In Diablo 2, all affixes on items could be divided into two groups; passive and proactive (or "statistical" and "mechanical"). Some affixes simply gave passive benefits to your character, merely improving your existing abilities. For example, +% damage, +life, +skill points, +% mana steal, +experience gain, etc. These were generally statistical effects that boosted your abilities. If you were a fireball sorc, these made you a stronger fireball sorc. You could 'twink' characters by getting the strongest items towards their abilities.

The other category; proactive affixes, were abilities on items that gave access to new and unique gameplay. Abilities that gave your character access to mechanics that otherwise he simply did not have. These were items with "% chance to cast on attack/hit/strike", "aura on equipped", "+ skill" (oskill, or nonclass), and "charges of skill". In Diablo 2, and mostly explored starting with patch 1.09 although introduced in LOD, these items formed a limited ability to expand the game mechanics of characters, opening up new builds and emergent gameplay. They were limited in that skills were merely recycled and bled between classes (with exception of much later added "hellfire torch"), for example the Sorceress' teleport on any character via Enigma runeword- but they opened up totally new vectors for players to expand their build variety.

There is no reason this system could not have been expanded upon, particularly in end-game content, as to avoid feature bloat and overly complicated early game. Where Diablo 2 had only skills bleeding between classes, even the smallest investment of time into designing limited abilities, perhaps outside of the rune-system, would have been greatly rewarded down the line. It is a classical failure of missing a design opportunity.

Torchlight made this same mistake recently in its first release- items approached a singularity as you enchanted them, and all items started looking exactly the same, and the game was nothing more than an elaborate level treadmill towards the end-game content. This is because new mechanics did not open up, and new methods of play did not reveal themselves. Diablo 2 only sc!#%*d the basics of what could be done- Diablo 3 appears to ignore it entirely.


This, in combination with many other factors, like restrictions on items and 'free respeccing', no skill points, no stat points, and so forth, leads to a game that will be very streamlined and generic. Where there might be balance, but no variety. It goes a long way to stifle any positive effect the rune system might have had. Items should not just be statistical benefits, like stat points are, but new gameplay vectors and means of personalization, like skills should be. The same logic that dictated "removing stat points" would ask you to remove items entirely

Item data we've exposed is by and large placeholder, and we're actually in the process of pulling it down due to a lot of reactions just like this. We thought it'd be cool to show some pre-release items in very temporary states, but it's just a matter of fact that people are going to take it at face value. Not that you or anyone else isn't able to discuss the particulars without assuming it's final content, we don't believe that to be true, but in general we don't think the discourse is healthy when it's going to be largely based on placeholder data.

To comment on your specific points though, the vast majority of affixes are simply not implemented in-game, and as the website directly queries game data, it can't pull something that isn't implemented. I'd say affixes are though one area where we want to do as much as possible by game release, but they are directly limited by when we want to finally get the game out the door. At some point feature creep has to stop, and we have to begin testing what should be (game mechanic-wise) a final product.

As you stated though a lot of the crazier affixes did not ship with Diablo II, but were added later. I don't believe that's because the designers didn't have those ideas, but they simply make more sense to expand and broaden the game featureset post-ship. You could argue that it's something that should be baked into the core experience, that Diablo III should be mechanically more complex than Diablo II at release, and the fact of that matter is that it is substantially more complex than Diablo II was at launch.

Bottom line we want as many affixes as we can get for launch, but with runestones, passives, and the itemization we're shooting for, we're already launching a game with far more diverse build potential than Diablo II.

I don't expect to change your mind. You've been playing Diablo II for 10 years, and so it seems like a step backward because the direct comparisons of a 10 year old game with an expansion don't match up with one currently in beta. I can yell runestones! until I'm hoarse and that doesn't change the fact that it's difficult to convince anyone that design complexity isn't being removed, just shifted.

Another thing to keep in mind (runestoooooones!) is that a lot of the proactive affix effects are now runestone effects for various skills, and so we do have to be careful how affixes interact with them. It's just going to be smarter on our part to be more cautious to start when we can't know how those kinds of overlaps could play out pre-release.

In some cases though we are purposefully avoiding affixes we just don't think promote good gameplay, like +damage to X. We want people to play the game and have fun, not feel crappy because they're in an area full of 'beasts' and are stacking +damage to demons. It also encourages a whole host of other divergent gameplay like holding sets for specific types of enemies, or building sets to run specific areas at end-game. Lastly it's just not that compelling. Either it's powerful enough where people do all those crazy things to use specific items in specific areas, or the affix is just de-emphasized to the point of meaninglessness.