This report is going to be easy for me.  I'm simply going to list portions of the almost 200 emails I've received in the past 12 hours regarding my Beta Report #5.  These are the responses I felt were the most interesting, and of course all identifying information is stripped for privacy reasons.  Read on.  If you haven't read report 5 yet, do so now.  I hope you'll agree with me that some of these responses are at least  eye-openers, and I leave it to you to decide the merit of each one.  The emails have been unedited except for removals of identifying information.

You nailed it. I have also arrived at the same conclusion re: the X pack and *welcome* the new challenges that it represents.

One of the first things I noticed in A5/hell was that the RULES HAVE CHANGED. WTF... My level 70 something 'zon no longer owns hell. Fine by me. Looks like a whole new ball game which should ensure a new lease on life for a game that had become err..... boring.

I will convert my low-mid level characters though- I reckon that a low 30's char still has enough room to grow skill/attribute wise to be viable in hell difficulty- my HC Amazon did just fine in *normal* act 5, she died to a time out in throne room but that was not her fault <sigh>. In fact that char is the only one I'll convert to XP now that I think about it- the others are too overspecialized to survive in the new environment.

I do want to convert my characters for the expansion, even though it will be a brand new game. Possibly my barbarian (clvl 81) and amazon (clvl 86) will have the hardest time. My sorc (clvl 81) might even have an easier go of it! Even with some diversification and emphasis on survival skills (e.g. 50% dodge, 50% avoid on my zon), I built my physical damage characters around the premise that their combat skills add "effects" to their powerful weapons.

My sorceress, on the other hand, has a bit more diversification and I think of her as a "combined elements sorc." As the description implies, I believe my sorc's power comes from making combinations of different spells from different trees work effectively at the same time. My sorc typically lays down some blaze, statics the monsters as they enter blaze, then alternates between GS and SF while they burn. Oh, TS is active all the time too, adding damage - and occasionally even finishing Diablo in Hell *hehe*. Firewall and FO get some use, but are generally situational spells (e.g. GS to freeze oblivion mages then throw some firewall under their feet; chill Izual with FO while leading him through a stacked blaze trail and staticing him).

I'm planning on developing a physical attack for my sorc so she'd have an ITD bow as her second equipment option. It seems to fit with her "combined elements approach."

Maybe I agree with you, and maybe I'm not pissed off about the changes, because my characters always sucked in Classic D2. Why? Because I liked too many skills to concentrate in just a few. Because it only seemed natural, when I created my first character (the paladin), to spread my stat points out. I never realized that I was doing things the hard way - that the key to success in D2 was concentrating in a few skills and a few stats - until all the whining started about the nerfs in the beta. What nerfs? When I saw the list of changes, I was excited and relieved. Maybe it'll take other characters as long to level up as it does my paladin! My point is that some players, like me, who have struggled and toiled through the game in order to preserve their dignity and sense of originality, may want to convert their characters. We have unknowingly built our characters for the expansion from the beginning, and to us, LoD is our salvation, not the target of incessant whining. Perhaps my paladin, my original character, won't be outclassed by melee fighters 20 levels below me anymore. They see LoD as a nerf - I see it (as I saw your Beta Report #5) as a breath of fresh air.

First (very important): When playing a game, gamers should be adapting to the game, not let the game adapt ouor old habits.

Sorceress: This sure is an interesting improvement, both in terms of difficulties and fun...I always wanted to build a tritoch (that's the summon in finalfantasy who use 3 elementals) sorcersss, but the lack of usefulness was extremely low in D2. In terms of difficulties, the sorceress gets spell nerfing, honestly, a sor would never die in hardcore D2 if there was no lag, I'm serious. The first character on the ladder are sorceress. So I guess the static field nerf was kinda needed, after all it's a lvl 6 skill, being used as a main skill...I don't think it should as it's the case in D2.

Necromancer: I do respect the revive non scaling hp nerfing because revive never dies of lack of life, on to the timer...so that really screwd me up when I told my friend, "why don't you use life tap with your revives" and he replied, "They never die off because they get killed but because of the timer" Guess some people will at least invest in life tap :)

In response to 99% of the nerf complaints, you hit the nail on the head with your rant. It is ridiculous of people to complain that they can't solo-8 anymore becuase as you said, it is a whole new game. However, I think there is a minority of people who are complaining not about the difficulty, but about the inequality in difficulty. I agree with a static field nerf (though the way they did is questionable, a straight reduction in the percent would be more consistent) however what makes me angry is the lack of a nerf for crushing blow. In D2X, you can easily get up to 100% crushing blow without using really any special equipment, just a bunch of crafts and a few uniques. Now crushing blow doesen't cost mana, reduces a target's life by 50% (as opposed to 25%), requires no skill points, and works on physical immunes. So while yes static field was cheesy and should be nerfed, crushing blow is even more cheesy yet Blizzard didn't touch it.

