Reminisce about how the game used to be here

I just found a “

Silks of the Victor”

Just thinking the name brings me back to when it was the penultimate armour, and respecs we’re a thing, you had to plan out every stat & skill point before committing… boy those were the days

What else have we lost from what we’ve gained?

Weapons are the biggest offenders if you ask me.

Baranar's Star

Doombringer

The Grandfather

They all used to mean something, while now seeing that golden name was only cool for completing the Holy Grail.

Starting over 3 times as you realize

Fire Bolt and

Fireball are not the way to go.

Being scammed left and right and trading in trading games.

Pacing, maybe? My best friend and I used to play on LAN for a couple of hours just to go through a single act. There was waypoint rushing, sure, but no everyone-can-teleport mess. It felt more like a game than a slot machine.

Balanced runewords (and other item qualities being viable).

Overall feeling that P2W was something inherently wrong, and that no one sane would pay real money for virtual goods. Back then we used to play a game for pleasure, not to compete with anyone.
And I don't mean Diablo only, but players and developers overall. Many games had rules that account trading = permanent (or at least lengthy) ban. Only later greedy corporations invented micromacrotransactions and made necessary amendments to such rules.
Unfortunately, such feeling did not apply to other forms of cheating, as maphacks and bots were common.

xigua wrote: 9 months ago

Being scammed left and right and trading in trading games.

Scams have always been common; now you may be scammed as well, if you don't pay attention.

But less - I feel - guy traded me a non socketed AP instead of the promised socketed one, I told him and he said sorry, took it back, gave back my rune and socketed it and traded then.

Real money was there - I remember selling

Natalya's on ebay for 40 bucks (for me as a young teen a lot of money) - didn't really realize that was not okay to be honest.

I still remember finding

Iceblink in the

Stony Field, 20-something years ago It was considered the BiS armor for my

Whirlwind Barbarian (with a rare

Lance) and I couldn't be happier ) Later on, I found another one and traded it for a

Stone of Jordan... mad times

Buriza-Do Kyanon

...this drop was once a reason to open a bottle of champagne

oblivion knights casting

Iron Maiden

Blubbalutsch wrote: 9 months ago

Buriza-Do Kyanon

...this drop was once a reason to open a bottle of champagne

I miss that chain-

Pierce GA...

I don’t necessarily miss all these aspects of the game, they’re more of just memories that are funny to think of when compared to current states of the game:

Farming act 1 normal to obtain chipped gems to trade 40 for an soj. Or conversely, buying 40 gems with an soj to try and roll a cruel

Colossus Blade of quickness with 2 open sockets.

This may still happen online, idk bc I play Xbox without chat, but people immediately resorting to call others the most offensive racial slurs at even the slightest trace of insult. Such as using a lower level bo or aura, interfering with theirs or even being quicker to pick up a unique ring in act 1 normal.

Ith blades. They were ethereal colossus blades which were endowed with the Silence runeword and 6 open sockets. I never had the agency to get one but you always knew who carried them. Back in the day I’d frequent an ongoing game labeled “normal” where an ignoramus

Ith barb would come and hostile people. I had a summon necro, who at the time were the most hated character for being lagromancers. I used the

Iron Maiden curse on said barb after he directly clicked on me with a

Whirlwind. I kept a safe distance ahead of him while laying a legion of

Bone Wall between him and myself. When the

Whirlwind finally ceased he immediately died and accused me of being a hacker. Good times lol.

One thing I do miss is being able to invest in so many skills without getting spread to obsolescence. The meta sorc build was

Frozen Orb,

Nova, t storm and

Energy Shield. You only had to throw in 1 point to

Cold Mastery. Prior to synergies and so many hacked items entering the game, I had my biggest taste of power when uniques were king and I hit

Mephisto like he was crack. I rocked

Shako,

Shaftstop and

Stormshield with max block and remember murdering noobs by seducing them outside of town by leaving large piles of gold or unique items for them to try and stash before my

Frozen Orb,

Nova and t storm stomp slaughtered them. I think it was fun for everyone, they got the items sometimes.

I also remember getting item popped. It was devastating. A bowazon had set up shop outside rogue camp and littered the Ground with items. Her idea was to surround peoples corpses with items so when they came to click on their bodies, they accidentally would click on an item that would equip to them instead. Which when murdered again, would cause all the items equipped to the first body to drop on the Ground. I’d been killed once but had put up a good enough fight and thought I could click my body without issue. I was wrong and after picking up one of items, was murdered again, at which point all the items on my first body then dropped to the Ground. At that point, everyone there rushed for the items. I ran back to the battlefield and was able to get one or two back but then quickly left in shame. Still hurts lol.

