Diablo 2 has a particular way of D2R Items pulling information from the central database in order to ensure that players can accomplish what they want to accomplish. Participating in a game? That's calling Central Database.
Are you looking to change characters? It's another way to check central command to ensure that you get the character asked for, in the same place you left it, complete with everything you'd spent your time working for.
Diablo 2, according to the team, was created to be centralized. The disadvantage of this is that only a single instance of this particular service can run at any one time, so they can't offload certain aspects of the load to local servers.
"Importantly this service is a one-time operation, which means we can only run just one instance of it so that all players have access to the most accurate and up-to-date game list every time," the devs wrote. "We have optimized this service in many ways to make it more compatible with contemporary technology, but as we've mentioned previously, a lot of our issues are due to game development."
In the meantime, there's a range of short-term solutions and plans to revise Diablo 2's structure so that it's more scalable for contemporary demands. The current service, which only provides the games available to players, for Diablo 2 Resurrected buy items instance it's being split into a service that is its own.