Hello,

What would you do to inject new life into D2 without forcing Blizzard to rework the User Interface nor revolution the game's inner mechanics too heavily?

First I would give Mercenaries -and all minions in general- a better AI. Auto unsummoning minions, disappearing Mercenaries... these are very frustrating.
Improving the AI and prevent such behaviors would be a great start.

I would also give players the possibility to hire any 2 Mercenaries, and not just 1.
I'd allow Mercs to wear at least 1 more item, like an Amulet, and I would introduce new Merc-Oriented runewords, as well as Merc-Only items... just like class specific items for the 7 Classes.
This would allow the programmers to create a host of new stuff, with -possibly- minimal risk of unbalancing the rest of the game.
Since Mercenaries would become more powerful (because people are smart and have prooven to be able to carve out great combos of items, no matter what crap you give 'em), then I'd lower the overall capabilities of Mercenaries, so that they still need concrete aid from players (thus preventing players from sitting in the back row offering support without risking their own skin).

I would also introduce a new, 8th Character Class.
No idea about the possible name (I'll refer to it as the 8th, for simplicity), but I would make this Class most peculiar, with 20 powerful skills (no idea about them, don't ask).
20 skills, for 2 skilltabs. The 3rd skilltab, with its 10 skills, would be 'leeched' from the character this 8th player is playing with.
To not unbalance things I would make so that the leechable skilltab is fixed for each Class. Lightning Spells from a Sorceress, Passive Skills from an Amazon, Elemental Skills from a Druid... are just some examples.
The leeched skilltab must not be the one containing the most powerful skills, of course, or it might become too easy. Also, I'd put 2 limitations on this special skilltab.
1) The 8th can only use what skills the sharing character has access to. If a Sorceress has Zero points in Energy Shield (example), the 8th can't use Energy Shield. It's possible that the leeched skilltab is completely empty (a Fury Druid might have no Elemental Skills to share).
2) No sinergies. The leeched skills should not benefit from sinergies, even if the original Sorceress/Amazon/whatever has pumped these up.

In this way we'd have a new Character Class that could play differently depending on who is in game with you.
One issue comes to mind though. How do you choose the Character to leech from?
I think it's best set in an automatic way. Otherwise people will tend to choose always the same skilltab, and play always with the same players.
Whatever single discriminant or set of discriminants they (Blizzard) may adopt, there would be a chance that 2 distinct players are candidate to be the leeched Class.
So I think that the best option is to let the game choose randomly every time (and nobody can yell "Go away!! I want to leech from Xyz_Dude!!"... imagine that).
In case the leeched player leaves the game, the 8th would automatically switch to another skilltab from another player, possibly of the same class of the previous, if available.
If the 8th remains alone, the 3rd skilltab becomes empty. He still has his 20 skills, which are powerful on their own, and should let him handle any situation in some way or the other.
What then if a game is populated only by players using the 8th?
No 3rd skilltab for anyone in that case, but every player would receive a boost in their skills, based on the number of players present. This boost shouldn't be a +skill boon, but rather something like snergies.

Finally, I would recreate the old labyrinth beneath Tristram's Cathedral, with its 16 levels, its 4 themes, and a new Boss waiting down there (Lazarus, maybe?)
No waypoints, thought. Put one, and people just use it to access the lower levels and rush to the final Treasure Chests.
Instead I'd like to see parties form and start the descent, face tough monsters, and get the due rewards at the end.
Monster's difficulty would greatly augment with each level, possibly non-linearly, so that if you can handle what's at Level One, you can't necessarily handle (yet) the gentlemen at Level Two.
And I would reintroduce those lost Tomes occasionally scattered here and there that you could read and apprehend bits of the background story from. I really miss them... the closest thing that resembles them in Diablo 2 is the Moldy Tome (Evil Countess quest).
It's not enough for me >_<

Well, I'm just throwing ideas.
I'd like to hear what you think, and your own ideas too.

Regards,
Ciao ciao : )

I'd just quit Diablo 2 and play a game that actually has a good PvP system.