Twitchthroe used to be the ideal armor for a Bowazon.

Rik wrote: 9 months ago

Ith blades. They were ethereal colossus blades which were endowed with the Silence runeword and 6 open sockets. I never had the agency to get one but you always knew who carried them.

Not only CB, i remember some bows of the same kind. And when we're talking about those cheater stuff, i have to add "bugged"

Nosferatu's Coil,

Stone of Jordan with

The Oculus stats and more fancy stuff on closed bnet. Was a nice day, tbh, when i once entered a game someone hacked so you could buy infinite of them from

Akara. I actualy like the idea of having weird unique item bases. Think it was a bug in the early days of d2 exp, when they could be dropped with an infinite low chance

Blubbalutsch wrote: 9 months ago

Rik wrote: 9 months ago

Ith blades. They were ethereal colossus blades which were endowed with the Silence runeword and 6 open sockets. I never had the agency to get one but you always knew who carried them.

Not only CB, i remember some bows of the same kind. And when we're talking about those cheater stuff, i have to add "bugged"

Nosferatu's Coil,

Stone of Jordan with

The Oculus stats and more fancy stuff on closed bnet. Was a nice day, tbh, when i once entered a game someone hacked so you could buy infinite of them from

Akara. I actualy like the idea of having weird unique item bases. Think it was a bug in the early days of d2 exp, when they could be dropped with an infinite low chance

That’s right. I was so barb focused that

Ith blades are most prominent in my Memory.

In somewhat of the same vein, I like the idea of “bugged” or jackpot items. I want the minuscule probability of getting something that gives a substantial Edge over anything else. It’d keep me chasing and give legacy players with decades of experience a higher chance of having something distinguishing from their years of devotion. I’d also like it to be on rares, the true ‘unique’ items in d2. Give that chance of a double cruel mod. Allow for a couple extra affixes with wider range of stats, or add more recipes, all of which provide bonuses worth striving for and allow to use and retain ethereal bases and expand those base item types to allow ppl to use a wider variety of items for unique looks and characteristics. I guess it makes it hard to balance, but wtf, the game is terribly imbalanced as it is. Ask any barbarian lol. Then again, someone would hit the jackpoint and then dupe it to oblivion and we will all be back in White ring territory again haha.

It’ll never be perfect but I still love it. Just throw in some compelling runewords every couple seasons and I’ll be thrilled

What about the amount of Sojs you needed to buy

Windforce,

The Grandfather or

Arkaine's Valor ?
And scammers trying to still your item through the

Atma's bar in

Lut Gholein ?

Tornado_OLO wrote: 9 months ago

What about the amount of Sojs you needed to buy

Windforce,

The Grandfather or

Arkaine's Valor ?
And scammers trying to still your item through the

Atma's bar in

Lut Gholein ?

Hahaha yes I remember

Atma and all sorts of shady trade maneuvers. I remember playing with this shady guy who got me to help participate in a con job attempt. He announced he knew the dupe technique and invited others to a game and I was posing as a participant trying to dupe. He had us go to our corners in act 1 and then press the following sequence, alt F1…. F2…. You know where it’s going And I said, holy hell it worked, I’ve doubled my sojs or whatever. Thankfully the failed patsy called bs and left the game and rightfully called us idiots. Lol

Anyone ever join those ‘you drop, I drop’ games? I’m still trying to bring those back hahaha

I came in .09 at which point grandfather and Arkaine valor had

Fallen from grace but wf bowazons were king, yet it seemed like everybody only had buriza. 1.08 valor was/is still something to behold.

I’m not sure what changed with grandfather but it no longer met the max ias breakpoints for ww and fell out of favor by the time I was playing. I actually found 2, the only of the big 4 uniques I was able to get from ponds runs, the 4 being:

Windforce, grandfather, Schaefer’s and cranium badger. I placed the golden blades on my original barb as an ornament. He was My first char, whom I’d placed 2 points into increase stamina on my first playthrough. I probably placed points into energy too, I can’t remember lol.

Back in my day, Pindle Runs were about the only thing most toons could solo in Hell. You could tele-sorc to Meph, or a Sword (6os with a bunch of rare jewels) and Board Barb, but most of us were stuck doing Hell Pindle Runs for hours.

And we liked it that way! Hmmph.

I remember when they introduced rune words years ago. This overexcitement when you found a

Sol rune for the very first time so you could make a Lore

Helm! And when a

Lum pops out - all your mates were so jealous because you made a Smoke armour! These were the days...

Back before LoD and the infamous "Lagomancers".

Yea buddy! When every skill point+ another

Skeleton! I remember having like 30+ with mages, fun!

And when you could selectively kill ones you didn’t want (i can’t do that on consol)