You have your current gamers… Geared with the POWER to play with pretty enhancements…
Then you have everyone else with the average joe computer that can CURRENTLY play the game with legal tweaks. (Svens link. Use original graphics mode for smooth play with Resurrected.)
It will be a blast! I CAN’T WAIT!!! TY BLIZZARD!!!11!1 
I see a good chunk of the wanna be d2 clone called something something exile will buy d2.
I say maybe around 2 million on launch it will stick with a few hundred thousand for the year, and drop down to a solid 50k for some years to come. However people will come back to it unlike d3 which when I come back to it I regret it almost instantly d2 always has a fun haggle trade, run, and dueling room set up
Consider what Kripp said here:
He is absolutely 100% correct.
I think it will be a huge launch and then solid steady player base afterwards. I still think the game is too punishing to have a large playerbase for a long period of time and that’s FINE.
The only way the game remains big is new content honestly, but I am on the fence with that. Mostly because I don’t think new content added would be good. Any “End Game” concepts I wont enjoy. I don’t like games where the game basically starts at “End Game”.
From a company stand point I am not sure how that would work either. New content in D2 has too much effect on D4 so I am not sure they want that risk. If new content in D2 is AMAZING and D4 is just a pretty solid game, that would suddenly make D4 bad.
My prediction: it will sell more copies than Valheim in the first month. And continue to sell.
punishing? The game honestly isn’t hard though never was in all honesty. You’re not taking into account either when D2 was first released youtube and online and easily accessible guides weren’t a thing. You will see the game be blitzed through by people who never played the original because of how easy and quick it is anymore to be find the info you need to do so, and because of how old the game is there is already before release of the remaster a massive amount of help for the game, not to mention after the release of d2r will be another influx. Difficulty will only be a problem for a small minority of players.
I have a feeling D4 is a very different game than D2/D2R. While some players will play both, many are pretty passionate about which style game they prefer.
D2 style folks will likely stick with D2R - esp if they do some Balance patches down the road.
D3 style folks will prob try D2R but may migrate more towards D4 on release.
It is ok to like different things and for a company to make multiple options. Kind of like how I can buy different ice cream flavors from one company and don’t have to pick. Chocolate ice cream existing does not harm my mint choc chip!
I think this forum can be a good indicator that how many players pre ordered. I see a bunch of differents accounts already.
I do agree with you here, I just have seen nothing communicated from Blizzard that they intend to use D2R in that way but I hope that would be the case.
I like both types of games I just think a D2 game and a D4 game are very different and if Blizzard supported both like two independent games I would be thrilled and log huge hours in both.
I think I meant punishing in a different way. I did not mean “hard”. Its difficult to make a game “hard” in modern gaming with how easy resources are to figure out how to beat things.
There are just a lot of mechanics in D2 that I do not think appeal enough to a larger player base. As you expand the player base in this game there is a lot of core game play many would want removed. I am not even talking about the back and forth we are having on this forum now.
You will have people asking why they have to beat the game 3 times, Why does it take so long to get to bosses, Hell resistances both players and monsters are an awful mechanic and so on.
It’s going to be so nice browsing the game lobby and seeing a bunch of human-made games.
I think if they spend time making pvp in D4 very good arena style or make it to where we can do 1v1s up to 10v10s or something in make d4 a nice trade market or open trade D4 will blow up in be amazing if they booger up pvp or trade i dont have hi hopes it will do well…
well if you google record sales for diablo 2 and diablo 2 lord of destruction when it first came out and how out dated the game is now it depends on the fan base which really died out over the last 20 years of waiting in hopes mean while other games like path of exile wolcen and the last epoch has taken its place over the years … id say prolly between 50k to 250k tops and if you throw in the “bots” to that equation prolly additional 250k so roughly 500k is my guess