Even referring to more general nerfing of classes, what I am complaining about is not making the game more difficult, it is making the game more difficult for some (in this case the Sorc and Necro) while the current uber builds (the Druid and Amazon) go unchanged, in fact they seem to be getting better (I still think crushing blow in any form on bows is pure cheese). There are other examples, why did the Necro (the supposed master of minions) get his main minions nerfed while Valkries and the Druid's pets *still* scale in multi player games? Yes, hitpoint scaling for minions should probably be taken out, but why do they only do it one class instead of all of them? What happens is everyone just goes to play Amazons and Druids and does solo-8, completly ignoring the idea of making hell hard.

This also happens within a class. Hurricane was nerfed, but why wasn't the Druids shapshifting skills nerfed too? Those are the skills that are filling the ladders with lvl 80 Druids. Blizzard nerfed Revive which is alright by me, but why didn't they nerf the much more overpowered IM instead? It boggles the mind.

I know I sound paranoid, but it is almost like Blizzard designs every part of the game with these inbalances. Everywhere you look there is loopholes for some classes, and nothing for the others.

One particularly good example of this is the whole Immune feature. It makes the game harder, and theoretically I really like the idea. However it doesen't take much time going through hell to notice how easy it is for some classes. Half the bosses in hell are triple immuned, so as you would probably argue, Sorcs should team up with the Druids and Amazons etc. to deal with them. However, why should the Druids and Amazons party with sorcs when there are barely any physical immunities? The whole system is set up like that. Even on the off chance that an Amazon finds a physical immune monster, she can just switch to his 1-500 lightning damage bow that Blizzard conviently introduced into the Xpack for her. See instead of making the game more difficult, Blizzard just adds in loopholes for a chosen few of the character classes, while letting the rest squablle among themselves since there is no reason for a Druid, who can solo quite easily, to party with them and help them out.

So in essence, what I'm complaining about is not that Blizzard nerfed the Sorc, but that Blizzard only nerfed the Sorc, and not the Druid and Amazon who are ironically the ones who most need the nerfing.

I think the sorc is going to have a rough time of it in Hell, I've never been one for trying to solo 8-player games, it's about a lot more than just gaining levels for me, and sometimes the game is hard for sure, but I've played variants that range from the tried and tested orb/SF to blaze, lightning only...they were all a blast. I'm not sure whether Blizzard's only intention here is to make the game as insanely hard as you say in order to prevent all the mindless levelling. The timers on her spells for example are ostensibly to control the lag generated by her spamming spells like meteor, firewall, blizzard etc, and yet I don't believe that's the optimal way to solve the problem. I've been playing the lag-free mod for a while now, and when playing with sorcies in a party the difference is remarkable. They can spam as many orbs and firewalls as they like and my framerates are fine. Why was this not an option to Blizzard? I'm assuming in all of this that they wanted to improve the framerate on machines, I can't imagine what other motivation they could have had.

I find that my style of play with a sorc is a run-and-gun thing.....can't stand still or you're toast, and it'd be nice to fire off spells while on the move, but I guess that's how the engine works. I've actually never relied too much on SF, I think it's always been a bit cheesy, but it was the one spell I could rely on if she was really getting into trouble. For many people I think this is the last straw, since they are also questioning the motives for the spell timer, if it's to curtail lag, then the lag-free mod is one example of an elegant way around it, hell even put in a switch on the client machine so players can opt to enable low or high-detail spell effects, this would apply to the sorc, the blood lords in Durance etc....

Yes the sorc can use mercs, and will probably have to altho there will be masochists who will try and do hell on their own. My concern here is that she will become far too dependant on it, and unlike the valk it'll cost loads to ressurect. Sure mercs probably have better AI than valks (not that it will take much) and their damage output will be greater, but separated from them she will be vulnerable.

I know this has been long and waffly, so in summary, I think the SF nerf was needed, my concern is more for the timers on the other high-damage spells, since she is going to have to use these more than before, it'd have been cool to see the SF nerf without the timers. It's natural that people would overreact, I know my first instinct was to do just that, but I'm hoping it all works out.

Just wanted to say that I agree with what your saying. I'm quite tired of the whining of the people who play 8 player solo games and such.. I prefer team play anyways and am saluting the blizz people for making it that way.

The problem is with the line:

"Blizzard just screwed that up and they're now fixing it"

My problem with the "nerfs" in the xpack (i HATE that term.. should be "changes") is that blizzard should NOT have screwed up in the first place..

