Holy Christ, are people still playing Diablo II nowadays? Even Ms. Pacman has better graphics.
I know D2 people are a special kind of breed. They are willing to spend hours and hours of grinding for items just to brag about it to other people they don’t even know. I used to be one 5 years ago or so.
But here’s a newsflash: TQ is not a Diablo II upgrade. It will be played on ‘open battle.net’ only which means you will be able to cheat to max lvl at the speed of light and get a full legendary set before you can so “dohâ€. This game is about questing together with serious people you like playing with. Grab a beer and get on teamspeak together for maximum fun (the beer is optional).
From the looks of it at the moment, TQ is NOT about farming items to brag about unless they somehow implement a way to make legit items detectable which I very much doubt.
This whole concept of, as you adequately put, “itemfever†is the sole force that still drives D2 today but is impossible to obtain while cheating is possible.
NWN is a great game, but advancing faster than normally (aka cheating) is also possible, yet people still play it because you need to switch your attitude from plain itemfever to enjoying (role)playing with friends.
Good luck with that.