the Villains Contest. He was thought to have a good shot of getting into the second round if he could avoid some sort of weird Blizzard LFF with Arthas. Instead, he laid an egg, which apparently even demons do. He didn't even compete with KOS-MOS. On the contrary, Diablo was bested by Arthas and came in dead last in a fourpack that was basically Mega Man and a load of cannon fodder. If that isn't a loud statement against any more gimmick contests, I don't know what is.