@Grisu I think that's what max (and the rest of the forum) is trying to figure out right now. D2R is almost exactly the same though, like on a moment to moment basis when playing. You guys ever click the corner of a sarcophagus and it doesn't open because the angle isn't quite right or something? Still happens. Everything is the same almost annoyingly so. I almost wish there was some improvements on some of these tiny things. You never really hear it talked about. People are going on and on about these things that I never personally cared about - traps sometimes make less boss packs spawn, or the eth bug, or whatever people are going on and on about on every website. NHAM bug is a big one I wish was fixed but it's beside the point. Ultimately it's the tiny moment to moment gameplay that makes or breaks the game. In that aspect they've succeeded, because it is the same game. Every tiny feeling is the same when you click. You click you move, you click things the door bugs out and opens/closes a bunch of times. It's the same game. It's exactly what I wanted with a remaster and generally what die-hard fans wanted regardless of the picture that the most vocal paint on the internet at the current moment.
IMO what I think will happen is this - the majority of forumites will play it separately for a period of time, generally not adopting the new patch fully (starting fresh/no old saves). Eventually people will transfer their saves, including the people who play the most for some of the obvious reasons like
@jjscud said, like cross progression (in my case, my wife always wants to lay in bed when I want to play d2, which keeps me from playing at all, which will now be possible to do with playing on a switch). And slowly folks will switch over for those types of conveniences. I see annihilus and hellfire torch being a big reason - it's one of the last holdouts that separates this forum from other massive single player community mods (illegal to speak of here, but everyone knows which one in particular I'm talking about that allows you to get those 2 charms). And tbh they're not necessary but they are massively nice and open up tons of equipment options for tons of builds, make tons more options for strong builds to push 99 more easily, etc etc the list goes on.
Ultimately the lists of 99ers for example will never be diminished by having an easier time on a new patch. No one can ever be a @strijdje hitting 99 first in 2004 ever again, let alone on a windy druid, topping the list. I think people in the new patch should just be added right to the very end of it because guess what it's basically just as hard. It doesn't matter that it's slightly easier because of annihilus because it's still an incomprehensibly grindy boring time, completed alone, by only a select few of everyone who has ever posted here. So tack them on the end.
With that being said I think it will be the perfect time to get new players and get them involved here. I do think there should be a new d2r 99er challenge thread because there will be a lot of people returning and new players who will have interest in competing. Who is going to hit 99 first in d2r? Anyone betting on
@PhineasB ?
There are more interesting things to think about that will impact how this remaster is treated - for example, with the eth upgrade bug being fixed, will old items converted on saves be fixed and changed retroactively? Will any items be retroactively updated? Will items from 1.07/08 be updated when converting old saves? I doubt it, but if something janky like this happens I can see d2r being treated as a completely separate environment. I for one wouldn't want to give up my 1.07 arkaine's for example. To me things like this make d2 next level awesome, so if something with old items changes then that's where the line should be drawn. What if some old items bug out when converted to D2R and end up massively overpowered? Like take for example how eth 1.07 bases get extra max damage when forwarded, if there are additional buggy interactions forwarding items/chars into d2r that could have serious impacts providing buggy items like that, accessible to everyone. What if those bugs are more serious than the 1.07 eth situation? Will that be acceptable to the forum? There's no way to know ahead of actual release.
Otherwise I think ultimately it will simply be a time-traveling deal, where players will play old d2 patches, get old items, play and go forward and play in d2r with those items the same as always, almost everyone will convert eventually and things will progress normally on the forum with very little interruption, some folks will declare that they play 1.14 or 1.13 or whatever, and some will say they're d2r and there will be basically no difference between them, the same as between 1.13 and 1.14.
Edit: And I'm firmly in the "hope they add new content" camp. I'm not sure how that would be handled here, however I've been playing the same game over and over for hundreds or thousands of hours a year for the better part of 2 decades so I'm ready for more changes. So I hope that happens in future patches to the game and that I and everyone here move forward and make new history.