Solved Cant access public rooms

Hello and welcome back @baronbiker,
The red text is merely an informative message and it's always there, you should press the CREATE or JOIN button to play the game instead. If no games show up after pressing the JOIN button, then it's possible that your characters have not been played in a long time and they've become non-ladder so you should create a new ladder character to confirm that theory although you should be getting that information straight from the character selection screen. You do not need to reinstall the game or download any other patch since being able to create games confirms you are already using the right version.
https://imgur.com/QJQxOMx
https://imgur.com/aCmXZzs

 

You will need to create a new ladder character in this case, as most of the players are playing ladder in this game. There are non-ladder players as well but a lot less compared to ladder ones, usually those who wish to preserve their progress forever and don't really care to interact with the ladder players usually hang there. You've seen the ladder games before, while your character was a ladder one.
Diablo II has been using the ladders or seasons concept for over 21 years now, the only difference is that in here the ladders last much longer than a few months as they usually do. You can find out more about ladder characters and the game mechanics by visiting diablowiki or the following link: http://classic.battle.net/diablo2exp/basics/charactertypes.shtml

 

A year ago lots of people were sitting at home quarantined with not much to do.
Cant really compare.

 

@baronbiker, I am confident you were playing on the ladder at that time and you most likely did it before the latest ladder reset and forgot about that. Even though we do have people playing non-ladder on our realm, you should know that non-ladder has never been a thing when it comes to private realms (in fact we are one of the few where people are still actively playing on non-ladder) and not even within the official servers anymore for quite some years now. The vast majority has always been playing ladder only, especially thanks to the long-term ladders we have here and even though non-ladder had more activity during the COVID-19 lockdowns it wasn't nearly close to the ladder activity.
It wouldn't be the first time someone forgets about when was the last time they've played and you most likely have done it right before the latest ladder reset.