Will I have to play Ladder?

Hey all,

Just wondering if moving to new chars on ladder is going to be mostly essential when ladder comes out? In terms of there still being enough others to trade with to build Wealth/ work towards new items etc.

I don't get as much time to play as I'd like. Currently I have built Infinity and am probably half way to Enigma. Unless I get lucky I won't be getting Enigma before ladder starts anyway. Still plenty of current builds/ runewords I'd like to explore before worrying about the new ladder ones.

So is everyone going to ladder or will some be staying non-ladder at least for a bit anyway?

I, for my part won't play ladder.
But I have no clue how it will impact trades.
Alot of players will go on ladder I suppose.

I personally will try both. I just finished my necro and want to pop some bodies in

Chaos Sanctuary, but will for sure try something out on Ladder.
To be honest, we have been playing for less time than what a normal ladder season would last (4 months), but perhaps we were very eager due to a combination of nostalgia and curiosity.
I say lets wait and see, perhaps we may try some char there (I want to try Wind druid)

Maybe it's just me, but... Non-Ladder seems dead (or dying) already. I'm noticing a LOT less public games in the list, and doubly so less *actual* public games (i.e. not trades/begging/free) the past two weeks.

Imo ladder start might "kill" non ladder activity for a while but that definitely won't be the full 4 month season. During the first couple months players will be playing mostly ladder but after that I expect everyone to transition back to non ladder as items stay forever in there. So... No you won't have to hop on the ladder train. It just might be that during the first 2/3 weeks after ladder launches it will be extra difficult to find trades but after that it should get better.

I probably won't play ladder either.

Played almost too much when the game was released ... like any good game, so that's ok for a while.
I was also (very) lucky and have most of the items I can use, and good runes for later use.


But repeating the whole thing over and over again is not good imho and I don't enjoy it either.
I don't see any real point in playing so much again to accumulate items (or later runes).

But I hope that many players will still be available in non Ladder who are not only interested in items .

I always played ladder but old times the duration was bigger.

Imo the problem was they had to launch ladder just right at start of the game and they should be at least 6 months.

Im scared about the feeling they will change things in the way to D3, since I want to chill in D2 and dont want either start from 0 so much times in a short period of time.

But I think too that they noticed a decrease of ppl interest and maybe they find that they should be 4 months.

Lets see how goes.

I'm not eager for joinin ladder climb as well. I'd rather prefer comfortable, calm gameplay without chasin some rank/testin new runewords/speculatin these rw's latter in non-ladder. Let the fresh blood burn there, i'll better keep mine in non-ladder

The simple answer is "depends".

Back in the original days, ladder didn't change too much. You always still had plenty of activity non-ladder as well.

Here, it really boils down to how much new stuff do they add, how good will the ladder runewords be, will there be additional incentive to play ladder and how patient can folks be? The runewords for example were stated to (most likely) be buildable non-ladder once the season is over (which is already a nice change from the original ladder only stuff) so that may drive less people to ladder than they normally would. If they ever do go through with that D3 style "ladder for more stash tabs" idea (ugh...) then yeah, more and more people will feel forced to play ladder, in turn making non-ladder play more and more lonely.

I for one would prefer to stay non-ladder (pending additional ladder-only stuff being released) but I'm keenly aware that there may be precious few folks left to trade with if I do. Will just have to wait and see.

All that having been said..there is one advantage to actually playing ladder: Early season is a great time to get rich (which then carries over to your non-ladder Wealth after the season).

I think they know that it will become a trading Ground for both rwt and bots if they kept the new runewords nonladder after season 1 end, just like back in the days with the ladder only runewords.

Once the chars got transfered after it ended everyone just sold all the stuff for forum gold or real money and made a new character for the new reset and repeat, I did this aswell to earn alot of forum gold and I hope they do not force people and split the community.

I lost most of my trust with Blizzard a few years back with WoW and the samething has happend there with 3 different clients for WoW, making all 3 versions feel semi dead and empty.

