From Diii.net.
Surprise, surprise, surprised that Blizzard would still add to a game that is almost 10 years old, and with Blizzard North people almost all gone. I wonder what are they going to include in the game. An extra boss? Infinite dungeons? What would be the fixes? Skills rebalancing? Fixes to the infamous CE-LE-FE champions?
If it is interesting enough it may pull some attention away from my diet of Torchlight and Dragon Age.
I can’t imagine that it’s anything as major as a new boss or dungeons-- That’s the realm of expansions, not patches. What they probably mean is a few new runewords, and maybe a new unique item or two. Still rather surprising, though.
Oh wow! A new patch, and I assume a new ladder when the patch comes out. That will defiantly be worth playing Diablo II again for!
Just remember, DII was dead and forgotten back in 2004. Then they unleashed a HUGE content patch.
Made the game like 2x harder. Great stuff. I actually had to retire my previously elite barbarian because he was getting his ass handed to him by normal mobs.
I might try it out when it his, though between Torchlight and DOA my gaming time has become severely restricted.
What I’d love to see in a DII content patch (no idea what they’re actually doing):
Fix runes. As in - make some good runewords accessible to the average player. As is, the normal player will never socket a good runeword. And getting some of the higher runes? I’m not exaggerating when I say that you have a better chance of winning the lottery.
Either fix set items or add a bunch of new ones. Again, the average player will never complete a set that’s worth anything. It’s just so random and hard.
Fix Nihlathak. I play hardcore exclusively. Attempting Nihlathak on normal? Very risky, not recommended. Nihlathak on Nightmare? Prepare for deeds. I can’t even fathom a strat that could take Hell Nihlathak, unless it’s "get so powerful that you can waltz up to him (without killing a single mob).
The problem is that he has a crazy-ass corpse explosion. He can literally pop your well-geared nightmare player from like three screens away if you’re foolish enough to generate a corpse on his level. That’s right. You can’t even see him and he can one-shot you. Lost my best ever Amazon this way, because in my 70s I was cocky enough to think I could at least take Nightmare Nihlathak. Killed a few mobs far away from him (hadn’t even seen his chamber on minimap) and pop-pop, my deeds will be remembered.
Completely overhaul looting system. I would love to death a DIII style looting system where loot was unique to each player. The mob of fools crowding Baal every time clicking like mad is just so stupid. It discourages pick up games. People pick up shit they can’t even use just to get something.
10 s timer on declaring hostile. Again, in hardcore, where every player you meet might be a PK hacking bastard - what is the fun in dumping 20 hours into a char just to have a POS PK hacker lag your connection, hostile, and 2-shot you? Are honest players just supposed to solo exclusively? That’s how I play, but it’s not nearly as much fun as grouping. But in hardcore, pickup groups are just too risky as is.
Trapsins need an end-game build
So do bowazons that don’t rock a Windforce
Tone down the immunities. Yeah, I get it. Pre 1.10, DII was too easy. But layering multiple immunities on nearly every mob in hell is just stupid.
Example: I’m a bowazon, with maybe a minor spec in FA (or GA, I can’t remember the one that does splash cold damage)
WTF am I supposed to do to a mob that spawns with phys/cold/magic immunity? It’s just dumb. I think it’s reasonable to expect every char to come up with two solid types of damage - having nearly every mob in Hell have one immunity - ok. Two immunities for boss specials?..well, ok. Maybe. More than that? That’s just a fuck-you stonewall on the player.
Bring back gambling uniques and sets. They shouldn’t have made these so rare (again, literal lottery odds). They have a good method now for getting SOJs out of the economy, let us gamble for uniques and set items again.
Buff gems. Past normal diff, the only use of gems is a few middling cube recipes. Gems are a good and neat idea, make them useful into Nightmare at least.
GAH! FIX US EAST SERVER! …I lag so bad on this one, for no good reason. My internet connection is godly, I play dozens of other online games with no network issues - why is DII US EAST such shit.
…and no, US WEST isn’t much better.
Dear Blizzard: This game requires mules. Everyone has them. Stop punishing those of us that simply can’t play that often.
I walked away from my last hardcore char (about six months ago). Why? I had obtained a decent amount of loot, stored it on mules. Couldn’t play for two weeks. Came back - mules were wiped. Fuck this. Make it like WoW, where a character is forever.
