Inside Battle.net - How the Diablo II: Resurrected Team Terrorized Sanctuary

wowhead.com:

As part of their bi-monthly 'Inside Battle.net' blog series, Blizzard posted an article detailing the ways in which Diablo II: Resurrected has changed to make the endgame journey more enjoyable for players. The article highlights the careers of Senior Principal Game Designer Robert Gallerani and Software Engineer Michael Clavell and how their combined efforts have changed the gameplay dynamics of Diablo II forever. Blizzard's 'Inside Battle.net' Blog Post If you’ve ever attempted to level a character all the way to 99 in Diablo II, then you know that it is not a task for the faint of heart.

According to the article, an average player would spend about 200 hours just to get from level 98 to 99. In fact, while more than 500,000 characters were created during the Season 1 Ladder of Diablo II: Resurrected, fewer than 1,000 players made it all the way to level 99. With these daunting statistics in mind, the team behind Diablo II: Resurrected decided to take a look at how players achieved this ambitious goal during Season 1 to see if there was anything that they could do to make this Feat of Strength less tedious.

Ahead of Season 2, the team developed two features that would change the endgame leveling methods of Diablo II from its previous 20-year history. By adding Terror Zones to the game, players now possess more ways than ever to complete the grind to 99. Previously, the most efficient way to level a character to 99 was to kill the same two bosses (Diablo & Baal) over and over again for hundreds of hours.

With Terror Zones, players now have more diverse options for continuing to level their characters during the endgame. Similarly, there was an issue with the number of viable endgame character builds. To combat this lack