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In pretty much every game nowadays, tier is marked by color indicating its rarity and relative strength. Blue gear is better than green gear, purple is better than blue, and Yellow? You know that stuff’s good. But how did those colored rarities come to be?

On the most recent episode of the GI Show, Ben Hanson interviews the former president of Blizzard North and designer for Diablo 1 and 2 David Brevik, who talks about the origins of loot rarity colors for the series and how they (in a way) came from Tolkien’s Angband.

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