Hardcore mode adds huge amounts of fun to the experience. You feel so invested into what's going on, calculating how much risk you can safely manage, etc. Leaderboards are more interesting. Finding secondary gear for when your main eventually dies.

Dying because I was being stupid is just part of the fun. Re-role. Use some saved resources to skip the early grind.

Dying because server crashed, internet lagged for 6 seconds, etc. Those hurt. They are the vast majority of deaths.

Taught me not to open Evil Urns in the Crystalline Passage without proper preparation. >:(

There is also an experience penalty on softcore in hell. 10% experience at lvl 98 is a few weeks of work for me.

Getting to level 99 or playing hardcore mode isn’t the objective for 99+% of players.

Diablo 2 is a fairly forgiving and moderately casual game imo. Most builds require only one skill for damage, and respeccing and how easy it is to get a character rushed means it’s easy to experiment or fix builds.

Where is Jamella Editor Resurrected? D2 was a great into to memory and hex editing as a kid :)

Edit: wouldja look at that https://github.com/dschu012/d2s

Also fun: https://d2esr.fandom.com/wiki/Eastern_Sun_Rises_Wiki

I played D2 pretty obsessively for a few years during my teens and never bothered going higher than 92, rolling new builds was always more fun than endless baal runs for me.