Blizzard themselves have said they did NOT take the time to properly test the game at higher difficulty levels. THAT is their biggest problem. They didn't expect that one person to play 23 of 24 hours a day on one character focusing so much on so few skills.

Its this lack of attention to the higher difficulty levels that blizzard is now finding themselves running around trying to fix their "Screw ups". And frankly I have ZERO sympathy for blizzard right now who are probably working their butts off trying to make the "right" changes.

I just wish that blizzard would have stuck to their original idea that no one person should be able to reach level 99 in their lifetime (well its an exaggeration.. but you get the idea) and they should have made this game as difficult as the xpack is in the first place..

I agree in saying that "the expansion is a whole new game" but the changes that blizzard is doing now should have been done in the first place!!

I think the problem is, that, and here I want to take you up on your offer of a discussionary attitude real quick: people care about their characters. That is, in a fictive sense, these characters are paper dolls cut from our own swaths of self. Anybody who plays a role playing game is...wait a minute -- role playing. So I think what's happening is that everyone, when they play D2, grows some sort of attachment to their character. They nurture it, feed it items, keep it alive, and guide it through it's little paper life. It's nice, really. And I think that's a big part of why people don't want to see their lovingly cared-for characters nerfed into the nursing home come expansion time. And sure, they can just not convert them, but there's a feeling of getting left behind, then. I mean, even now I find it hard to even play vanilla since, well, who cares? All characters and items and such will be useless in a few weeks anyway. Regardless, I think there's slightly more to it than just the loss of some people's uber-builds. At some point, they care for those characters and don't like to see things changed.

We didnt get 8 new hotkeys just for fun.

You say that you are tired of hearing people complain. I just think that you don't ever play sorcs. The thing is all of your examples revolved around one class. And one class only.  I don't see a rational way to defend what is being done and I think that the "stop complaining" and "deal with it" attitude that you are expressing is out of sheer inability to respond to our very valid claims.

I understand that they game is being completely "retooled". However, does that not conflict with the concept of an expansion? Should an expansion pack not simply be an add on to an existing game?

The way I see it is simple. Challenge me with new monsters and new character classes. Don't challenge me by completely changing the whole game and thus wiping clean my current accomplishments.

After playing the game for countless hours I got bored with PvM and turned to the world of PvP. I now almost exclusively Duel and PKK. For me the expansion is not going to be usable because I DO NOT want to start over...

I have a stocked PvP account with 6 Clvl 86-89 characters (one of each class... 2 barbs) built from Clvl 1 to be PvP. I spent many hours leveling these guys to own PKs and Dueling games.

I'd love the challenge of new item hunting and developing a great PvP Druid and Assassin to ADD to my current list of PvP characters.

However, I will need to start all over... I'm not really looking forward to releveling the 5 original classes to use different skills to be effective in PvP.

To me the expansion pack is not really an expansion since it takes away as much as it adds. And it's not a whole new game... it's just a giant patch to correct things that should have been corrected a LONG time ago.

As for the SF nerf, I highly agree with it. Sorc players will be forced to make tri-elemental or dual-elemental builds to survive, and that is how the Sorceress was intented to be played.

If you look at CD2, you will notice that every Sorceress uses SF as her primary attack (yes, PRIMARY attack) and backs it up with a secondary attack like Frozen Orb, Hidra, etc., to deliver the killing blow. This is WRONG.

I just don't get WHY IN THE NINE HELLS people don't seem to realize that there are OTHER SPELLS in the Lighting Tree BESIDES SF, Teleport and ES.

According to Sirian, CS and Lighting are VIABLE now, and Thunderstorm deals huge damage. This is GREAT. Imagine a Sorceress using Chain Lighting, Hidra and Blaze, it would ROCK! :-)

The ONLY problem that the Sorceress has is that Blizzard has screwed monsters with resistances. I'm not a Beta tester, but I can easily tell from my experience in CD2, that almost 99.99% of the monsters in ActV are immune to ONE element, and have OVER-THE-ROOF resistance to the other TWO elements. Yep, that's it, we have a monster that is practically "immune" to all sorts of elemental damage, and its a PITA that the only class that relies on pure elemental damage to survive is the Sorceress.

This can be adressed by either giving a resistance reduction component to EVERY mastery (read: resistance reduction, NOT, and I repeat, ***NOT*** immunity reduction) and making every mastery deal more damage, that COULD be a solutions.

But, personally, I think that the BEST solution to this scenario, is that Blizzard needs to CAREFULLY redo the resistances for every single monster in the game, so we can have a monster that is immune to one, maybe TWO elements, but *****CAN***** BE KILLED BY THE OTHER ELEMENT.

