Here are the features that have been announced and are coming to D2R.
This is my personal “Ranking” with comments:
1. Shared Stash
This is probably my Number 1 Feature. A huge Quality of Life improvement without any downside, even if breaking a sweat during muling added to the excitement and tension haha in the first couple years of D2 where I only had 1 Key-Set (2000-2002) and had to rely on pub games or early “friends”.
2. Increased Stash Size
This is my number 2. In combination with Shared Stash, I love it.
3. Ability to search games from all difficulties
This is number 3, Great to be able to search for individual difficulties and not just be locked to the highest difficulty completed. This will also cause a lot of good player to help out in lower difficulties naturally, when bored etc.
4. Hotkey to move items from inventory to stash/vendor and vice versa
This is my number 4. This is huge for someone that loves to farm for hours, as it will make stashing and vendor interaction so much more enjoyable and smooth and quick.
5. Reduced Ladder Season Duration
Reduced Ladder Season Duration is an absolute MUST for me (From half-Year to 3 months - same as POE and D3 etc.). For me personally, after 3-4 weeks, I am mostly done with my Main-Character. Farmed all the items and runes I need, got character to 95+ and I either keep rushing friends or other people for a while, or I take a break from D2 and go play POE for another Month. 3 Month Seasons would mean the next amazing Reset is coming every 3 months like POE/D3 etc. All I hope for is that at least D2R and POE do not launch at the same time and have at least 3-4 weeks between them lol. If I would have to choose D2R vs POE, starting on the same day, I would pick D2/D2R.
6. New PBR 3D Engine and Remastered Sound
This could easily be my number 1 on first glance, but because I love the original D2 graphics for the past 21 years, and know that after 30 minutes I forget about graphics anyways, this has slipped to the 6th place. That being said, The PBR & Light-Effects, combination of Gorgeous Pre-Rendered Backgrounds and so far pretty good looking 3D models, makes me really excited for D2R. The remastered and crisp Original Sound/Music/Voices is Icing on the cake.
7. Battle.Net 2.0 Integration (Less Botting/cheating/Exploiting & In-Game Friend-List/chat)
This is also great news. Rubber-Banding, Realm-Down, Roll-Backs etc, have really made it difficult to enjoy ladder resets in recent times, even if it gave us some good laughs in our discord. Also the blocking of Bots, is absolutely crucial to a stable and good item economy. Although Botting never bothered me personally, as long as no or very few people bot, I am really excited to play and farm GG items that keep their worth for much longer during a ladder reset.
8. Global Servers (No UsEast/West/EU/Asia)
This is amazing. This will pool the community in one place and also benefit the economy by a lot I think. No more deciding “Do I choose to play UsEast because it has the biggest population or do I roll with a realm that has better ping? and what about friends? omg…”.
9. Gold Auto Pickup
Sure…l guess. It destroys or diminishes builds (i.e. Gold-Find-Barb). It reduces game-difficulty, especially early in the ladder (anyone that knows D2 knows why). It will affect the economy and the worth of Rare Items because of massively more frequent gambling. I guess… so newcomers don’t loose it on their first character…
10. Item-Linking in Chat
Great little feature to show off your Loots to Clan-Members or just random people in the party. Now you can show proof that you were the one who got the HR in chaos sanctuary 
11. Advanced Stats Display Function (FCR/FHR/FBR etc.)
Great Feature. I never had issues calculating stats myself and I liked doing it. However, its great to have peace of mind and a window that shows other interesting stats. Cool-Beans
12. No Character Expiration
This is great, why not. I never play long enough to care, if my chars get deleted after a while its because I am done with the Ladder Season anyways, so I don’t care. All I care about are the first 4-6ish weeks of a Ladder Season, and the first Day and week are the best stuff ever. That being said, its nice to know you still have a 2 month old character sitting around and you are bored, and can just login and play for a bit to kill some time. Why not.
13. Auto-Party when you join a game
Great. However, reduces the need to engage in chat, but makes party-creation smoother. So-So, should be ok I guess? Time will tell. Probably negative impact on socialization, but smoother grouping. (i.e. The only thing you ever see in Chat in D3 is people being angry at each other or no chat at all.)
14. Item Comparison (side by side)
Being an experienced D2 player, I don’t need this as I already know what to look for and what I want/need. My personal item progression is super straight forward. I know which item is an upgrade virtually instantly, even for items that look like downgrades but aren’t in fact etc.
15. Duplicate Character Names Allowed
Unique Names were a cool thing, and I am gona miss them for sure. However, since this is not going to change, I just move on. Don’t care about names in D2R with the loss of uniqueness and it’s prestige.
16. Official MOD Support with Access to new Assets/Parameters
This is actually really awesome, but I love D2LOD so much that whenever a MOD comes out, no matter how “good”, I always return to D2LOD and love it. That being said, I am actually really excited for this “official” MOD support coming to D2R with access to new Art-Assets and Parameter-Manipulation.
17. Graphics Toggle (PBR/Classic Mode)
Sure, why not. Depending on In-Game-Performance and Lag / Input-Lag etc. Classic Mode could become the “better” choice lol. Let’s hope the PBR 3D Mode is just as crisp, responsive, and most importantly Delay-Free as the “classic” Mode with Open-GL / Glide-Wrapper.
18. Controller Support (For PC)
I am a PC player and would never use a controller when I can use a good Mouse and Keyboard. D2 is a Mouse-and-Keyboard game for me, and this will never change. I just hope that when you connect a controller to your PC, you will automatically only be able to play with Console people. If not, it will either make it much easier for controller people to snag items in pubs, or the other way around. Either way, I hope they will not allow Controller Players to play with PC (Mouse+Keyboard) players for obvious reasons. Imagine Controller players having “Vacum-Pickup” lol, that would suck for other people in the party that use normal controls.
19. Cross Progression (Between PC and Consoles)
This last one I could not care less. The only thing that concerns me is manipulated “hacked” items making their way to the PC Realm and Economy through Cross-Progression. If this is not an issue, it’s all good.
What is your ranking out of the list below (officially announced), and which features are you most excited for?
- Shared Stash
- Increased Stash Size
- New PBR 3D Engine and Remastered Sound
- Ability to search games from all difficulties
- Short-Cut to move items from inventory to stash/vendor and viece versa
- Advanced Stats Display Function (FCR/FHR/FBR etc.)
- Item Comparison (side by side)
- No Character Expiration
- Gold Auto Pickup
- Duplicate Character Names Allowed
- Global Servers (No UsEast/West/EU/Asia)
- Reduced Ladder Season Duration
- Graphics Toggle (PBR/Classic Mode)
- Auto-Party when you join a game
- Controller Support (For PC)
- Cross Progression (Between PC and Consoles)
- Official MOD Support with Access to new Assets/Parameters
- Battle.Net 2.0 Integration (Less Botting/cheating/Exploiting & In-Game Friend-List/chat)
- Item-Linking in Chat