The good main stories are Forsaken (can’t play this anymore afaik), The Witch Queen (may be worth it), and The Final Shape (from what I hear, no context on this one). There’s also some good stories in specific seasons but I don’t know how they’re handling older seasons and whether or not you can still play them. Back when I was actively playing they were cycling them out every year.
A lot of the value in these is the endgame content though. Unless you’re interested in the loot game, lost sectors, exotic missions and/or plan on getting a group together for dungeons and raids, I don’t think it’s worth it. If all you care about is the story, I think you can get much better stories elsewhere.
Yup, that tracks. I think it was a total of about $150 for me starting Y3 and up to the beginning of Y4. When D2 is good, it’s REALLY good, and nothing quite compares to grinding that game with a bunch of friends who are also super into it.
My friends I used to play with I actually met in-game when I was F2P. I couldn’t buy the DLCs myself at the time so they just bought me the DLCs (which I still think is wild and I’m unbelievably grateful for). But the content got stale as hell at around Y4 and they stopped playing for the better part of a year. By the time they were back, they still didn’t wanna do most of the content and I was getting burnt out on the power grind every season. Raids became more about the loot, less about having fun. Eventually we all kinda fell off it. By the time I could pay for it myself, only some of them were playing sporadically, and the monetization kept getting more and more insane (like fuck Bungie for thinking dungeon keys were a good idea).
I really miss those days though and I’d pay in a heartbeat if it meant playing like we used to.