This last patch was just a bit much however. I'm not going to go into my problems with it because you've already heard it way too often. But I play a lot, both in passworded games with friends and soloing, enough so to have had to start a second and third account because my first was full of level 70+ barons, and it was getting darn boring. Out of the dozen or so people I play with regularly, only I am still planning on buying the expansion because of the incredible number of nerfs. Personally I think this is just wrong. As for conversions, well maybe you shouldn't have been allowed to do that, as you would have liked. But since you can, the nerfs are a slap in the face of anyone who has actually played enough to get their character above level 40 or so. I have two characters that are still viable - my paladin and my barb, because I started them first and have points all over the place because I was learning and am too stubborn to delete the "screwed up characters." Turns out they are now more viable than my ubers -- there's a moral lesson in there someplace, I think.

For every good poster, there were about 20 others who, as you know, just sat there and whined while proudly wearing their blinders. I have absorbed every nugget of info on the expansion from all of the good Diablo sites, and I am insanely excited about the expansion. The whines didn't curb my enthusiasm, because I've seen this before on so many other games, particularly during pre-release. Most people seem to lack the ability to step back and look at the whole picture, and because of that we get pointless post after post of whining and moaning.

Now I thought about responding to them, trying to reason with them, but I knew no one would really pay attention. I've been gaming since this industry started, I'm a skilled player, and when I get in a writing mood, my articles pop up on the net in various places. However, no one at the Lounge knows me, so I doubted they would pay much attention. Thank you! Thank you Bolty, for your rant. You said what I've been thinking, but unlike if I had posted it, some might actually listen to you.

"the Expansion Pack for Diablo II is a whole new game". Well not exactly. It is an expansion, it is not a whole new game, you can't play it without having bought DiabloII. That implies a certain degree of continuity. Now does that mean you should be able to take your uber character from diabloii and be able to move him to the expansion and have him be an Uber character there? No it does not. Does it mean that if you take him to the expansion , take the time to get him some of the better items and restructure your gear to meet the new rules, and have a viable not uber character, yes you should. An Uber character, assuming there still is such a thing, should require a brand new build. Now from what I've heard so far nothing has been nerfed badly enough to make the major character builds not viable, (though I've never played a Sorc so I'm not sure on that latest Static Field nerf). It sounds like the major builds may not be as powerful and may require some work to get started but that's fine by me.

Now to the point is your choice whether to convert your character. Again half true. I don't think Blizzard will put on the box for the expansion set itself the explanation on how chars will change when converted over. So unless you read the on-line stuff you won't know when you buy the game how your existing chars will be affected and that's bad. If you don't like it you've already spent the money. Also Blizzard would need to put on the conversion screen not just a simple your characters may be nerfed message but should post the whole changes list that they assembled. Fairest thing for them to do would be to mail to all registered users an ad for the expansion with all the new features plus all the changes so that people know before they buy. While I think it is a good idea for people to read up on a game on-line before they play that should not be a requirement.

"Too bad that wasn't Blizzard's intention for you to be able to do that from the start". Blizzard's intention is irrelevant. I say this as a programmer, not a game programmer but a programmer none the less. It is an interesting exercise for a programmer to watch a user with one of his programs. The stuff you spent a lot of time on that you thought would make the user's life easier they ignore. The stuff you quickly threw together that you thought people would rarely use, they use all the time. It is a combination of frustrating, humbling, and humorous at the same time. Blizzard could have intended a party RPG where people would actually get into character as they talked during the game. They could have intended a lot of different things. What they got and what people like about the game is something entirely different. If 90%, pulling numbers out of thin air, of the people like playing solo on Realms creating godly characters then they shouldn't say "wait thats not the way we intended the game to be played, let's change things so they can't do that any more." That is both stupid and fiscally unsound.

Which brings me to my biggest gripe. There is a tendency in the Lounge, and a subtext to your post, for players to be condescending up to hostile to those who play the game a certain way. Now there is a way to do that in good natured banter, like if me and my neighbor were to argue the merits of the Yankees vrs the Mets. That isn't usually the way it goes in the Lounge, it usually gets vicious vrs anyone who plays using the standard skills. Anyone playing and having fun within the rules that is not directly negatively impacting another player is not doing anything wrong. Someone who plays a WW Lance Barb to lvl 99, someone who likes trading, someone who likes trying out different char designs and never goes past Normal, someone who wants to create a character decked out in gear that's all blue, they are all perfectly valid methods of play and as long as the person is enjoying themselves who cares how they play.! It's a game with no end point, victory is how you define it. I've heard players complain that they can't lvl as fast with their non cookie-cutter chars. Well, obviously. You have one person who decided what they enjoy is leveling using the most efficient means possible. You have another player who said they want to do something different as their first priority and level as their 2nd. You might expect the first player to be somewhat better at leveling. If the 2nd player is going to try for #1 on the Ladder he will be very unhappy. If however he takes his pride in knowing he got his Berserk barb to lvl 50 without a point in WW then he still has enjoyment. You can't have it both ways.

