Quite the blast from the past I’ll say.  When those articles were written I was playing D2 religiously, and since then have gone on to SWG, Wow, and a myriad of other games that can never compare to D2 (although SWG sure came close and Wow had its own strong points).  I remember trading on dii.net and how it was the only way to trade high value items. 

It’s sad how badly D2 has declined since December of 2001, when the big dupe hit and threw the economy into shambles.  I’ve come back recently in anticipation of D3 and the new patch, and now there’s bots running people through hell diablo and baal in five minutes.  These bots are so sophisticated, and I highly respect them even though I hate what they do to the game.  But with these bots in mind I just have to wonder how long until D3 is duped and botted to hell.  Sometimes I wonder if it will even be worth playing.  But eh, that’s just another rant I can pickup at a later time.

Anyways, I look forward to becoming a regular on this site again for D3.  There’s no doubt that the years when D2 was in its prime were one of my better years, and I hope to repeat that experience with D3.  I want to have new articles to look forward to on Diii.net, I want to watch the new game evolve, and of course I want to do some serious heavy duty magic finding.

Here’s hoping Garwulf and other great contributors will be back for the next installment of Diablo.

I don’t think I’ve ever said this before, without adding anything more, but that was a really good comment. duping and bot issues aside, it’s nice to think of the activity and interest of the D2 community in those early days. Not that it’s dead now, by any means, but there was such interest and excitement and participation. We’ve got plans to do a lot with D3 than we did with D2, and it’s going to be fun.