aliencowz7
Member
Mostly to increase the longevity of the game, I imagine -- although everyone agrees that the difficulty spikes are a bad thing, even if the difficulty level is debatable.
I think this is a poor choice for the long term health of the game, but the AH is likely to maintain an important sustaining tool, and PvP has yet to launch, so we'll see. As already stated, it is traders and PvPers which sustained D2 through most of its lifetime.
I don't think it will have any effect whatsoever on the long term health of the game as the main point in diablo games is to farm items post beating the hardest difficulty for a sense of increasing power for your character.
Currently that feel is completely absent, instead of feeling like your gear is making you into a demon killing badass, it feels like your gear upgrades are simply making it so you are able to progress to the end of the game while still getting your ass beat. That certainly isn't what diablo means to me.
What I didn't love about d2 was getting 1 shot in hell because I hadn't yet maxed out my resists. What I did love was mowing down demons with friends and hunting for items to get more powerful.