This is what my basic disagreement with your post and many of the other regular of Lurkers come down to. Blizzard should not design the expansion to make D2 more like their original goal. They should not design it to meet the needs of the Lurker regulars. They should not design it to meet my needs either. They should design it to meet the needs of the majority of the X million players who bought the game. Not just Realm players but all players. I have no idea how the %s of buyers break down, I'd be very curious as to how many buyers even play Realms games. If the majority of people who play D2 are playing because they want a really tough game then Blizzard should drastically up the difficulty. However it is my very strong suspicion that is not the case. Frankly I think the appeal for most is the play for just one more level, just one more item, in activity that sucks you in but is not too challenging. I think most people like being able to solo 8 person hell and that doesn't detract from the longer term viability of the game, it adds to it. I'll go back to Alpha Centauri if I want a strategy game. I'll go back to Planescape or Fallout if I want a computer RPG that is close to being an RPG. I don't play the heavy duty arcade games any more, reflexes are getting worse with age, but there are far more difficult action games out there if you want to play an arcade game. If I want party play I'll pick a game with a server that can handle 8 people in the vicinity at the same time, though I would love if this game was adjusted to allow for that. If I do want a heavy duty D2 challenge, I'll try one of the Variants someone came up with or try out one of my own. You can always make the game more difficult for yourself if you want.

I cannot say that I can even imagine the effects that all the items and especially mercs will have on the game, and most people can't either. Looking at those changes in the context of "our game" (Classic D2) now seems ridiculous and frightening (with good reason) to the common player. If these changes did apply to Classic it would be a different story, but they don't for the most part. Even my first impulse was to think, "But how will my sorc kill the high council in Act 3 Hell? I can barely do it now!" But what people don't realize is that these changes are meant to balance the expansion (a totally different game) and put the focus more on team play, which was intended from the beginning. I think that the reason most people have a hard time with this is because, at least in America, people want to strive to be "the best"; the strongest, fastest, and most well off. It's a pattern in American society that has existed seemingly forever. The idea of Blizzard imposing almost socialistic restaints on players' actions infuriates them, because in America it's the star player or lead singer that gets the attention, not the drummer or foul shooter.

You stated that the expansion is a whole new game, yet it's not called Diablo 3, it's just an expansion. Expansions are not supposed to be whole new games, only extensions of the original. Blizzard should not have meddled with Nightmare and Hell difficulties, they should've added another difficulty. People are of a mindset right now that they can solo Hell difficulty just fine in an 8-player game, and it would be nice to keep thinking that in the expansion, you'd still know that there is a whole new challenge ahead with the next difficulty where their characters would not be so viable anymore. Sure, some people enjoy the challenge that the expansion will bring, but I don't remember any rpg's I've played where a level 99 character would have to run from a monster. Blizzard thinks that most people want a challenge but challenge is not why magic find items are so popular. The game is addictive not because you strive to kill Diablo 500 times, it's because of the items.

Nerfing is fine. I agree with most of what they did, but I have to say that nerfing the sorc the way they did may have been going too far. I'll explain. First off, the sorc was quite possibly the least used and arguably (I disagree) least overall effective character. To be sure she did have a very hard time in certain areas at killing anything (CS). I believe that in the x-pack (in all honesty), all other characters (execpt maybe amazon) WILL actually still be able to solo for the most part in most areas. Only physically immunes can challenge melees, but I've seen magic weapons with the potential of 500+ in elemental damage which could be the secondary weapon! But I believe the sorc with her slowed casting times and nerfed static will by far be the weakest. I am totally for nerfing and character balancing AS LONG AS all characters remain fairly close together in overall effectiveness. I hope I don't have to retire my 2 level 80 sorcs.

I totally understand your note about the "whole new game" concept. But what you are saying to people is don't be human. If you look in any psych book, you find a section about trauma and it usually goes like this:

Stage 1 : Complete shock and disbelief
Stage 2 : Anger
Stage 3 : Depression
Stage 4 : Acceptance
Stage 5 : Adaptation

What you are requesting is people skip stages 1-3. If we could, we would be Vulcan. Since we are human, steps 1-3 are absolutely required. It took me about 60 minutes to get through stages 1-4. I'm an engineer, it is my job to adapt quickly.

