Median and pod let you pick between 20+ locations (like US east/west, europe, tons of countries), all on one realm. They really need to split the game servers into multiple servers on slashd so it's on par with pod and median.
D2 median xl resolution Patch#
PoD is like diablo 2 patch 1.20, slashd is current bnet done mostly right. On officials you can get high runes within an hour or two of resets with a credit card swipe. Anyhow, I'd pick slashd over official any day. If you just play hyper casual then it's kinda fine I guess. They have wildly out of touch with D2 people making choices and have for nearly a decade now. There's just so many garbage choices on officials if you are remotely "hardcore" or into d2. Not being able to make more than 40-60 games in 12 hours (or ~20 in 1 hour) without getting temp banned unless you switch cdkey sets or ips per client is awful, having to load 3-7 other clients to do anything efficiently is awful (but still kinda true on slashd if you want exp - 2/8 is still superior to anything, at least you don't need 24 cdkey sets and multiple proxies to not get temp banned on slashd like you do on officials), duping used by item selling sites not patched, mass botting, ban hacks people actually like that do QoL features, etc. Official D2 is awful and has made countless changes that alienated its players.
It just doesn't require you to run 7-8 clients to get a reasonable nodrop value. Rune drop rates were increased on officials significantly since when most people played, and slashd has the same drop rates.
Also, you can't bot on slashd so you get way less high runes and items compared to officials anyway. If you are a big nerd and have done this on officials you'd think slashd's nodrop rate is a godsend. It just stops you from having to load and automate or micromanage that many clients.