Delete and stop all dupes. Make it easier to find items, and stop people from magic finding constantly to get mega-rich. Also put quest blockers to make you actually do all/most quests and make sure you do it the old fashioned way.

how about a hot-key to tell your merc to attack or not attack. is stupid to have to raise merc 1000's of times because of iron maiden.

Delete and stop all dupes. Make it easier to find items, and stop people from magic finding constantly to get mega-rich. Also put quest blockers to make you actually do all/most quests and make sure you do it the old fashioned way.

I'd bet money that most people would quit without rushes. I haven't played in over a year, but the only thing fun for me was PvP, and getting a new character leveled up quickly to gear it up. Playing the storyline gets boring VERY fast for many people, and I doubt that most people would want this to happen.

I'd bet money that most people would quit without rushes. I haven't played in over a year, but the only thing fun for me was PvP, and getting a new character leveled up quickly to gear it up. Playing the storyline gets boring VERY fast for many people, and I doubt that most people would want this to happen.

Yeah. Abusing the game is currently more fun than playing the way it is right now.

Yeah once you beat it once the fun is gone.

Yeah once you beat it once the fun is gone.

My intentions was always to kill people. I cared less if I beat Baal.

Maybe players should reach Level 99 much MUCH faster.
The trade off might be that if a player dies, he loses 1 Level, the last allocated 5 Stat points and the last allocated Skill point.
This would open new possibilities... like purposedly seeking death multiple times to be able to correct the mistakes.
The lost Levels would be reacquired in a relatively short time.

Ciao ciao : )

Maybe players should reach Level 99 much MUCH faster.
The trade off might be that if a player dies, he loses 1 Level, the last allocated 5 Stat points and the last allocated Skill point.
This would open new possibilities... like purposedly seeking death multiple times to be able to correct the mistakes.
The lost Levels would be reacquired in a relatively short time.

Ciao ciao : )

Unless that was in a separate type of difficulty like softcore / hardcore i think that would make more people mad because there is a lot of people like me that enjoy leveling up to 99 the way it is now and it's already pretty annoying losing 6-8 mil at 98 from a regular death let alone a drop with out body (26 milish ie 200++ games). Leveling was meant to be difficult in the upper 90's and I think it's fine how it is already.

They should stop Desynching. I always thought that was very unfair. To all of a sudden have a barb in front of you WWing away, while you thought he was off screen. Chargers Hdins, etc.

Alas, desynching is impossible to stop for this game.
You see, it's due to the way the game itself works.
It's not 3D and everything is a series of sprites put & shown together to form animations. These animations are fixed and have precise timing rules that cannot be broken, or everything goes kaput.

Desynching is when everything goes kaput indeed, because at least one of the comps connected to the game you're in, cannot keep up with the others.
Usually desynching is caused by lag. Other times it's because there's too much stuff going on to be handled within time.
The Hellfire Torch and its Firestorm is a good example of the latter motivation. It is possible that the Firestorm affects so many monsters at once, that a computer is unable to calculate everything within the next time frame... and the game slows down.
It's a harmless slowdown when you play alone, because Blizzard's server can wait for you since you are the only player and all the actions depends on you entirely.
It's a disrupting desynching when you have company, instead, because every player can do his stuff while you do yours, and entering a waiting state is almost never a feasible option.

Certain attacks, certain skills, certain actions can trigger a lot of work in the background. If then the connection has a temporary slowdown, the final results obtained from this 'lot of work' may reach you and your buddies that little bit too late that is enough to send everyone kaput, because not all the connected comps share the same data, and discrepancies are formed.
And so it may happen (example) that for your comp you are in a certain position X,Y... for another player you are a good 3 yards away (along the direction you were supposed to be moving), while for the rest of the gang you are in yet another position.
How can you be in two/three places at the same time? How do you recover from such situation?
The game has to perform extra checks to try and estabilish who is right and who is wrong (in order to fix things), but these extra checks imply extra data exchange between the comps.
Heh, it's even more work that might further delay the vital communications, and strike the finishing blow to the game instead of saving it.
Well, sometimes the recovery has success... many other times it fails.

Ciao ciao : )