Pre-expansion rationale?

Just curious why folks choose to play pre-expansion.

My guess is that the introduction of runewords so fundamentally changed the trajectory of the franchise that some folks prefer playing without. Any other rationale?

Well there are many factors to that decision.

First of all since runewords introduced so many items that are inducing helpful auras made the game easier by default . Not to mention all the other bonuses that on most occasions are superior to those of unique items. ( Spirit shield instead of

Lidless Wall for example ). So choosing to play this instead of LoD has the same idea as playing Hardcore over Softcore for example. Some people just like their games to be hard in all aspects.

One more reason is trade mentality without runes, nothing has a base rune value ( like

Ist for example ) instead trades are mostly made in a i need this you need that basis and this has a certain appeal to some people, its mostly about how to improve their gameplay and not their stash of runes in the bank.

Adding to all the above, while the game could be harder due to lack of certain items/rune words, game is also much simpler, hard and simple.

Another reason could be just nostalgia - I played it back in the day and i just want to relive it.

My two cents on the subject without actually playing pre-expansion.

You bring up a great point about the lack of commoditized goods, ex. pegging value to

Ist. If I do recall though back in the day

The Stone of Jordan was that heavily traded commodity?

The nostalgia I have would be with respects to rares being so impactful pre-expansion. That made everyone's build out feel special/unique.

you can use pre exp char to boost to hell without doing anc.. and when boosted to hell act3 convert it to an expansion char.. and you have a boosted char in hell skipping anc /

Baal quests

One thing i experienced when playing classic is that the communication with other players is a bigger thing. Not much ppl playing it, so if someone joins your act 1 andy game its rly something. And the game being harder in general requires more cooperation. Furthermore, as it is hard to "rush" thru the acts, you are somehow forced to perceive atmospheric details in a more intense way. It gets kind of boring when you are a4 hell, as the casual game of equipment optimization and redundant cs runs starts kicking in. I recommend to give it a try if you get bored by the farming routines in d2exp.

Unfortunately, patches applied to LoD also apply to classic. The game gets easier every time. If you want to play the old difficult D2, look for it on torrents...

flamebellow wrote: 2 years ago

Unfortunately, patches applied to LoD also apply to classic. The game gets easier every time. If you want to play the old difficult D2, look for it on torrents...

That is very interesting, hadn't considered that.

Blubbalutsch wrote: 2 years ago

One thing i experienced when playing classic is that the communication with other players is a bigger thing. Not much ppl playing it, so if someone joins your act 1 andy game its rly something. And the game being harder in general requires more cooperation. Furthermore, as it is hard to "rush" thru the acts, you are somehow forced to perceive atmospheric details in a more intense way. It gets kind of boring when you are a4 hell, as the casual game of equipment optimization and redundant cs runs starts kicking in. I recommend to give it a try if you get bored by the farming routines in d2exp.

I think I will. Hard to remember but pretty sure I played more pre-expansion when I was a kid versus LoD. I just remembering

Whirlwind with

Iceblink and a huge

Lance.

yea i was a highschool student back then and i faintly remember the game, the trades, the the the. It was just a different pure game experience.

Trading was i need this you need that and then decide if the trade is fair based on the rarity of the find, you can have this here as well but its just getting overlapped by rune values.

And yes Soj were the base commodity after a point thats why it was the most heavily duped item in the game lol. I remember i had a friend that had an account, character limit full everything filled with duped soj xD

But yes what

Flamebellow said its probably true, i remember we were petrified going to Diablo or see

Mephisto face to face as we do now and he dies with 2-3 spells, we were farming all day, duped good stuff was all over the place and still these bosses would blast us to bits if we were complacent. It was just... diferent and yes probably if you want to relive it torrent would be the best option...

P.S. Hardcore back in the day? Can you imagine? ( internet wasnt as stable as it is today as well ).

Euthivolos wrote: 2 years ago

P.S. Hardcore back in the day? Can you imagine? ( internet wasnt as stable as it is today as well ).

I played HC only back in the days. I remember that the internet connection in germany was way more stable back then than it is today. Not having every guy and his dog streaming netflix all day long through the same copper wires on the last mile was great. But german government decided that copper wire is superior to optical fiber. So better don't rely on the internet when you plan holidays there The real problem for HC was that swedish telephone company that ran the EU servers. (Telia was it called i think). I remember a lot of deaths due to lag spikes and, when i once got to sweden in that days, seriously considered some revenge at their headquarters