Ok relax horbar, basically ladder is alot harder, like the monsters act like champion monsters and everything is harder. Since its harder there are some exclusive items in ladder play that wouldnt be on normal non-ladder (see arreat summit). Ladder works like hardcore where its a whole different place and cannot join any nonladder games. Ladder also has more cube recipe's basically u can make any rune like zod and all the rest of them (very attractive feature) and i think that about sums it up.