Well to put it simply, there is absolutely no point in the beginning of the game, and anything after that in between, until you get to end-game. Annihilus is a great Diablo 2 server with clearly a lot of effort and hours put into it. It has a lot of content and cool features with new gear and such. Unfortunately as great as this is, half the point of playing Diablo 2 was to play through the game and acquire gear and enjoy the story line. Unfortunately, it's unbelievably easy to get super effective gear to basically blast through everything that isn't new or end-game content, kinda defeats the purpose of playing.
I understand the servers idea is to get you to end-game content, but literally when the entire point has been changed into grinding end-game content for the best gear possible, it is unbearably boring and dull. Your points are very valid but this server is suffering pretty bad and it will need an overhaul or people will simply move on. There are too many other RPG games out, too many other D2 mods even to be ignoring the core part of a game. The leveling experience needs an overhaul. Exp rates need to be lowered, gear rarity drops needs to be lowered as well.
HOWEVER. The fact you can no longer get exp from spectating is a huge step in the right direction. There was also an update to gear rarity drops that lowered the chance, which is also a nice step in the right direction. Unfortunately I won't be playing until the next ladder reset. I've played virtually every build on every character and the only build I want to play with is very unique, effective and basically gives me a point to continue playing Diablo 2. Unfortunately he's rendered completely useless, therefore I can't use him, therefore there's no point in me playing Annihilus until it's fixed. The admins apparently need to wait months on months to implement a simple change so I can actually play my character.
I don't hate you admins, at all. Game, you're an awesome individual and have provided a lot of people with a great new diablo 2 experience, but you and your team need to be more open minded about suggestions to keep your game alive, to say the least. It should not take months to wait for some kind of reset or what have you, to implement things. I definitely feel your server will benefit from constant minor updates, even if they're small.