The friggin early days.....

[Mithrandir]

When did the soj economy develope?

Pretty much right when Jarulf discovered that there was an order to Uniques dropping. Literally a week after it was first announced, I remembered reading about pairs (and sometimes even entire teams) getting together: one would just spend all of his time gambling, the others would farm cash for him... on a bad day they would be bringing in 20 SoJs.

What were the "godly" items back before everybody started using the duped rares?

The "godly" items? Silks of the Victor was huge for the first couple months, I suppose due to it having +1 Skills... a mod which was, in general, over rated until people started becoming more attuned to the game mechanics.

Rare Executioner Swords, Gothic Bows, and Ornate Armor stick out in my mind as objects commonly sought after it trade channels - mainly because Amazons and Barbs (MS and WW, respectively) were the two main "uber" classes.

Frostburns, Goldwrap (for the MF), Treads of Cthon, Tarnhelm, Goldwrap, and Wormskull were all big very very early but, since they all had relatively common base items, quickly became much to common to be worth much.

I still remember people going gaga in a trading channel over a 3PD Shield the very first week D2 was out... +54% to all resists?!? Holy Jeebus! *laugh* :)

Who made the first level 99? Lvl 99 HC?

Gosh, it's bee a while. Although the names escape me at the moment, basically a group of people would have 7 Sors clear out the entire Arcane Sanctuary, get Diablo down to a sliver, put up a TP, and then have the Barb they were trying to get to 99 get the final hit (thus getting all the xp). Seems pretty inefficient, no? Well, they had enough people doing this that the Barb could litterally kill, jump to next game, kill, jump, kill, jump, kill, etc.

One group of people came up with the original idea, but then another group copied and quickly caught up. Both groups were racing to see who could get the first 50 - by the end, the Barbs were being played 24/7 (not by the same individuals, of course... they had to sleep some time :) ) and they dinged 99 less than an hour from each other.

As to HC...? My memory is foggy on this one, but I don't believe a HC 99 was reached until LoD and the "technique" of farming Bloody Foothills had been mastered.


Edit: Missed a tag.