One of the most famous series by Blizzard, Diablo's sequel was released more than two decades ago, in 2000 - and it's expansion, Lord of Destruction in 2001 - and after a long time waiting, in 2021 we finally got our remaster for it, Diablo II: Resurrected, which already included the expansion.

At first glance the biggest change from the classic is of course the looks, Blizzard did a great job updating the graphics, the effects, the "feel" of physics of the game. But the remaster has a lot more to offer, we got many long-awaited changes to the game aswell.

The list of changes are many, even if we ignore the balance, stability, bug fixing, and UI changes, most of which were long due. For example killing the Cow King on the Secret Cow Level that "doesn't exist", used to prevent us from going there on the same difficulty with the same character, and in this way preventing us from killing the boss of the area with the best drop chances. In Resurrected we can finally farm the Cow King as many times as we want, making the runs more enjoyable. But they also finally fixed the infamous "fire-ench" or "Lister-bug" which were able to one-shot any character. These bugs were rare, but losing a Hardcore character to it is unfair. These changes could seem little, but for players who spent years and years in the game, even these are noticable.

In the first Ladder of Diablo II Resurrected - which came with Patch 2.4 and went live on April 28, 2022 - many of the lower level set items got upgrades, so now they are much better for leveling. On Hell difficulty, many new zones were added to the list of level 85 areas - these were, and still are the best for farming endgame gear and high runes. Mercenaries got fixes and convenience updates aswell, like the Act 1 Rogue being able to use Amazon bows, or the Act 2 Mercenary having all available auras on all difficulties. They also made Uber Diablo available for everyone who is online at the spawn, regardless of the server instance they are on - this was a long awaited change aswell, to make the powerful Annihilus Small Charm available to more players. They also added a handful of new Horadric Cube Recipes and changed how some older Runewords work - for example the previously ladder-only Insight - which can now be made in non-ladder too - can be placed in bows and crossbows, or the polearm-only all-powerful runewords, Infinity, Obedience and Pride can be used in spear class weapons too. There were a ton of balance and UI changes aswell, and while most of Blizzard's focus went on stabilizing the servers - there were a lot of players online constantly - they also had time to add many new stuff to the veterans of the game.

The second Ladder and Patch 2.5 was announced in September, 2022 and the biggest change were the new endgame areas, called Terror Zones. On every difficulty level, after you kill Baal, his "unwavering corruption" creeps into specific zones, making them spawn higher level monsters - which in turn boosts experience and loot gained. If we go to these Terror Zones on Hell difficulty, we have a chance to find Sunder Charms, which, when kept in our inventory, remove a specific immunity from monsters as well as our own resistance to that element. In this way we have an easier time farming on Hell with different character builds, so we are not necessarily limited to the usual ones.

The third Ladder season and Patch 2.6 introduced eight new Runewords - most of them are for leveling, filling the gaps, but a few are powerful even in the endgame. The runeword Mosaic enabled the previously very weak Martial Assassin character build to be viable on Hell - some say they are even better than others now - but in the end its a welcome change to have more builds to choose from. 

There were a lot of changes to how melee classes work - making them stronger overall, and balancing bow skills for Amazons - so they are a little less behind Lightning Fury Amazons - which are all welcome, since these changes didnt break the game's balance, just made more character builds viable on Hell.

Shaking up a decades-old classic made many fans happy, but since the time of Ladder Season four, Blizzard's attention was on Diablo IV understandably - although there are still many who are waiting for more to come to Diablo II.