Agreed, the first one just seemed to have the perfect atmosphere and the music was great. It really gave you a claustrophobic feeling playing the game, though that may have come about simply be because of the limitations at the time as opposed to by design. It truly felt like you were alone against the end of the world...

The gameplay itself left alot to be desired, and D2 bored me, but the first just struck several chords with me that kept me playing to the end. I also loved the village Tristram as well, it had the right atmosphere and the characters there despite having very little to say were so memorable (Wirt the Peg Legged boy, I always thought he would turn into a demon at some point...).

like i always do in any forum when a good diablo 2 talk is started, here read this guys diablo 2 stories and see if they are funny
http://forums.d2jsp.org/topic.php?t=33400787&f=168

I never understood the appeal of pvp in D2, first of all, it was mostly griefing and second of all even people who only pvped just got duped items off eBay (or duped themselves).

There was a lot of suck in WOW pvp, even back when it was fun (well, mostly fun), but at least they always had a progression and skill could trump gear.

The whole economy in that game was ruined by duping as was pvp. Duped, Zod runed, ethereal gear took care of that. Not to mention the lol-bowazon-pierce-plus-homing-arrow crap with that stupid crossbow (I may be off on the names of the skills) or other cheese combos that they didn't fix for ages just made the whole exercise pointless.

Ofc the runes were duped but this was not the main problem. The main problem was rather the hackers from TMC to Widescreen hack and other hackers. But even they were no problem for a good player. What was great on d2 pvp ?
High speed reactionary ( F-16 pilot)
perfect skilled with good item choice
unbalanced (which i see as bonus since i hate perfect balance)

You really need to be a good player to survive it and i have not met many who were good in d2 pvp.

I don't want perfect balance, but some balance is worthwhile. WOW was never perfectly balanced, neither was Warhammer Online, I'd consider both better for pvp though. I'm not sure we're to the point where you can claim skill for really twicth stuff yet, connections are a problem still in much of the world and ping still matters. I understand the desire, though, and I think that's why LAN parties still matter.

I used to screw with bad pvpers though. I had a Druid stacked up for life (biggest potion in the game only gave me like 8% of my life total back, iirc). So I'd lumber straight at them, they never bothered to move because of course they figured I'd be dead by the time I got there because 1) druids suck and 2) it was seemingly stupid tactic. Of course, they never had any HP so they usually died as soon as I got there.

It really depends on what level you played d2 pvp. Well a druid was only really good when you played with enigma and as a wind druid this is of course in a free for all without any rules. In duell liga you could not use teleport from enigma so a melee druid could have been played but you did really need huge faster run/walk like 200% so that you can catch some pvp's like ranged ones.

I never played it, I killed griefers that called themselves pvpers.

i actually hardly play pvp.
First of all i don't like it and i was only persuaded by a friend who played this pvp for ages.
Getting your **s kicked for 2hours isn't exactly fun.

Yes of course if you have not much experience in d 2 you get your **s kicked it depends high on how much experience you have and how fast your hand/eye coordination and multitasking of kb+m is. That's why d 2 pvp is so difficult for many. WoW pvp is also not bad but you rather work with many skills and cooldowns and like 30 shortcuts but not extremely fast reactionary. I have not played WoW pvp or WoW at all but i have seen some pvp videos of WoW like the one from swifty.
Here is one of his videos

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rb9NCWxg0d0&feature=related

i rather play PvP games who are designed as such.
Counterstrike , medal of honor , quake , unreal tournament , left 4 dead , and so on
The last keyboard and mous juggling i've done was with magicka :)

I did quite a bit of pvp back in the days of 1.09, and while there was certainly quite a bit of griefing going on in public pvp games, there were still some good duels to be found and it could be quite a bit of fun with a good group of people. I pvped quite a bit with a barbarian, but much more with a sorceress, and while I'd still often get my ass handed to me by many of the top duelers with high-end equipment (good assassins were brutal), I could still hold my own against many of the league duelers, and could usually wipe the floor with most of the pvpers that could be found in pub games. And this was using all self-found equipment.

I also have to say that the zons you mentioned ("Burizons", named after the crossbow), were particularly amusing to duel, as the crossbow was popular among amateurs due to being common and exploiting the guided arrow+pierce bug, but had a ridiculously slow rate of fire (at least compared to some of the bows available). This made it pretty trivial to simply dance around all their arrows with my sorc and take them out at my leisure. I also used a different build than many pvp sorcs during that time, forgoing a maxed out Thunderstorm in favor of some points in Hydra, so when many amazons would resort to turtling in a corner after being beaten once or twice they'd get a bit of a surprise when I tossed up a couple of fire hydras right next to them. Some good times there, and some very fun duels when playing against more skilled opponents (and team duels could be particularly fun with a good group... I still remember a paladin who used javelins and absolutely rocked in team duels).

Of course, towards the end of 1.09, when things moved beyond simple duped items to the "ITH" and "white" items, that basically completely did away with any possibility of dueling with legit gear outside of any league environment (and most leagues were either composed of people running bots 24/7 when they weren't dueling, or leagues with very stringent rules designed to "balance" the game... usually heavily in favor of a few particular classes that the people running the league just happened to favor). I never really got back into D2 once 1.10 came out, so I have no idea what the dueling environment ended up being like then.

ya the pvp ruled in 1.09 i used to have mules to hold the ears :D it was so darn simple and fun level up to lv90 + gather the best unique/ set gear for the char, invest in solo skills[there were no freaking synergies that time] , even after the later patches came many setup their own private b net to host 1.09 games, i wonder if they are still around

Did you ever try firewall back in 1.09 before the ith hacks? That used to be punishing along with hydras.

I think I tried it on one sorc build I did, and although the raw damage could be absolutely devastating my personal opinion was that targeting it effectively was way more trouble than it was worth. In pvm it could take down enemies fast if you had a decent merc that could tank them, but you still had to lay down several to cover enough ground to take out a large group of enemies. In pvp it could definitely take out some people quickly if you dropped it right on them, but again the targeting of it made it more trouble than it was worth. Trying to accurately drop one right on an opponent while teleporting almost twice a second just wasn't something I was able to do. Hydra was basically just a "fire and forget" type of thing where just getting it close to the person was good enough. Firewall also had much less utility against opponents who were constantly moving (e.g. barbs, other sorcs), and unlike hydra which required opponents to vacate the entire area, with firewall an opponent only had to move a small distance before they were safe again and could resume their attacks.

I also have to say that the most fun sorc build I ever did was a charged bolt/fireball sorc, which surprisingly could actually do quite well in pvm and was an absolute blast to play.