Remove the Party Experience Bonus!

[Occhidiangela]

LoD, and LoD alone, ruined competitive play in D2, and I doubt this was ever Blizzards intention.

LoD had plenty of competition: duelling leagues were a standard feature. I daresay the ladder was already a joke, however LoD made it more of one due to the XP steroids features.

PvP, a form of competition, for all of its faults and imbalances, was still around.

By competition it seems to me that you refer to "I get to kill Diablo in this 8 player Hell game and you don't so I get the XP for my ladder character, for my character's leveling up."

Is that the "competition" that you felt was "ruined?" Beyond that, there was still plenty of competition. That feature is what I was referring to as dog eat dog and spreading hate and discontent: I work IRL, I don't play PC games to get more of the same during my leisure time.

Or, is the competition you refer to the "competition to get to X level first?" Once someone had indeed hit 99 in Diablo II, what then? Is the ladder that important a source of gaming pleasure? For some folks, it must be. To ever achieve 95-99 clvl takes some time and effort. In LoD, that "competition" was watered down by the Cow Level, and by the rather high monster levels in Act V, and by the speed at which experience points could be accrued in Hell Act V at all. _That_ bit of watering down of level advancement appears to have been fixed. What I will point out is that I never played a character past 80, ever, for the simple reason that I did not find Cows a viable entertainment, and usualy by that time I had typically killed Baal in Hell and wanted to try another character type. The wide variety of builds that could succeed was, IMO, a strength of the game.

Since I am utterly indifferent to the ladder, and do not pursue levels for their own sake, I can only say that the Ladder Only Realm feature appeals to me due to its "cleanliness" feature. There will still be plenty of PK's, legit and otherwise, folks who try to leech, and sundry morons no matter where one goes on bnet: we can all accept that as part of the environment and try to have such fun as the game presents to us.

EDIT: Just a couple of replies to your reply to me, sorry for the delay:

I'll be egocentric enough to say that I think the competitive hardcore players (not the game mode) was Blizzard's first priority when they designed D2 Closed. And I guess it evened out in the end, competitive players were the ones to get the shaft when LoD was introduced. The somewhat decent PvP balance that existed in Classic was crushed, and the Ladder was turned into a true joke with thousands of lvl 99 characters. The competitive ladder will hopefully make a return in v1.10, but PvP is probably forever doomed.

PvP has yet to be balanced in D2, most players and leagues do their own balancing due to the large number of loopholes and other problems. As to the ladder, we shall see.

I believe D2 Closed was originally designed with competitive players primarily in mind. Leisure players belong as little in a competitive environment as novice players belong in Hell. Of course, this balance shifted completely when LoD came out. Just as you claim there's more than enough room for my playing style, there was more than enough room for leisure players back in classic.

Where you sit determines what you see. ANd we both agree that a novice should indeed stay out of Hell diff. Your feelings and mine in re level 5 leechers in the Hell Cow Level are probably the same: earn your own levels, pal. The leisure player will often not intentionally insert himself into the competitive environment, and I assert that your belief that Realms' goal was competition is held hostage to a buzz word*, and your own personal preferences. Realms was, among other things, aimed at making for a clean environment: hack resistant, if not free. (Well, it sorta worked, and over time, degraded.) It also provided a basis for Ladder competition.
It does not follow that therefore only competition was its aim. Blizzard tried to make it amenable to both styles. Why? They want both sorts of players.

*The buzz word, the catch phrase: "Compete Free over Battle.net." Designed originally for . . . Diablo and Starcraft, eh? What you define, or assume, as competition may or may not be identical to that ever elusive "how the game was intended to be played" assertion that can crop up in discussions like this.

All that said, I sincerely hope that when 1.10 is released and the ladder season begins, that you enjoy the game more than you apparently do now.

Fun is where you find it. :)