Wathombe: Indeed, Ladder East. There used to be a legend, which I'm unsure applies now that there are three Asia realms, but... NL/L meaning non-ladder/ladder and E/W/S/U/A/T/I for East/West/South america/eUrope/Asia/asiaTwo/Indonesia (Asia 3 including Australia). Seeing as we're doing all of this ladder-only I figured my non-ladder accounts wouldn't make sense to list.
Drawde and others: I admit these ideas are good, but when have you EVER known Blizzard to make sense? THOR for a hammer is nice (I'd look at four-worders and the effect of TIR/TAL/THUL and ORT/OHM in weapons to decide which to test first), but almost all of the original runewords created weren't for a specific build, just randomly thrown out there. I've only found one good use of MALICE, it doesn't use MAL, AMN, LUM/LO, etc, and that helps one specific build that no one else plays (I'll write a guide some day). Mostly they're all-around words that didn't require much brainpower to write up. Most of the original D2 team is gone, and anyone left doesn't seem interested in fixing the overwhelming bugs in the patch they recently released. .10 is a debacle and I'd rather have .11 or better/proper crafting matrix than new runewords. Besides, the BotDs for necromancers are either of the new unique wands. Get used to it - those builds, among others, are overpowered.
Alright, now that that's out of the way, it's been stated that etherealness isn't used for a prerequisite on runewords (wouldn't make sense to start using it now with everyone making BotD out of ethereal berserker axes), and I seriously doubt anything other than class-specificness can be in types either (this isn't crafting). What about something more disturbing, making all of this work a total loss, like activating different runewords on different realms? Before you try using a LOGICAL reason Blizzard would do this, like trying to even out the number of builds (why would they care and how would they keep track) think of a more BLIZZARD-like reason: because they're Blizzard.
One more thing, I think we should keep track of all relevant URLs to this thread and directly relevant information (so it doesn't get reprinted or take a week to sort through 50 pages of posts). Either the thread starter or a replacement for that person - as in someone who's constantly updating a certain spreadsheet (damn that thing is large) - would be a good choice. The link for the sheet, link to available players for runehunting in each realm, pages for rune drop frequencies, etc. I can do it if it's not a problem with anyone else and if I won't get thrashed for not posting every day. This way anyone new to the thread can get caught up by reading the first/last pages to find out the thread purpose and developements.