Hell, just implement muling without character switching. Everybody mules; why make it a chore? Just accept it. Especially on hardcore, part of the fun is building up a decent stash so though your first char is a slog, you have the satisfaction of knowing you’re building up an an armory for the next char.
Figure out a ladder system that gives the average player a chance to see their name. Maybe extend the top 100 hardcore players to the top 1000. Or whatever it is now x10 (I’m not sure). Back when I was serious, it was really neat seeing my standing every day. These days - they reset the ladder, and 98 anti-socials are like lvl 90 within 2 hours. Boring and pointless. Give us casuals a leaderboard we can enjoy. I’m not saying nerf the anti-socials, but even seeing myself at number #5345 on the ladder would be cool; as is I can’t place on the ladder, ever.
Come up with a proper PvP system. Right now - nobody has any idea whether a player is any good at PvP until they get killed by that player. Which, on hardcore, is not very useful information. Give players a title, or an icon - or something so we know when that lvl 20 baba enters our game of lvl 40-somethings - “this dude knows something”. And why not pvp rewards?
Rebalance player hp, player dmg, monster dmg. Part of the stupidity of the current PVP system is this. Once you get into Nightmare and Hell, the monsters will have hps orders of magnitude above yours. Blizzard’s solution? Well, give player damage a huge boost. Where this gets stupid is the current PvP solution - Players can dish out damage far beyond what any reasonable player character has for HP. Fine for killing mobs. But most serious PKs these days base their game on being able to one or two-shot any player. Stupid. Give us real PVP by bringing player damage, player hp and monster hp closer to a balance.
Wow, this turned into a real DII rant. I’d love to play the game again. There’s just so many stupid balance issues that I don’t. Here’s hoping the future patch gets me back into the thing.
The 1.13 patch has been in the works for awhile now (to the point where people keep asking about the release, because Blizzard made it sound like it was coming soon in April, then problems sprung up). As GameHat said, they did (relatively) large content updates in 1.10 (hugely upping the difficulty of Hell mode, adding synergies to the skills, and adding a bunch of high-end runewords and items to compensate) and 1.11 (added a few more runewords and some new end-game content).
It sounds like 1.13 won’t add much “content” (i.e., probably no new monsters, maybe some new items) but there will be nice fixes here and there. Blizzard said they were going to up the stash size, and that’s been a main reason for the delay. I’d like to see some balance changes (or heck, just bug fixes, like the fact that none of the Amazon’s bow skills actually give the AR boost they’re supposed to).
The game actually doesn’t delete the character… it’ll say “character expired” but if you try to load it, it’ll still load it… IF no one else has created a new character with that name. Basically, it won’t get deleted, just put up for grabs to be replaced. So give your character unique names and you’ll be fine. I’m not worried about my Frenzy barb named “Odrskeggox” ever being cleared. 
I do really agree though on the muling. Larger stash is nice but it’s a band-aid. Just give us an inter-character item exchange system.
What I’d love to see, and it will never happen, would be an unlimited shared stash. Back before I was fancy enough for a home internet connection, I’d just play single player. ATMA was the greatest program of all time, allowing me to swap gear from player to player. I still had to create mules, but that was fine.
I ended up collecting every set (gah - just thinking about those 1.07 Meph runs to hit those armor/weapon racks… GAH!), and had a character for each. Pretty cool going to my character list and it being all the sets.
If they would just add wide-screen and higher resolution support I would still be playing it.
Wow, I didn’t realize they were still doing anything for D2. I lost so many hours to that game…
GameHat, most of your complaints were fixed two or three patches ago.
1: Several good runewords are, in fact, available to casual players: Treachery, Spirit, Insight, Honor, Lore, and Black (the latter three having been around since 1.09 at least) all come to mind. These aren’t the best runewords possible, of course, but of course those are rarer. They’re still good enough to get you all the way through Hell.
2: There are two perfectly practical ways to complete sets. You can build up the pieces of low-level sets using your high-level characters and pass them on when you create new characters, or for high-level sets, you can trade with other players. Plus, of course, many set items are worthwhile in themselves, with the set bonuses being just gravy.
