This article is written by Turky, a member of the Battle.net forums. However, seeing as Ghetto knows nothing about Diablo II, he will take responsibility for anything lost in the translation.

“I thought the point of an expansion, was to expand on the original game, not change it?”

Let me start by saying Diablo 2 is my favorite game of all-time.  Most of Blizzard’s other titles are up there as well.  But Blizzard has made a common mistake with their games: They make a game a certain way, and then change it during the expansion.

To me, this is a flaw.  This is a flaw because the original game made it popular in the first place.  As far as I can tell, this hasn’t affected the Starcraft series.  But with Warcraft and Diablo, this is contagious and out of control.

Diablo 2 comes out.  It takes a while to level, and you spend time on a character because you feel you’re developing it with every upgrade.  Rares were better than Uniques, and should be, because they have different stats, everybody looked different, and everyone collected items to trade for something special.  Yes, there were duplicated items, but they were rare, and since everyone could imbue items, you could create items that were better than the duplicates.

Classes were well-balanced and any class could kill another.   Don’t let anyone tell you different.  The glaring difference between the expansion and the original was that every specialization for every class had a role.  Lance Barbarians had a purpose, as did Scythe Barbs, as did Sword Barbs and Mace Barbs.  There was a place for Fire, Lightning, and Cold Sorceresses.  Even if the time required to level these characters was different, any class could easily solo their way to level ninety.

With the Diablo II expansion, everything changed.  Damage was normalized, and classes became more powerful than others.  In order to succeed, players were pigeonholed into specialized builds.  People were clones of each other, everyone wanted the same items, and everyone played the same specs.  Where did Lance Barbians go?  In the past, classes had incentive, pros, and cons to choose a specific weapon choice.  Since they normalized range on melee weapons as well, there is no difference between a Sword Barb and a Lance Barb.  Only now, swords deal similar damage to lances, and a Sword Barb has the option of equipping a shield.

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