At this point there is literally no other explanation with the announcement of the changes to leveling and itemization. Do they not understand that there is a substantial portion of the playerbase that does not want to start over and only wants to level and grind gear once? Or do they simply not care?
Either way I am glad I didn’t preorder the expansion and now I am absolutely confident I made the right decision. Why would I buy an expansion that will take away all of my hard earned items (and I do mean hard because the current system of obtaining them is a ridiculous grind) and actively make me weaker? Why would anyone?
Edit: To everyone saying “they need to improve the game and these constant shakeups are a part of that” I would like to say two things:
(1) the game should have never been released in the sorry state that it was. The decade+ of time and resources they poured into the development of D4 should have been more than enough to create a quality game that didn’t need numerous massive overhauls several times in its first year just to be playable.
(2) none of these shakeups strictly require that all old items become defunct and indeed most of the changes they’ve made so far, aside from perhaps the massive itemization overhaul that introduced the new upgrading system, could have easily been made retroactive. The fact that they chose not to do this is just that, a choice.
And that choice is going to cost them a customer that has played every single Diablo game and all of their expansions up until now. Do they care? Of course not, I don’t delude myself into thinking that. But you know what? I don’t think I am the only one they will lose and I hope when that reality finally dawns it will haunt them, or at least their pocketbooks since that’s all they seem to care about anyway.
Edit 2: The discussion has devolved into a debate over whether the Eternal Realm is valid at all. I won’t argue with people who believe otherwise but I would advice they look up the word “eternal” in a dictionary of their choice and tell me how anything that’s happened on the “Eternal” Realm since launch fits any accepted definition for that word. The word “eternal” carries a connotation or permanence and something that is ageless and unchanging. What we’ve gotten instead couldn’t be further from what is implicit in that term.
It was all a complete lie by Blizzard and those of us who bought the game in good faith were completely ripped off. Absolutely nothing in the game supports an Eternal Realm, not the limited character slots or storage space, and certainly not the constant invalidation of gear. None of this was made apparent before the game launched and players had no reason to believe it would be the case because I has never been so in any other Diablo game.
Lastly, to reiterate once again, there is absolutely no reason they need to constantly mess with item and level caps and any changes they do feel are absolutely necessary can also be made retroactively.