3: Any class with a means of disposing of corpses can take out Nihlathak without breaking a sweat. Assassins, druids, necromancers, or paladins should all be able to do it. Additionally, a barbarian or sorceress could just leap/teleport past all of his minions (who aren’t dangerous at all) and focus in on him alone. Or you could use any item that has the “slain monsters rest in piece” attribute. Or, of course, you could just skip him.
4: OK, this is a problem, in public games. The general solution is to play pub games for XP, and then only with your friends or solo when you’re looking to get loot. There are a large number of folks from this board who play (or at least, who probably will play, if there’s a new patch and ladder), and we all share loot fairly (like, if a good wand drops, the necromancer in the group gets it, and so on).
5: Hostility can only be declared in town, so you already have time to leave the game if someone hostiles you. Anyone who’s using a hack to get around the only-in-town restriction would probably also hack around a 10-second timer.
6: I’ve never had a problem with trap assassins late game: They can dish out just as much damage per time as a sorceress, in a larger area, and they’re more tolerant than most of lag. This has been the case since at least 1.10, when synergies were introduced.
7: OK, this one I’ll grant you. There are other good bows than Windforce available now, but they’re all expensive, which doesn’t change the core of the complaint.
8: With one solitary exception that I gather from your other complaints you’ve never seen, it’s impossible for any monster to have more than two immunities. Even if a boss spawns with attributes that would ordinarily give it more than two immunities, any extra immunities are dropped.
9: Gambling uniques and sets is possible, albeit unlikely. It’s also possible to gamble up rare items that are better than any unique, in some cases.
10: Some of the best items possible can only be produced by those “middling cube recipes” you mention.
11: I don’t know what the issue is here. Sure, the servers occasionally crash, but when they do, all characters that were on that server get rolled back so you don’t lose anything.
12: OK, that’s annoying, but as magnusblitz mentioned, they’re not really deleted.
13: How would you even find yourself on a ladder that size?
14-15: I don’t PVP, so I can’t comment on these.
GameHat I see a lot of your complaints is that you play hardcore in public games. When this new patch comes out, you should play with us as a group.
The best fun I’ve ever had in Diablo II was when I found the group of dopers who play Diablo II, especially at the start of a new ladder. Most of your complaints will go away if you play the game almost entirely with a group. Oh, and listen to Chronos, he has spent more time then anyone I know researching Diablo II. He knows enough about the maps to get us accused of using Maphack!
I’m still holding out hope for a “Wolfenstein 3D” patch.
In a way, that’s actually good news. Yeah, we won’t be getting a larger stash now, and that sucks, but at least the fact that they were trying to implement it (something there was no hint of before) indicates that they know it was an issue, so hopefully they’ll see the light in D3 and make it limitless. Actually, what I’d really like to see would be a limitless stash that’s shared between all characters on the same account: That way, not only would you not need mules, but you could transfer items between your own characters easily, too.
I’m guessing his problem is the TPPKs. It’s why I quit playing hardcore. If you only play softcore you probably wouldn’t have encountered these but it’s where a player fires a projectile then tps to town and hostiles while the projectile is still in the air and then the projectile hits and kills an innocent player. Absolutely ridiculous. They should either make it so all projectiles dissipate when you tp to town or make it so you can’t hostile for a few seconds after entering town.
But HC players have been complaining about this forever and the only thing bliz has done is make it so Hydras disappear when you tp to town. So I’m not holding my breath that they’ll fix the rest of their abilities now.
It’s still 1 in 10,000 though. Sure it’s better then the 1 in 100,000 it was when LoD was first released but it’s a far sight from the 3 in 100 it was back before that.
And nobody gambles anything but circlets and jewelry due to the price and rarity of exceptional / elite gambles. I’d love to see the whole gambling mechanic overhauled but I doubt they’ll even touch it.
So, umm… what are the concerns, exactly ?
M here, P and I are in for the new ladder when the patch comes out.
Missed the edit window. I’m betting they created yet another dupe bug when they tried to expand the stash. I really hope they get rid of the need for mules in D3, it is such a ridiculous system and I am a pack rat.
I’ll be there too. Claim the Necromancer 
I will find my Tyreal’s yet. I had one on the last ladder, but it’s still the only item I’ve never found myself on battle.net.
Including all the runes?