Well I'm glad it wasn't just my imagination
I did help contribute to less participation and conversations though, as I took a several month break and got a new job.
It's weird how, at least for me, I can go from straight up hardcore drug addiction to this game, thinking about the game all day while I am waiting for my duties to be over, so I can play when I get home. Then I will be at a point like I sort of am now, although trying to break out of it, where I just don't have the desire to do massive MF runs or doing any other things. It is a COMPLETE OPPOSITE EFFECT! Strange. If I don't play for a few months, to close to a year, I will get this huge craving to start all over again usually.
I think that maybe a lot of it on this forum, even though this is one of the few forums about anything, anywhere on the web, where people are civil, help each other out and share information that people could hold to keep an advantage on people. The big difference is that a vast majority of us, I assume anyway, started playing on B.Net and I imagine a lot of other people were during the peak times of B.Net, like 1.09 through maybe 1.11. So we don't have that comradery when we play with our buddies that we know from around the nation and world, and our buddies from our hometowns and from school and what not. Beating the game with the limited character types and finding the same elite items over and over, from doing ungodly amounts of runs, can wear stale after several months and then you get your brain calling you back months later.
I wish we had more multiplayer, or LAN I guess we would play, games that we could meet up with each other and do Baal, CS, Cow runs, we could duel each other for fun all of the time and I think it would really pick up the trading scene. As of now, trading seems pretty minimal and large or valuable items never budge. If we met people in games and saw items and were in instant, in game chatting, I believe negotiations and trades could be worked out better. This might bring more people back into the game as well.
Starting new characters with friends, duels, trades, MF, hanging out. Those were the parts that made D2 so much fun and addicting growing up! But nobody here wants to go to B.Net, because we all value the integrity of the game and the people who you play with and against. B.Net would be a Heaven, if there was literally zero bots, dupes or hacks. Diablo 2 played exactly how the base game was meant to be played, is simply amazing. Everyone doesn't have Enigma in the first week in real D2 lol.
I remember a forum I played on, where people constantly moderated to make sure no bots were running and they had ladder seasons and NL, just like on B.Net. It was kind of cool. If I was doing constant MF runs, an ADMIN could get in my PW protected game and just make sure I wasn't a bot, by saying hi or something funny to him or him seing me messing around in town. I don't know how much work it takes to create a whole forum, where we could all join in and even have the main different patches available to play with each other and those items being abled to move amongst patches. This is probably a pipedream.
This place is still the greatest place right now. It's just that I spent so many great memories from ~12ish to ~25ish, playing with real people, having very strong friendly bonds with people who were strangers before we met, mad duels from BM to GM duels lol. Leveling with your 8 man group from early evening, until the sun comes up, on Classic and Xpac.
How often do people meet up on LAN and is it something okay to do, something safe, something that isn't looked down upon? I LOVE it here and the talking on the forums is great, but the in game loneliness can get to you after awhile.
Maybe a push for more LAN games(I assume a server is far out of the equation lol), would bolster up people's playing and commitments to the game. I would have to imagine that the majority of people, like having at least one friend or even more to play with. Especially when you can't duel and have no point of building a dueler, if there aren't any.
Even if we all chose Single Player, we chose to form this place and I am sure would love playing together with each other, in a fair, legitimate, protected version of D2. I know some people play here and B.net, to get their playing in more than one man games, but I can't accept how bastardized B.net has become with the HAXxxorz,Dupez,Botz, not fun for anyone over the age of what? 15?
Why can't we have a better set up system around here where we can play with each other on LAN, could have competitions like Iron Mans, Ladder Style Leveling Characters, Duels and Team Duels, Group MFing, trading and checking out each other's gear they use and are willing to trade. I think it would help a lot of newer, lower players to catch up. I think the one biggest benefit, without a doubt (at least for the devoted, I'm more into the earlier stuff I mentioned), would be the ability to do CS/Baal Runs nonstop and have at least ONE, or up to the MAX PLAYERS, and not have to do all the work in every run, could chat and not be so board you can't handle it. Each person could step up after so many breaks, to give people slight breaks with Ondal's, to keep XP flowing while your fingers are about broken. Plus all the character diversity, would make runs fly through.
Why do we avoid this a lot?