I played D2 back in the day, I played D3 for 9 years, I played D2R, I am now ready for D4? 
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Bryan,
I was referring to the canonical game only. Yes, mods add a whole new layer. But since D2R is bereft of them, I compare only the actual game.
D2R is better. It has PVP
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I bought the War Chest back in the day, played D1 for awhile moved on to D2Lod, played that for a very long while, loved the game but the internet in the sticks was terrible back then, if you could get it at all, so I missed out on some good stuff I suppose, but still loved the game, till I moved on.
Now at 70 years young I play the heck out of D3, my main game for a long time now and if I live to see D4, I will most likely move on to that game if the gods let me live that long!
If I donāt, maybe Iāll grow some real wings and Iāll be fighting real Demons in the āGreat Beyondā! 
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I played D2 when it came out. I didnāt do the LoD expansion. Iāve invested more hours into D3. These games are very different. It blows my mind that D3 even originated from D2. Itās like D3ās campaign mode leveling up 1 to 70 is the only gameplay that bears any resemblance to the entirety of D2, but thatās really all.
| Subject | D2 | D3 |
|---|---|---|
| Loot Hunt | Win | Lose |
| Build Diversity | Win | Lose |
| Game Play | Lose | Win |
| End Game | Lose | Win (not by much) |
| PVP | Win | Lose |
I personally believe until D4 comes out, they should make D3 a teensy bit more like D2.
- Rescale Torments
- Rescale Experience keep the experience per GR tier at ~7.5% per after GR70 and scale up the required exp per paragon point. Currently, the math favors 2 minute runs, this pace is not comfortable for everyone.
- Rescale Paragon Main Stat (5 per point up to 2000, 3 per point up to 3500, 1 per thereafter).
- Set balance.
- Complete legendary item overhaul, fix unused items, make more skills competitive.
- A new loot tier (1 in 1000) these items scale per the Torment/GR Level they were found in. (starting at GR100 equivalent content, affixes min & max values are boosted by 1.05x at GR100 up to 1.15x at GR150). Does NOT boost weapon damage.
- New legendary gems, to be later used as Runewords. (legendary gems will always drop, even if you have all of them. After youāve collected the standard ones, there will is a random chance to find others, give them a white beam so theyāre easy to spot. Allow them to also have a chance to drop from Ubers, show up in a bounty box, or even the random purple enemy that you kill along the way.
- Runeword equivalent augments that use a combination of new and existing legendary gems to produce new effects. For instance, you can augment Treachery, made from Gogok, Esoteric Alteration and Two other new gems (Thulās Crystal and Lemās Faceted Rock). The augment will scale the affixes granted based on the average the legendary gem power of all 4 reagents, ie: 750dex, 15% attack speed, 300 cold resist). This major time sink that will let players invest in the advancement of their favorite builds.
This would be enough to keep this community active until D4 shows up.
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Pretty sure doing exactly nothing would also work.
Replay in D2 is huge. I will give you that. I literally forgot the entire game before I got D2R. First beta, it started to come back a little. Second? Same. Final game? Played like 3 hours then itās like my brain got plugged into the Diablo 2 wiki and I knew every inch of it. Then I remembered why I stopped playing to begin with. Then I didnāt want to log back in, lol.
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This franchise shouldnāt rest on its laurels. If youāre not growing, youāre dying. There are impressive aRPG titles right around the corner. Why be complacent and expect D2R to carry interest until Immortal?
Weāre already watching Twitch viewership fallout (403k daily peak down to 73k):
-43% Friday
-19% Saturday
+0.5% Sunday
-17% Monday
-47% Tuesday
-11% Wednesday
Weāll see where it stabilizes in a month. Iām not saying D3 should be the savior, but inaction is a foolish proposition.
Because regardless of resources spent they wonāt attract new customers for a soon to be 10 year old game. Itās just wasted money. Player retention has no impact on the bottom line for a game with nothing monetized beside the original sale.
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Youāre thinking direct response, youāre not thinking about mind share.
In that regard resources spent is to little to late at this point.
Becauseā¦ you said so?
As opposed to your say so?
Ahem, who said this first? How are you so sure?
Because they have done ānothingā for going on 8 years and people still play. Why should that suddenly change now?
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Theyāve lately focused on temporary season themes, bundled with some questionable set/item changes. I will agree patches are slim compared to those released by indie devs who hustle for their players, butā¦ with the successor announced and a community divided between D3, D2R and possibly DI, I believe weāre still going to get patches all the way through D4.
To plug the usual complaints about this game, which you can find underneath most Diablo related articles in public comments, including those about D2R ā there is a short window of time to fix some glaring problems (poor balance, limited end game with a short loot hunt, legendary items that drop like candy, primals do nothing, etc.) so that D3 can be referenced in a positive light. The same way RoS is referenced as the cleanup of Vanilla.
Some things I mentioned are straightforward number fixes, others like the Runeword/Legendary Gem examples are a little more involved, but not quite to the level of Followers/Emanate which had interface changes. I donāt think any of the suggestions live outside the realm of possible.
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The only thing D2R proves daily is how superior D3 is in every way.
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You should read some of those posts in D2R.
Not exact quote with a little exaggeration 
D2R is superior than D3 because you need 10k hours to farm those rare items.
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Yeah well like I always say, thereās 3 things you can always count on in life.
Death, taxes, and human stupidity.
That third one is the core essence of the D2R forum.
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For me, it goes like this:
I absolutely love D2. I love playing it in Single Player, I love playing it with a friend over LAN (sometimes mods), and I love playing it over the Closed Battle Net.
I also like D3. I have many critiques towards that game, but over time it has become a decent gameā¦ Iād argue itās better than many of the current day games, by comparisson.
I mostly play solo nowadays in a non-competitive manner. I used to have records, but I no longer care about that. I just hunt for primals and I upgrade gems with 1% chance. Feel free to laugh at me, but thatās what I enjoy in D3.
As to D2R: I refunded! From where Iām standing, it doesnāt bring anything of value.
- I donāt like the new graphics. On some level this is purely subjective. However, for the sake of objectivity, I gotta say, that the new character models are not faithful recreations of the originals.
- I donāt like the removal of TCP IP and Open Battle Net (I find forcing everyone onto the Closed Battle Net for multiplayer and killing off mods to be a crazy, control freak move);
- I donāt like glide wrappers not working for the classic graphics.
- I donāt like the lack of really helpful accessibility features (despite blog posts talking in lengths about accessibility and modernization) such as more modern interface, action bar, hotkeys, that allow me to cast with the keyboard rather than the mouse. The dated interface is a major turnoff, I canāt see new players getting into the game.
If those are not enough, hereās a big problem: D2R introduces a major issue, the so called character rollbacks. For whatever reason, sometimes your character is not properly saved on the new servers and you can lose progress.
Iāve never had such problem in other Blizzard games, including D2 and D3. No matter what problems the servers have, the progress always saved properlyā¦ so I donāt know what Blizzard have done and how theyāve set up things for this to be even possibleā¦ but this is unacceptable!
More importantly, this demonstrates, that the people behind this deeply misunderstand how people typically play Diablo games, especially D2.
As in, people farm few rewarding spots in the game, usually several within 5 or so minutes, then leave, make another game and clear those same spots all over again.
To not account for the way people typically play when setting up your infrastructure seems beyond dumb to me.
So Iāll keep playing D2, Iāll keep playing D3ā¦ and I will only consider buying D2R if they make some improvements to the interface, the controls and if they do away with the random character rollbacks.
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