This is not a remaster. They lost that bargaining chip a long time ago. This is definitely now considered a remake. Although, I don’t think that warrants big changes to the game that will definitely change how it’s played, I don’t consider it to be the same as a remaster.
Imagine art museums “remastering” a piece of renaissance art by censoring all the spicy bits.
Well, I have news for you: this slogan was dead on arrival. They already said they weren’t against changing things, and that included some rebalancing of stuff. All you people should realize by now that Blizzard “says” a lot of stuff. Remember those “billions” of skill combinations possible in D3 
[Edit: That’s not saying I agree with them. Just that they’re going to do whatever they’re going to do, and this ship has sailed.]
If you change elements in the game, then it’s a remake lol
If a movie remasters a 1950 movie they’ll had color and improve the sound, but they’re not going to change anything.
If you improve D2 by adding a bigger stash, adding a shared stash changing the rules for the pindleskin portal, changing rules for the cow king, changing the way uber diablo is summoned, ect… you have a REMAKE my friend
This is neither…this is a turd left floating in the bowl with the toilet broken.
all fun aside I’ll put it in plain english for the urban folks.
Re-Mastered is what if they made a movie exactly as it was intended but using modern tech.
Re-Made is what if they took an old movie and applied modern standards (tech, culture, scope, etc) to it.
If they begin applying modern standards to D2:R then it’s a ReMake.
If they tinker with the, queues, network and graphics then it’s still a ReMaster.
edit: personal opinion, I think D2’r has crossed into reMake territory by allowing ladder runewords in open.
The game is already different than d2. Someone posts your comment every day and gets eviscerated.
This topic is 100% speculation. I’m completely bewildered by the people who cling so wildly to their side of the discussion that they feel the need to attack others for disagreeing with them.
For those who seem out of the know, there is a different between a “Remake” and a “Remaster” It’s not some arbitrary set of terms one side or the other is throwing around to try and solidify their opinion on their stance. “Remaster” I believe is originally a music industry term. You take an song older song and you “Remaster” it by enhancing the quality of the parts all ready recorded, using newer and better technology. A “Remake” is completely doing it from scratch, and maybe putting in your own artistic vision or change. Think of a band doing a cover song or the entire “Punk Goes PoP” Series.
It’s been stated in interviews Diablo II: Resurrected is a remaster, not a remake https://www.pcgamer.com/diablo-2-resurrected-release-date-alpha-changes/ I think it was important for Blizzard to state this to set expectations, because this wasn’t set for Warcraft III: Reforged and that along with many other reasons was a disaster. (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-07-22/inside-activision-blizzard-s-botched-warcraft-iii-reforged-game) Sure you can argue that the many changes made to the game would qualify it was a “Remake” but ultimately, it is what Blizzard wants and decides for the project, they are being clear they want this to be a Remaster.
I’ve seen a lot of people say that Blizzard intends to make changes to the game. If someone has a direct quote, I’d like to see, but as I understand it, the most that has been said is that nothing is off the table. This indicates that no decision has really been made one way or the other. I noticed Rhykker posted a video just not is, saying their is a Japanese News article claiming the new ladder season will have new rune words and strong monsters to fight. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pT4rx8xTmGY&t=694s) But this forum topic is older than the video. So I’m not quite sure where the information initially came form, aside form forum rumors. (side note, I’ve not finished watching this video or that section so there may be more information)
At the moment, Blizzard should be prioritizing the servers. Queues suck, having down time where you can’t play sucks. Getting “rated” because you failed to join a full game or because the game doesn’t exist sucks. Before anything is changed or added in any way, this NEEDS to be resolved. Ultimately, I’m not super confident in change, and def not the sweeping changes some people as asking for. I’m not opposed to rebalancing or new items etc my self, but what it comes down to is money. The only thing Blizzard is making money off of right now is Box sales. The further down the timeline we go, the less money they are making from that. If they are going to go down the remake rout and start adding content, there needs to be a steady stream of cash coming in that justifies this and it needs to be enough to turn a profit for the company. If we look at SC:R It got a cartoon graphics dlc, some announcer DLCs and a few balance changes. WC3:R, botched launch, 0 DLC. I think some balance changes, but otherwise has been dead in the water.
So we’re here with Diablo II: Resurrected. I think balance changes will happen in some for or another. Like we would see in a 1.15 patch. New items/Rune Words are likely. I would think rune words are easier, because no additional graphics need to be created. This is probably the biggest point of contention when I see people asking for “Act 6” work would need to go into making both a new graphics version of act 6 as well as an d2 2000 version of the act and art.
