Diablo II is destined to be Battle.net only : LAN characters will be seperate and not usable on B.net

This message came straight from Blizzard :

"To answer your question, we have no choice but to have B.net only characters that are not
playable on your LAN. The reason is fairly obvious; unless we control the character data on our
end, it is hackable. We are doing everything we can to ensure that B.net provides a fair,
cheat-free playing environment. Unfortunately, that means B.net-only characters."

Max Schaefer, VP, BlizzNorth