A D2 mod with a population of 1300 has more HARDCORE games in normal than my D2R hardcore game list combined.
Yet most people here like to spread misinformation:
“they’re waiting for ladder”
“no one plays hardcore”
“no one plays classic”
“they’re all in private games”
Those things might be true to a degree (heh, not really), but this has absolutely nothing to do with the current state of the game-list in any mode (which has been the same since launch with hundreds of thousands of players online, if not millions).
To sum it up:
PD2: All servers (NA, EU, Asia, Australia) are linked to the same, single game-list
D2 LOD Vanilla: NA (East and West) are split between 2 game lists.
D2R: Each server (12+?) gets there OWN game-list. That means there are 12+ game lists.
To release ladder in this current state is a step back from 2001. The game-list should not be dead or stagnant in 2022. In 2001, there were endless cow games ALL DAY.
There is no reason for the game-list to be gatekept by ping. I have NO PROBLEM playing on Europe with 200 ping. If the player population was ever low enough that I had to resort to playing with European players, I would be fine with that. So it just doesn’t make sense for it to be set up in this way for DIABLO 2.
Classic SHOULD have its own in-game community. Many people already play hardcore, the difference is there would be HC games up at ALL times of the day.
PD2 was able to add a search filter AND append games to the list (rather than dumping the whole game-list and redumping like D2 LOd and D2R).
What’s going to happen to NL once Ladder releases? If things remain the same NL will be even more dead, and not everyone has time to play ladder. So there will be another split between the already split game-list populations.
It would be nice if Blizzard could test merging game lists during the PTR before ladder releases.
Yeah, they’re putting minimal effort into D2R, but PD2 has some pretty terrible changes to balance that I just can’t stand.
Also, you only see a certain amount of games on the game list within a certain ping range. It’s an issue they’ve claimed they’re going to fix, but if you could see all of the games available, you’d see many times more games than that of PD2.
Exactly, isn’t it funny how PD2 with an online population of 1300 (at the time of posting this) has a more active and productive game list than D2R with a population of easily over 100x that right now?
I can’t really get into mods either, they always look over-saturated with the intensity dialed up to 11. But I’ll admit the PD2 guys did good work with the lobby and their new Rathma boss is actually pretty impressive.
There was over a million people playing at launch and this sums up the experience perfectly (this was posted around a week after launch):
So even if people come back for ladder, if its the same as above, it’s still a lackluster experience compared to the original game with the same population.
PD2 does combine everyone in 1 game-list, but there are more hardcore games up with 1300 people than what we currently have, and that’s only because of the way this online mode is set-up.
I even turned on a VPN and connected to different parts of US-East, I got a different Hardcore list each time, so I can confirm that it’s not a lack of players that is the issue here.
Yes that’s exactly why. If you want to see for yourself, you can turn on a VPN and you can access different game lists across the region.
For example, I connected to Canada Montreal (US-East), I saw 5 hardcore games in normal. Then I switched to Florida (opposite side of US-East) and had 4 different hardcore normal games.
We should be able to see all hardcore normal games and be able to set a ping filter so we can decide if we want to see below 100 ping or 200 ping or 300 ping.
Oh yeah, PD2 is the best D2 mod imo. I played season one and had quite a bit of fun, I just don’t like what they did to WW barbs, zealots, and smiters. It seems like they have a genuine disdain for melee characters.
Some of the stuff they did was just QoL improvements, and could actually make D2R better, but other features are just terrible for balance, imo.
This is the biggest “QOL” they could possibly make to this game right now. Now is the perfect time to be asking for this with the PTR server up and no set date for ladder.