Meh, same old whining.
Big-Fat-Homo, you act like the only thing 1.10 did was introduce runewords to make the game so easy. The fact is... runewords are almost needed now to survive the other features that 1.10 brought about. You didn't need runewords in previous patches because monsters sucked and the game was even easier than it is now!
Here's a few of the features 1.10 introduced, that are relevant to this thread...
- greatly increased monster speed, damage, and defense (game just got harder because monsters can swarm you and kill you quicker)
- widespread monster immunities (game just got harder because now several builds suck vs certain enemies)
- # of unique monsters increased in every area of every difficulty level (game just got harder because more unique monsters = more chance of them having deadly attributes; such as fanatacism, FE, MSLE, or whatever fear your build might have)
- increased experience gaining penalties for lvl 70+ characters (game just got harder because now you have to repeatedly kill these dangerous monsters several more times than before; this increases your odds of dying)
- synergy bonuses to skills (game just got harder in the sense that you can now strengthen your main skill, but have less pts to use on a secondary skill. If your secondary skill was meant to deal with the new monster immunity problems, this can get ugly. ex. blizzard sorc)
- there are other features that one could argue add to this, such as: nerfing of cow experience = slower leveling (more chances to die), new D Clone was hardest monster in the game for most builds, or even the whole Ladder system giving players a sense of urgency to play quicker than your comfortable pace... but I think you get the point by now.
This patch made it a whole new game. Runewords allow you to overcome these new features. Don't forget that high runes are not easily attained in a legitimate game, that this was meant to be. The emergence of dupes, ebay, etc has granted any player the chance to wear enigma and such. I see that as a far greater problem than the "runewords are too godly" problem. Even the most godliest characters still die today. Play hardcore to find out.
I don't remember what patch is was when I first started playing D2... but it was long before 1.10. These new features are what keeps this game alive. And don't tell me that D2 was any harder back then than it is now. That said... no one is forcing you to use the runewords, so clearly your problem is seeing "noobs pretend they're godly". It's a game. Who cares how anyone else is experiencing it other than yourself???