All ladder characters, big or small, rich or poor, then become normal, like everybody else. Periodically, Blizzard reset the ladder (by releasing the new patch). Of course, they can't play forever like that. And so, thousands of pros now start anew with ladder characters. In order to obtain the awesome new ladder-only items, you have to face the challenge of Diablo2:LoD all alone, without the support of the good equipment that you have collected over the previous years. You don't have funky items ready for your little necro to take. Thus, you will get a new necro, who will be isolated from the rest of your old pwnzor heroes. If you want to have a ladder character, you have to make a brand new character and check the 'Ladder' box. He is a normal character and normal characters cannot be converted into ladder ones. If you want a ladder character, you can't use your old pre-1.10 paladin, oh, no. Normal characters don't have access to many of the items on the lists on ArreatSummit. That's right - Blizz made a whole new bunch of cool features especially for the ladder characters. The interesting detail about their ladder servers is that there are ladder-only uniques or rune words that only work in ladder games. They are totally isolated from ordinary characters.

is that ladder characters play in ladder-only servers. The difference between an ordinary necromancer/amazon/assassin/. Not a new class - the paladin, sorc, barb, and so on are still there, but a new category. It's a new feature they introduced when v1.10 came out (right?).

Diablo 2 ladder reset