Any changes they make would need to be balanced with how much time/money it will cost for the development, and if that’s worth the money D2R is pulling in. I’m not a programmer and my knowledge on programming is limited. I’m not sure how complex it would be to do actual systems changes, but as I understand it, the coding for Diablo 2 is unorganized (Spaghetti code as David Brevik describes it) So making changes to the core systems could be more catastrophic and costly if something gets messed up. Which is a consideration that need to be made for the project. If they choose to monetize this, it will extend the life support of this game. Realistically, I think both sides of the fence need to calibrate their expectations. We’re probably going to see additional changes to the game. If you look at both SC and WC3R, they were intended to be remasters and received balance updates. Unless they find a way to monetize the game, they likely won’t be sweeping changes being posted here on the forums.
For those going about that japanese article saying that there will be new runewords and new monsters on ladder its has been debunked by Blizzard themselves.
Looks like you have nothing save a less than 500 people survey:
sucks to be you, the ladders looks to be getting some spicy new stuffs 
Currently, D2R has 28 and counting changes relative to D2/D2:LoD. Does a remaster normally have 28+ changes relative to the original game or is it a remake at that point? I do not personally care how D2R was advertised. I look at the reality of the release.
this game was in a constant state of evolution before it got resurrected so why would you want to put it into stasis now? slow evolution yes…tablets etched in stone…no.
there were new rune words every new season so if there are no more new rune words that would be a change. ladder resets always came with a new rune word list. every season.
I encourage you to watch the video I posted, your comment aged like milk before you even made it.
The rumor of new runewords and new monsters stems from an error translating a japanese interview and has been debunked by Blizzard.
Check out this old blue post over 10 years ago.
"I also want to impress upon everyone that 1.13 isn’t and never has been intended as a final patch for Diablo II. I realize with the long delays in getting it to PTR, and longer stretches of time inbetween patches that it seems like it’s necessary that 1.13 encompass everything because, well, there’s just no guarantee that anything will come after. Or in a timely fashion. But, there is a solid long term plan of action for future support of Diablo II. There’s obviously plenty of room for skepticism, and I can’t blame anyone for that. But even with that skepticism I hope that we can get the message across that we have no intention of stopping here." – Bashiok
I made a thread about it, but it no one seemed interested in actually discussing anything that’s not some stupid drama, but patch 1.13 was not supposed to be the final content patch for Diablo 2. People were pissed when 1.13 was released because it sat in PTR for almost a year and all our feedback was totally ignored and the changes in 1.13 were sparse. Blue’s promised us a new patch to D2 that was going to add a new quest that was supposed to be a bridge between diablo 2 and the then unreleased diablo 3. Who knows what the hell was going on in the background, but nothing ever came and as usual Blizzard’s continual promises to its player base fell through. None of the hardcore Diablo 2 players 10 years ago thought the game existed in some perfect stasis that should be preserved and was above being changed. We were screaming for changes and were completely ignored. It seems like most of the crowd in the “remaster vs remake” crowd barely played the game in it’s heyday and haven’t made it out of nightmare mode.
If you learn some basic statistic lessons in university, you will know a sample of 1000 people can represent a population of a whole country
I call it a remasterk…or would it be remakstered? They re-mas-ti-cate-ed it.
I would have liked to have seen more done i.e some new endgame content added. Diablo 3 has greater rifting and harder difficulty modes. Anything like this would have been a welcome addition.
Even just a Hell+ mode difficulty beyond Hell would have been great.
Ultimately it is a remaster because it’s still the original game code running on presumably the same game engine and the new graphics are a separate layer running on top of that. But the new graphics obviously have as much work put into them as a “full remake”. So D2:R is the best of both worlds. The only glaring flaw being that the original graphics in this version aren’t accurate. There are some missing effects and performance seems a little off
These people never played a remaster god damn, just go play something like FF12 that is a remaster with a lot of revamped systems and the graphics are not even close to what D2R did, D2R graphics are a complete remake.
Even though I agree with you on the points you are making. But have no doubt been called a purist because you don’t support every change suggested and probably ever will be suggested. Then in time, if they haven’t already done it, they will use an all or nothing fallacy saying that D2:LOD went through changes. Along with D2R changed a lot so you should support all suggestions for all of the changes asked for.