All I know is that I agree with you, but you where very harsh on the people who visit your site. Lets us go through stages 1-3, wallow in 4, and then achieve step 5. I've taken every nerf blizzard has thrown at me and thrown it back at'm already. I say bring it on...but I too need steps 1-3.

I mean, from what I can tell, the D2X improvements and changes are going to make the possibilities virtually incalculabe. As a person who has only played some Diablo 2, and currently doing so, but I haven't even killed off Diablo in Normal yet, but I'm getting there, I'd like to give you a quick view from an outsider who has played some of Diablo 2 Classic.

Basically, it is this: D2X's changes sound so good because they make the game choices, in skills and equipment that you shoot for, more a question of what I'd like to try out and work with than a case of "hmm, how do I beat the game."

You know, it's interesting, I read a lot of articles on Diablo 2 Classic, trying to understand blocking percentages, block lock, minimmize DEX, get a great shield even as a sorceror (insane, but oh well). I read about how this spell is better than that, no matter what. I wonder about static field, it's obviously meant to weaken, not to be a consecutively used skill to virtually kill a character before your finishing attack (obviously it's design was for weakening, so that you can move in afterwards and have a chance against a well protected boss or whatever, design here I'm talking). And then guess what, now it's more like that. Static field only taking down monster HPs to 33% of max in Nightmare, or 50% of max HPs in Hell. Tremendous idea (this from me, a guy who'll probably never make it past nightmare, and yet I cheer) because that's what SF should be and that's what Nightmare and Hell should be, isn't that why they are given the cool sounding names ? I'm supposed to think that <gulp>, this time I'm dealing with the "professional" monsters this time through, and I'm supposed to be a experienced pro myself (which also should mean that I know how to use almost anything in my skill set, to some degree, so making a game less dependent on a couple of uberskills is inline with that design).

But, here's a key point of yours I want to especially reinforce. If this were Diablo 3, I'd actually buy it. I don't want to be too long, so I'll not defend that statement except in short. All the new features, new equipment, the balancing of skills, the bug fixes, the blocking being looked at (for plus and minus), the mercs, the resurrecting, the new characters (traps and animals, yes), the additional act, the new socketing and charms, runewords, etc. IT'S A WHOLE NEW GAME, IT'S ALSO WHAT DIABLO2 COULD NEVER BE, I'M AMAZED AT HOW THIS REALLY GOES BEYOND DIABLO 1 IN CONCEPT.

Finally, I hope others consider this. Baldur's Gate 2's expansion module and Ice Wind Dale's expansion module ARE NOT WHOLE NEW GAMES. With D2X, I can actually decide to keep D2 Classic as one game, for a different mindset and playing experience, and D2X will PLAY like a WHOLE NEW GAME.

I guess that's why I have to commend you. You always make your site look at how to play the game in a whole new way. Cool strategy guides like Smiting/Converter Paladin, or reference to all the different ways to play a sorceror (often referencing Sirian's cool test runs, which question the paradigm and also teach things about the game). Now, instead of just PLAYING DIFFERENTLY as in a VARIANT, we now can PLAY A WHOLE NEW GAME.

That article you wrote on that, says it all. Thanks so much for your website. From what you are saying, I have learned to play the game with personal freedom, and with confidence in my own ideas, realizing that the consequences of my choices in the game are much as in life, a way of living and dealing with the environmental reality and trying to use what I bring to the table to get the job done. And that's freeing, it's like a relaxing way of practicing the mindset that works best in REAL life as well. That D2X reinforces that is even more freeing. I didn't come to D2 series to become a virtual God. I came to have fun and wonder at the possibilities even if at the occasional cool WAYS of achieving great virtual deeds. I LIKE being able to try it all again another way and knowing that it will be just as cool the second or twentieth time around, that's called replayability.

I would also like to thank you for being the first person to state something that I have thought for a long time that has kept me off b-net, you are not suppose to survive solo in an 8 player game.I can't stand trying to get allies to help me through the game, but instead of joining me they would rather go by themselves and solo when 4-8 other people are in the game. This to me defeats the purpose of multiplayer.

i just read your Beta Report #5 and although i fear it won't change anything in the heads of most of those whiners, i have to say that i'm glad that you've written that. It contains a lot of things that had to be said. Some things were completely new to me, like that thing that it was Blizzards intention right from the start to make the game that hard for single players. But what was much more important for me, are the things you said about the behaviour of most of the players of the D2 community. This marks a development in the computer gaming world that i started recognizing some years ago. A lot people don't see themselves as a member of what i'd like to call a family. A family that contains the players as well as the developers of a game. A family where the members respected each other and where there exist an exchange of ideas. Today it's more like sea of consumers. People feel not like a part of the game anymore. They say: "I paid it, it has to be my way!" And if its not so they say "#### Blizz" instead of giving some suggestions how to improve it or accept the fact that the game designers had vision how the game should work when they created it.

