Professional Farmers

[kandrathe]

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I'm confident they will do what they can to fix the problems - they are handling WoW a lot better than D2, you must admit.
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It's seems better designed for longevity, or at least a lifespan that allows for a 12 to 18 month development cycle before the universe becomes stale.

Consider how long it takes to cap a toon in D2, versus WOW (not power leveling, mind you). Then, consider what you need to do to "complete" your capped toon. Then, there is a "content" difference where the WOW character has available more "party designated" instances where they can acquire some of the best BOP items. If I recall correctly, most, if not all items in D2 items are transferable to others, which accelerates the stagnation. I suspect there is a correlation in the time that a WOW realm becomes stale to the amount of time it takes to cap and "complete" a toon.

However, in D2, you have the ladder resets that restart from ground zero and keep the realm fresh. It's been along time since I've played D2, but I imagine that the stale ladder, and non-ladder realms economies are distorted by farmers and cheaters in the same way they always were.