One can just hope that both ladder and non ladder feels alive so you won’t be forced to play ladder if you wan’t to play with others, implementing ladder only stuff like extra stash and a higher limit for open chars like more mules etc I just a stupid way to go in my opinion and should be added for both versions if they choose to make changes.

Ladder should be a way for competition not a rwt money income source and full of bots.

I don't find it interesting to play anymore and I wait for a ladder to reset. I don't have high-end runewords, but I can clear any area in seconds and have done it thousands of times. The Trade seems to be dead, nobody needs torches, shakos, tals, skillers heck even for SoJs there is not much competition. I am wondering how people are still having fun

Schnorki wrote: 2 years ago

All that having been said..there is one advantage to actually playing ladder: Early season is a great time to get rich (which then carries over to your non-ladder Wealth after the season).

Naitsirk wrote: 2 years ago

I think they know that it will become a trading Ground for both rwt and bots if they kept the new runewords nonladder after season 1 end, just like back in the days with the ladder only runewords.
[...]
Ladder should be a way for competition not a rwt money income source and full of bots.

That is what it will probably mostly aim at. The game just doesn't have enough content.

If you want to get "rich", you have to invest a lot of time ... the game does not require great skills, just a pure investment of time - and we're talking theoretically about "play money".

It wasn't any different in the beginning, but I still remember how people wanted to be LvL 99 first (and also played in Guilds).
Nowadays it's all about the money ... although I still can't understand that it's supposed to be profitable (time / money) for rwt trades - but that's another story.

Just for the record: I for one was talking about in-game rich, not RWT rich. Simply because you can sell your easily farmed, more common drops for a crapton more in runes early on and then use the same runes post-ladder to buy whatever you may still need for then again comparatively cheaper.

Yes, that's exactly how I understood it.

Should have separated the two quotes .

personally I wont be playing ladder. Im 33 now married with a wife and kid I've already made my Enigma, Infinity, griefs. I honestly can't start all over again like I did when I was a young kid.

I'll wish everyone luck on ladder but I ain't got time for that anymore.

twiz wrote: 2 years ago

Maybe it's just me, but... Non-Ladder seems dead (or dying) already. I'm noticing a LOT less public games in the list, and doubly so less *actual* public games (i.e. not trades/begging/free) the past two weeks.

The ladder reset announcement killed the current (non)ladder. It was waaay too early, especially if there's going to be PTR (saving money on professional testers). The game will stay dead for a month or two.

So from my experience in LOD ladder seasons of the ancient past, as someone who does not care about ladder much, here are my expectations:


-Non-Ladder will still have plenty of players, but will be called dead anyway by some people.

-There will be a spike in the number of free/trade games a few days/weeks both before & after each season as ladder only players sometimes give away their gear at both those times & non-ladder players will be looking to take advantage of that.

-Non-Ladder will experience a bit of a drop in prices around the start and end of each season due to both the free games, and the flood of items coming from ladder players, but prices will stabilize again between seasons(depending on how long between) & during seasons. A savvy trader might try to use this to their advantage.


The last one might not apply as much to the days before a season if there are enough players returning early in anticipation of the new season to offset the items coming from ladder only players, & there are an unlimited number of other things that could also affect market prices, so always take any price predictions with a grain of salt & use your own best judgement.

is ladder loot the same or better?

DarkHenge wrote: 2 years ago

personally I wont be playing ladder. Im 33 now married with a wife and kid I've already made my Enigma, Infinity, griefs. I honestly can't start all over again like I did when I was a young kid.

I'll wish everyone luck on ladder but I ain't got time for that anymore.

Another dad, all the better.
And having played a lot less I still have plenty to go on non ladder for at least the first season. Will wait for the 2nd

Hey thanks all for the input. Sounds like playing non ladder might be an option so guess I'll be stickin around non ladder for a while anyway.