I have several high level characters, and I did bring them over and try to play. I had read that everything was harder, so I played conservatively and I didn't seem to have too much trouble. I did have a had time in Hell, but I found that I enjoy NM act 5 quite a bit and I manage to get quite a bit of XP, even if I solo. There are some issues on my mind that I have noticed in gameplay. Although my overall impressions are favorable, there are a couple of things that I don't like. The major one is that the drops have been so reduced-most of the fun for me is finding things. I don't even care if they are rares or not, I just like stuff. It is frustrating to me to kill an entire pack of flayers and not even get a bunch of arrows for my efforts. I read that the new patch had upped the amount of drops-I plan to test that this afternoon sometime. I also object to the emphasis on partying. Part of it is the same reason I don't like seat belt laws-I don't like someone else making my decisions for me. Also, I really haven't met that many people in a party that I would want to play with again. A great deal of the people on the realms seem to have some serious issues-bad mouths, racist and sexist attidues(yes, I am a woman and I finally figured out using my name as my account was not a good idea :). I have a few good friends(none that made it to the beta) but they cannot always be on when I am on and vice versa. I also share with my husband and that also limits my time. Anyway,it probably boils down more to I don't like the idea of the company dictating my playing style. The interesting thing is that I find myself getting the same amount of XP and drops in a game by myself as I do in a game with several people. But I don't have to deal with the people who like to take all the drops and never share, such as the really obnoxious sorc I played with yesterday that telekinesised(is this a word?) everything in sight. I finally told her to bugger off, didn't her mama teach her to share for pete's sake? And after I gave her the wps I had, too, Sheesh.

I just saw that page of yours, the one about "it's a whole new game", and I really wish I could agree with it, but I've spent over 14 hours now reading and contemplating, comparing and calculating... and I've been TRYING, god have I been trying to make a post that isn't the size of the empire state building to explain exactly what's got my panties in a bundle with the new patch... ok here's what I'm getting at: I found loopholes and imbalances the size of the grand canyon, stuff that makes bowazons about 10 times more powerful than any other class in every single arena (vs. mobs, vs. bosses, vs. players) and found that the only characters *truly* hurt by these changes are the sorceress, the necromancer, the elemental druid, and any necromancer/paladin that was looking forward to partying to defeat immunes with conviction, lower resists, amp damage and maybe even help with life tap. I know, it sounds far-fetched, but that's why I'm including in this email all the problems I see in 1.46 as validation of this, and will gladly retrieve exact stats if you want about anything mentioned herein.

I'll try to cover everything, while still keeping this somewhat detailed and coherent (there's so much information I'm having trouble keeping track of it all in my head), here I list all the problems in no particular order because too many things link to too many other things to specify exactly why each given thing is awry (near the end I start linking things, couldn't help it, please forgive the increased length as the list progresses):

The fact that dex still affects bow damage, in addition to no timer on multishot, the insane damage on new bows, heavy hit rate on strafe, while critical strike and dodge/evade/avoid all work at full power with bows all contribute to there being no reason at all to use spears (or any other class, for that matter) other than strictly for variant novelty, and I'm shocked that this hasn't changed (yet, at least) in D2X, further stifling amazons to strictly bowazons and javazons, I expect to see even less spearazons in D2X than ever before

with multishot able to fire a 20 arrow volley up to 4+ times per second, with each arrow being capable of 1200+ average damage (with a very high end bow and critical strike), almost never missing (plenty of new +1000 AR items, or there's that ITD bow, and penetrate and high dexterity since that increases bow damage), also able to carry crushing blow and as much as 300-400+ elemental damage ("condensing", "shocking") shouldn't have any problems with, well, anything in the game... I've actually come up with this possible new skill description for multishot, it basically covers all the power involved with crushing blow + multishot, maybe you'll find it amusing:

"Just like static field, but it can't be resisted, can rapid-fire without releasing the attack button, has no 50% life threshhold, does twice as much damage per hit, steals life/mana, indefinitely stunlocks, blinds, freezes, cause flee and/or knocks back monsters, also finishes with your choice of physical, fire, lightning, cold, or poison damage, it slices, it dices, it minces and chops, all while attacking from a range from behind the safety of a 12000 life resummonable minion! It's the best of every attack in the game, with none of the downsides, all in one convenient skill and don't ya wanna know how it works?! Max me out! One time only! Order now! Guaranteed to be Uber OR YOUR MONEY BACK!"

