The “GAME” for a lot of people is to break the game. That is the case in all genre. It has been like that since video games became a thing and it will be like as long as they exist.
There is nothing unique about that in the Diablo franchise. If there is money to be made then that just increases the incentives to find every exploit and vulnerability.
There seems to be plenty of demand to justify having a third option on character creation. That also wouldn’t conflict with anything that they said since the 1.14 version would be preserved.
Classic, LoD and LoD+/Blizzmod/whatever you want to call it
Item and skill changes or new content would be confined to the new mode and leave 1.14 alone for people who want to play untouched(ish) D2.
I think the main reason they may consider not doing that is a fear of competing with themselves for D4, but I don’t think that actually is a real issue. I’ll try D4 regardless of D2:R having an extra mode with changes or not. They’d be completely different games. New story, different combat, different abilities etc. We’d still be getting A LOT more new from a D4 than some rebalancing or minor content additions in D2:R. Being able to play an old game in a slightly different way is an entirely different thing than a whole new game.
I think another consideration for D4 is that I don’t believe that the way D4 will work, will have season/ladder based play. It will be a bigger world, with some open world/mmo elements and a lot of infinite randomization (if the dungeon key thing still is in play).
Did they ask about D2R characters? This was the first question from Korean players. Or are they now censoring interviews too? 