I wish I could play Diablo 2 on a 1920x1080 monitor without it looking like

[Hammerskjold]

Well, if you're playing games with others on public Battle.net, the expectation is that you'd be playing the same game they are. Maphack use there would be cheating and is considered Bad Form.™

I have a brother-in-law who plays D2 on the realms regularly, using maphack and bots. That's the game as he's always known it (he came to the game long after it was at its most popular). He was floored when I said I've never tried either. To him it would be a completely different game.

Is there a point at which so many are cheating that the expectation is that you are indeed playing the same game (i.e. maphack + bots)?

I never had d2 maphack on my own computer, but I did see it for myself. On a net\gaming cafe. This was during the Counterstrike, Starcraft, and yes D2 glorious all night net\gaming cafe.

I will safely bet that the cafe I went to, every machine had MH on. You still had to activate it, it didn't come on automatically when you fired up D2.

But it was definitely there, and I did see it being used by at least one person playing D2. (Everyone else at the time was playing CS, SCraft, a Korean MMORPG, etc.)

For some people, MH and bots is the 'real' D2. If the criteria is numbers alone, I suspect they might be right.