Funny eh? The part that has me blown away is that if things go unchanged, it's dead serious.

and then there's necromancers, no I'm not talking about the weaker revives here, I'm talking about the ability for him to kill something that has physical immunity. From what I recall death maulers tend to show up right outside the gates of the act 5 town right? And those suckers are totally physically immune, so what's a necromancer, with but a mere golem (since he can't summon other minions until AFTER he's killed something) supposed to do to kill them? I mean, poison nova deals something like 170 (unstackable) damage/sec when maxxed out, hardly acceptable by any means, even bone spirit could take a while to take down a single hell act 5 singleplayer game monster, due to their increased life, and even if one was killed, what next? revive it and have it use it's physical attacks against other physically immune death maulers? or perhaps summon a skeleton magi with 62 life and watch it get instantly obliterated after one hit?

On the other hand, if it were an amazon in the same situation, she need only toss up a valkyrie as the distraction, whip out a "shocking" or "condensing" bow while wearing goblin toe (I can only imagine the legions of gamblers at this very moment creating hundreds of the things before gambling gets turned off, or dupers doing the same thing after the game comes out), and nail those feeble little physical immunes to the floor in no time, it's just flat out unfair how they can adapt to any situation like that.

Then there's those "unleechable" monsters, namely skeletons. First of all, life tap ALWAYS steals life, based on the player's output damage (even in PvP it uses the pre-penalty output damage to steal from), so those can be handled in that way. But that shouldn't even be a problem since there AREN'T any unleechable monsters in act 4 or act 5, save 1 or 2 monster types in the whole acts (I find it odd that skeletons are unleechable, but reanimated hordes and finger magi (undead) aren't, it defeats the purpose of having unleechable monsters in the first place, save perhaps just being a novelty monster "on the way to" act 4/5) the main problem here being that life tap can exist on charged items, so once again a necromancer is uncalled for.

And then there's the changes to static field... personally, my stance is like so: static field nerf: good, making static need one click per cast instead of just putting on a mild timer: VERY bad (inducing real physical harm on the players, BAD Blizzard, BAD!), not reducing crushing blow to compensate (making it resistible by physical resistance/immunity, giving it the same "cannot reduce life below this point" limits, etc.): HORRIBLE, that's where the biggest baddest loopholes now stem from.

Maybe you can see now why I'm having such a hard time trying to put this together in a more organized form, and why I'm so terribly upset about patch 1.46... it has nothing to do with all classes being able/unable to "solo" etc. or about wanting the game to remain the same as D2, it has to do with amazons now being basically more powerful offensively and defensively (dodge/evade/avoid mimicking a shield, THE most powerful single minion in the game, slow missiles, etc. etc. everything all combines just too well) than ANY other class, whether with physical OR elemental attacks, whether vs. monsters OR vs. players, they're just flat out *the best* in EVERY way, they don't HAVE a downside compared to other classes, it simply does not exist, or at least that will be the case once amazon players start making those new "uber builds" (multishot, penetrate, critical strike, dodge/evade/avoid, valkyrie, with goblin toe and rattlecage, and a high damage bow on tab 1, other high elemental bow on tab 2, hefty +mana charms for when physical immunes come along, done deal, all bases covered), my problem isn't about the game getting "too hard", I like hard, but I like hard when it's the same hardness for everyone, but it looks like amazons are pretty much exactly the same as they were in D2 (3/4 damage isn't a nerf when bows can do over 2x as much damage and be bought from vendors and inflict crushing blow, 1 attack check per arrow isn't a nerf when AR can be boosted to over 15000 with the new +AR items (I actually knew someone on USEast with like 12000 AR just in D2C), guided arrow getting slower isn't a nerf when it can do 10x as much damage as orb/bone spirit and they can still be slowed down to laughable speed with slow missiles, etc.)

Meanwhile all the other classes, (except for necromancers and sorceresses) have some way or another, in a balanced sense, to still ignore any major immunity or such that gives them trouble all by themselves, albeit to limited extents (zeal/vengeance, physical/elemental weapons, amp damage on weapons, life tap on items, elemental traps/physical attacks), whereas now the "berserk" of sorceress skills, that being cold mastery, and the same for necromancers, that being amp damage, are now just flat out unusable, while other classes need only toss on crushing blow, and take their pick of physical, fire, cold, lightning, poison, or even "magic" damage to "finish" monsters off with, it's just not right man, this whole thing has gone terribly awry.