First things first… let’s address the facts. Upon launch of original D2, the game was insanely popular and broke all sorts of sales records right out of the gate. A significant portion of players consider the 1.09 series of patches the “golden age” heyday of D2. Not everyone, of course, but a very significant portion. That was all prior to the 1.10 patch that came in 2003, which added monster immunities. I’m not saying that the introduction of immunities hurt or helped the game’s popularity, I’m merely stating, neutrally, the fact that the game was clearly fine prior to them being introduced.
A lot of players have considered the addition of immunities to be a pretty big misstep in the direction of the game. At that point Blizzard North was all but dead, and if I recall correctly, the 1.10 patch was implemented by the one sole remaining Blizzard north dev before North shut down forever and “South” took sole control of the game in maintenance mode.
Those are all facts, and if I’m off on the history of Blizzard and the 1.10 patch, it’s minor nuance of non-point detail. It might have been two devs instead of one, etc.
The addition of sundered charms is fine, I think. In current state, they’re optional. If you don’t like immunities and want to break them, fine, that’s your choice. If you prefer to play the game with that challenge intact, then you have that option as well. The dev team has decided to put that option in the individual player’s hands and give you a choice on how YOU want to play based on the play experience you want. Personally, I don’t see a problem with that and applaud them taking that approach. If you’re down with the terror zone mechanic and sundered charms, turn it on. If not, don’t. Simple.
However, this brings me to my personal bone to pick… again. I know it’s not a sizeable portion of the player base by any stretch, but there is a non-zero number of us who do prefer to play pre-LoD mode. I know, I know… most of you reading this don’t understand why anybody would choose to play that mode or our reasons why. And that’s okay. It’s not in the scope of this to try and explain it or justify it, just accept that we are out here, we have our individual reasons why we prefer it, and Blizzard left the mode in the game for us because they know we’re here.
The issue is that they keep “tuning” and “balancing” the game for LoD, taking charms, jewels, and runes/runewords into account, assuming players will have access to them and be using them. Those changes are then pushed down to all players, including pre-LoD mode players. That’s an issue. Imagine playing your expansion character, but never pick up a charm, never pick up a rune, and never put any gear on your merc (which you can’t even take with you outside the act it came from). Forget facets, and forget your shared stash tabs. Now keep every single other mechanic and all the numbers the same. That’s what the pre-LoD experience is currently.
TL;DR - Blizzard has decided to do a “soft undo” of a previous decision by allowing players to flat out break immunities easily if they want… but only LoD players get the option. Once again, another across-the-board global decision that affects all modes forgets to take into account how it will impact non-LoD players… or in this case, not impact. I’m not in any way saying that terror zones and sundered charms should or shouldn’t be implemented in LoD, so please don’t infer some commentary on that one way or the other. I’m just saying that if you’re going to do this under the guise and justification to “promote build diversity” then it should be remembered that, hey, non-LoD players would like the same build diversity options. And maybe, just maybe, start tuning non-LoD games independently of LoD games in general to reflect the substantial differences between the two modes. Stop treating us pre-expansion mode players like second-class players.